D Day Dodgers

I wasn't born until well after D Day but I'm old enough to remember stories of people who were. This parody was attributed to Major Hamish Henderson of the 51st Highland Division, written after Lady Astor referred to the men of the 8th Army who were fighting in the Italian campaign as the "D-Day Dodgers". She apparently forgot that they had fought their way from Alexandria, Egypt, through Libya to Tunisia, to Sicily and then up the boot of Italy to a summer retreat called Monte Cassino without any relief.

Captain Henderson personally accepted the surrender of Italy from Marshal Graziani in 1945, the first major surrender of an Axis army in the West. On the 65th anniversary of D Day let us not only commemorate the Normandy Landings but also remember the efforts the D Day Dodgers and all those others who contributed to the defeat of fascism.

See more about Hamish in this earlier post.