On the evening of the 6th June I naturally found myself watching "The Longest Day". In fact I'm surprised only one channel was showing it. Not even "Saving Private Ryan" but there's something about TLD that tells this amazing story so completely.
Anyway, I couldn't help thinking while watching it that, 69 years later, Would they do it today?
Three million men sailing across a storm-torn English Channel and taking on the most insurmountable military force known to man - and keeping it a secret until they showed up on the French coast that chilly morning. Can you imagine today's global leadership having that kind of back-bone to mount that kind of operation? It makes the invasion of Iraq look like a cadet exercise. As Rod Steiger says in it, "the biggest Armada the world's ever known."
As we watch the Syrian Civil War turn into the most ghastly human rights catastrophe since the holocaust and the UN fail to do anything but posture, I struggle to imagine the global community galvanise into action in the way the Allies did in June 1944.
I've walked most of the beaches along that front: Juno and Omaha and Sword. The scale is quite something else when you get a sense of the size of the front they opened up. I've also been to the Pegasus Bridge and seen how far in land that was - how far behind enemy lines - and how steep the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.
(I've also been watching "Band of Brothers" lately and understood again what a huge struggle began on June 7th 1944 and what a long road to Berlin it was.)
Would today's leadership sue for peace? Would they procrastinate for years until nothing could be done. Would the Nazi reality just become something they could have "appeased" and placated?
I hope not, but when you look at the inactivity taking place over Syria today - and equally over climate change for that matter - it is hard to have the kind of confidence in the modern world leadership that they would find steel in the way Roosevelt and Churchill did in 1944.
Well, whatever, all I can say is "John has a long moustache".