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On this day, when we remember the victory that brought seventy-five years of peace to Europe, we should never forget the men and women who fought to preserve civilization.
While V-E Day is celebrated on May 8, the “Act of Military Surrender” was signed in Reims by General Affred Jodl, on behalf of Nazi Germany and accepted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, at 2:41AM May 7, 1945. When guns finally ceased, Europe had been at war for five years and eight months. Americans had been fighting for three years and five months. An estimated 75 million people lost their lives during those years, including 405,000 Americans.
I was four years old, living at my maternal grandparents’ home in Madison, Connecticut, with my mother, two sisters and a brother. My father, with the 10th Mountain Division, was in Roverto, just west and north of Italy’s Lake Garda’s. In his History of the 87th Mountain Infantry, Captain George Earle wrote: “After the memory of the seared browns of the Apennines and the recent dust of battle, the May colors of the foothills of the Alps seemed unbelievably fresh and vivid.” The war in Italy had ended five days earlier.
While some equate our experience with COVID-19 today as our generation’s trial, it is not the same. Certainly, healthcare workers, who daily face the possibility of infection, knowingly confront peril. But those of us who “shelter-at-home” have little in common with foot soldiers in foxholes, airmen in combat, submariners being depth-charged, or marines storming beaches. We wear masks and socially distance.