Madam, - Thank you for your Editorial of June 4th, which may remind readers of the debt of gratitude we owe America for protecting our independence and way of life over the second half of the 20th century.
In 1944 I was seven years old and living in Bristol with my parents. In the early months of that year an 18-year-old Indian-American soldier by the name of Maurice Yohi was billeted in our home.
For a very short period this boy became my hero. He told me about his home, gave me rides in his jeep and carved for me a wooden knife.
Sadly, Maurice was killed on the first assault of the D-Day landings. I hope I will never forget him or lose his wooden knife. - Yours, etc.,
ROGER WORMALD,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.
******
Madam, - Kevin Myers is quite wrong to depict D-Day as the first battle of the Cold War (Weekend, June 7th).
Stalin had been pressing for the opening of a second front in France for nearly three years and strongly supported Roosevelt's efforts to get Churchill to agree to a cross-channel invasion in 1944. The D-Day landings were co-ordinated with Operation Bagration - a massive Red Army offensive on the Eastern Front - and the allied invasion of France would hardly have been possible at all without the sacrifice of the millions of Soviet soldiers who died fighting Nazi barbarism.
After D-Day the Soviet-Western alliance went from strength to strength, now that Britain and the United States were fully committed to the land war in Europe. At the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945 the Allied leaders, Stalin included, proclaimed their commitment to a liberated and democratic Europe - ideals perverted by the outbreak of the Cold War.
The causes of the Cold War are many and varied, but an important contribution was made by Mr Myers's predecessors - ideological zealots more intent on pursing an anti-Communist crusade than building on the unity and alliance represented by D-Day. - Yours, etc.,
Prof GEOFFREY ROBERTS,
Department of History,
University College Cork.