Editor:
Hats off for the D-Day celebrations and for those who organized them. But it is the many “end of the beginning” or “beginning of the end” comments that trouble me. For Europe they might easily also apply to the enormous German defeat at Stalingrad. Or even the failure of Hitler to invade Britain. It certainly did not apply to the Second World War.
I was a British officer in Number One Reinforcement Camp, South East Asia Command, on the India/Burma border on VE Day, reading about the celebrations in London, Paris and New York. This was before the bombing of Hiroshima. Ahead was the invasion of the Japanese, a formidable task by any measure. Preparations for that invasion were well advanced. Then came the atom bomb and the actual end of the Second World War.
Which brings me back to the “beginning of the end” comments. For future historians, I’m sure the answer will be the bombing of Pearl Harbour and the entry of the U.S.A. into the war. And for bookies, the odds on favourite.
Bernard McGrath, Gibsons
