Thursday June 6th 2019

Image : BBC Copyright / Press Association

I had a notion to record the 75th Anniversary of the D Day landings on June 6th 1944. And then I looked back 5 years in my blog and realised in 2014 I'd written a very long piece on the D Day 70th Anniversary Ceremonies.  Today in 2019 a huge ceremony took place in Normady, with many of the 300 veterans attending, frail, but resolute in being there to remember long fallen friends and comrades. Time is passing swiftly for them and their numbers dwindle at the same pace. In ten years time very few servicemen and women of WW2 will be alive. That aural history will fade with them. Lest We forget.

Tonight too saw the final of three programmes in the UP series. Beginning in 1964, this longform documentary has followed the lives of who were then 7 year old school children. Their parents would have been of the generation who fought in WW2, the generation which now are coming to the ends of their own lives. The current series 63 UP revisits the children of 1964 as they now enter late middle age and old age will be with them soon. One participant Lynn, has already died after a short illness, and another Nick, is seriously ill. Now these children are all aged 63 years, what drifted across the airwaves without exception was that life is short, make the most of it every day.

It is why we remember the 4000 soldiers and seamen who died on those beaches on June 4th 1944. They no longer can make the most of every day, their life was short.