World leaders will gather on Sunday in Normandy, northern France, to pay tribute to the second World War allied soldiers who fought, and in many instances gave their lives, that others might live free from tyranny and oppression.
Specifically, they will honour the extraordinary events that began 60 years ago on D-Day, June 6th 1944, when allied forces scrambled ashore amid bloody confusion and, against ferocious opposition thrown at them by German forces, established a bridgehead on mainland Europe. Thus began the land invasion counter attack on the Third Reich that was to culminate, a little over a year later, in the collapse of Hitler's world amid the ruins of Berlin. The Normandy Landings were, to paraphrase Churchill on an earlier allied victory, the beginning of the end of the Nazi reign of terror over Europe.
The majority of Irish people alive today were born after the end of the second World War and participation in that war is not an intimate part of many family histories in the Republic. For that reason, and also because of this State's ambivalent attitude, to put it mildly, towards the titanic struggle that the war represented, the 60th anniversary of D-Day is noted less here than among some other nations of Europe. That is to be regretted. Were it not for the sacrifices of so many individuals (most barely out of their teens, few aged over 30), the military leadership of their senior officers and the steely political determination of the likes of Churchill and the then US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, much of the world - Europe certainly - would have been carved up between two frightful ideologies, fascism and communism, with horrendous human consequences. The second half of the 20th century would have been very different indeed and this State would not have been spared despite its "neutrality" in a war which, in its limited impact here, was known as "the emergency".
Many Irish men and women, from the Republic and Northern Ireland, fought on the allied side. Some participated in the D-Day landings and the subsequent push eastwards. They helped liberate France, the low countries and, eventually, Germany itself. Today, they should be proud of what they did and they should be acknowledged. All of us on this island owe them a debt of gratitude.
The scale of the sacrifice on June 6th 1944 and thereafter is breathtaking - as anyone who has visited the Normandy coast cemeteries will know: 3,000 allied men died on D-Day itself, 425,000 perished in the ensuing battle for Normandy. Some 55 million people died in the war - around 30 million civilians and 25 million soldiers, sailors and airmen. The Soviet Union, whose Red Army advanced on Berlin from the east, was by far the worst affected, losing more than 21 million of its people.
This weekend, those who gave their lives in a just cause should be remembered for what they did for us. Comparison with other, questionable, contemporary military activity is singularly ill-judged.