Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.
WWII near you
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Do any of you have any WWII related places near you?
I live in East Texas and we have several German POW camp sites. The old middle high school building of our home town was built by German POW’s.
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I work very close to “Camp X”. A secret facility during WW2 where the British government trained Spies and operatives to be dropped into Europe.
There is also an old POW camp in a town near by “POW Camp 19 - Bowmanville”
The General Motors plant in Oshawa built many vehicles and trucks for the effort.
The Oshawa Air port was also the training station and home of the 420 Wing (Bomber Command)
I see a part of WW2 history every day where I live.
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It’s everywhere.
I live in the Netherlands, near Rotterdam, the center of which was bombed by the Germans in 1940. The remainders of the Atlantikwall are just twenty miles away. My old school was commandeered by the German military. Unexploded ordnance is still occasionally being detected and cleared. Walking in a park last week, I saw an old Panther tank, now a memorial to the fighting that once took place there. I even work for a government institution that supports WWII victims.
Yes, it’s everywhere. From the names of streets, to the silence of the graveyards, to the stories and memories of elderly people.
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i live near selfridge and about 45 minutes way from willow run, a factory built by for to make B-24 liberators
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Nürnberg is full of it…
- the Trials
- the Colloseum
- Zeppelinfield
- Race laws
- Julius Streicher
- Bombing raids
- parts of the 4th Panzer - Division ( Wehrkreis Würzburg/Nürnberg)
- SS barracks went into Merryl-barracks used by the American Forces now used for Refugees
I also visited KZ- Dachau but only a tenth of the Konzentration Camp remains as well as Bergen Belsen…
I was once in the Wevelsburg for a tour…
and last but not least Berlin when the Wall was still up…
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