This evening, while watching a DVD of a portion of the BBC Series on World War II entitled "Battlefields", I was introduced to a song called "D-Day Dodgers" which appears to be a war version of the song "Lili Marleen." The song "D-Day Dodgers" refers to the soldiers who were stuck in Italy at the time of the Normandy invasion in France. The BBC episode entitled "Cassino" told very effectively the story of the Allied attack on Fortress Cassino, southeast of Rome, and held by the Germans. In the overall campaign to reach Rome, some 100,000 men were lost.
The song "D-Day Dodgers" captures poignantly the sacrifice of some very brave men who fought and suffered terrible losses in order to liberate Italy from the grip of fascism. Watching the video and listening to this wistful song brought home for me this awesome sacrifice, now more than sixty years in the past. May we never forget what those men gave up in order to save us from fascism, and to protect liberty.
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