V-Day

[Rina Ascura]

Sorry for being a little late.

Okay, I have an excuse. In Russia we celebrate V-Day at 9th May, because of the timezone issue. I know the rest of the world celebrates it one day earlier. Also forgive me for possible grammatical mistakes and unreadability, I'm a little drunk.

68 years ago we defeated Nazism. By "we" I mean the Allies, not any single country. Our enemies were perhaps the closest real-world thing to an empire of evil, and this evil was destroyed, Earth cleansed from it. It was quite a long time ago, but there still live people who remembered this war.

Today I celebrated with my grandmother. She was a teenage girl back then, when her village was in the Nazi occupied territory. She remembers well many stories, both grisly and exhilarating, about World War II as seen by a simple country girl.  I was listening to her stories, realizing this is the only live testimony of those times in my family, since both of my grandfathers are dead.

However, I still have records of my paternal grandfather, who was a Lt.Colonel and a pilot during the Great Patriotic War. I never knew him, and only learned his story from archive documents. However, he is not forgotten.

Nobody is forgotten.
Nothing is.

Remember World War II.

[Oramac]

Always remember.  And thank a Vet at every chance available.  Are you able to watch the series Band of Brothers?  It's got a lot of good interviews with WWII vets, though obviously from Easy Company, since they're the focus of the series. 

[Rina Ascura]

I'll search for it. Not sure if it's translated; my understanding of spoken English is substantially shoddier than written.

[Oramac]

I'll search for it. Not sure if it's translated; my understanding of spoken English is substantially shoddier than written.

Hmm.  Didn't think of that.  It's probably not translated into Russian, though there probably is French subtitles or something.  In any case, I completely agree about honoring our veterans, old and new, and remembering the sacrifices they've made. 

[TheHobbitofDune]

During WWII, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded China's capital city of Nanking and proceeded to slaughter 300,000 of my family's countrymen. To this day, the Japanese government has still not given China a true, sincere apology.

Remember Nanking.
Remember World War II.

[Manroon]

A little late myself, but amen to all of the above. Thanks to the Vets, from ANY war, and particularly WWII. Talk to those guys, or anyone you might meet who remembers that time. Listen to whatever they want to say and pass on what you hear. Remember also that in any war, or anything for that matter, there are ALL kinds of people. Civilians. Patriots. Freedom Fighters. Reluctant Soldiers. Dictators. Selfless Leaders. Murderers. Rescuers. All people.

My thanks to those who were there, Allied Soldier or otherwise, for coming through it and doing your part to give the rest of us a world in one piece, the chance to live our lives as we choose, and the opportunity to learn from what happened then.