Module 6 War and PeaceThe D-Day Landings – Passage 1In September 1939, Britain declared war on Germany after Germany invaded Poland. The war, which lasted until 1945, is known as the Second World War. During the war, Germany occupied many countries, including France. He most important battle of the war in Europe was Operation Overlord, the military operation in 1944 to invade France.Operation Overlord started when boats full of soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy in France, known as the D-Day landings. More than 5,000 ships crossed the English Channel, carrying 130,000 troops to the French coast.Troops from the United States, Britain and Canada took part in the D-Day landings. The operation was extremely dangerous and many soldiers were killed before they even got off the boats. American soldiers attempted to land at the most dangerous place, known as Omaha Beach.The situation at Omaha Beach was so bad that the US army commanders thought about abandoning the invasion. Eventually, the soldiers made a breakthrough and the D-Day landings were successful. It was the beginning of the end of the Second World War.Operation Overlord started as a story of danger and confusion and ended as a story of bravery and acts of heroism.The D-Day Landings – Passage 2The soldiers of Able Company crossed the English Channel in seven boats early on the morning of 6 June 1944. when they were about 5 kilometres from the beach, the Germans started firing artillery shells at them but the boats were too far away. The Germans continued firing and Boat 5 was hit one kilometer from the beach. Six men drowned before help arrived. Twenty men fell into the water and were picked up by other boats. As a result, they missed the fighting on the beach. Six men drowned before help arrived. Twenty men fell into the water and were picked up by other boats. As a result, they missed the fighting on the beach. They were lucky. If they had reached the beach, they would probably have been killed. When Boat 3 was a few metres form the beach, the soldiers jumped out, but the water was so deep that some of them disappeared under the water. Many of the men were either killed or wounded by machine gun fire.The soldiers on Boat 1 and Boat 4 jumped into the water, but it was too deep and most of them drowned. Half an hour after the first attack, two thirds of the company (a company is a group of about 100 soldiers) were dead. The survivors lay on the beach, exhausted and shocked.After an hour and forty-five minutes, six of the survivors tried to climb up the cliff to get off the beach. Four were too exhausted to reach the top. The other two, Private Jake Shefer and Private Thomas Lovejoy, joined a group from another company and fought with them. Two men. Two rifl es. This was Able Company’s contribution to D-Day.The D-Day Landings – Passage 3On 6 June 2004, survivors of the D-Day landings from many different countries returned to France to remember their lost comrades. Many of them went to the cemetery and memorial which overlooks Omaha Beach.The cemetery and memorial are situated on a cliff overlooking the beach and the English Channel, from where the boats attempted their landing. The cemetery contains the graves of 9,386 Americans who died during the landings. The memorial also contains the names of more than 1,500 men who were never found.On the memorial, there is part of a poem called “For the Fallen”, which was written by an English poet, Lawrence Binyon:They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. The poem was first published in The Times newspaper on 14 September 1914 and can be seen on war memorials in many parts of the world.Saving Private Ryan (1998)A review by Jenny Carter, aged 15Saving Private Ryan is a film which was directed by Steven Spielberg. The two main characters are Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, and Private James Ryan, played by Matt Damon.James Ryan is the fourth brother to be involved in the Second World War. His three brothers have already been killed, two of them in the D-Day landings in Normandy, the other in a battle in another part of the world. Their heart-broken mother receives news about all her dead sons on the same day. The US army decides to send a group of men into the French countryside to try to find the fourth brother. Captain Miller, a hero and survivor of the Omaha Beach battle, is chosen to lead the rescue team of eight men.The film opens with a 30-minute sequence of the invasion of Normandy, probably the most violent images of war ever shown in a film. We see the full horror of war, and the chaos and senseless waste of life.Saving Private Ryan is an unforgettable anti-war film and also a story of courage and sacrifice. Spielberg has made a lot of good films, but he has never made one with such a strong message. And the message is simple –we want peace; we don’t want war.D-Day + 2To our astonishment, just two days after we had received our confidential orders to join the D-Day landing troops, and after a day fighting and seeing many of my friends killed by the enemy, we found ourselves outside a peaceful village in France. It was so sudden, after the mess and confusion of war on the beach.It was late afternoon, and the sun was setting on a perfect country scene of farm buildings, a main street, a few shops, a garage and a church. But we hesitated because we were aware that there might still have been enemy soldiers. Our lieutenant told Private Kowalski and me to advance and check the village.As we entered the main street, a young woman on a tractor drove out of the garage, saw us and called out something in French. Immediately five men came out of the bar, and two more from a farmyard, holding guns. I took off my helmet and yelled, “American! Put your guns down!” they gathered round us, shouting and shaking our hands, some women appeared and kissed us.We soon understood that the enemy had abandoned the village, so Kowalski went backto the others to let them know it was safe. I walked into a barbershop and stroked my chin, to show I needed to shave. The barber had a magnificent moustache, which he used wax to keep in shape. He filled a tin with cold water, and took out a razor from a drawer. He used a leather sharpener on the razor, and then gave me the best shave I had had in years. Finally he picked up a pair of scissors and a comb, and cut my hair.When the rest of our company arrived, they unloaded their baggage and bedding while the villagers brought out some jars of wine, and laid a table in the middle of the street, which they then covered with plates of potatoes and carrots, ham and sausages. Someone shouted “Cheers!” in English and we all drank to liberation and to the French constitution. Some of our boys had never tasted wine before, and spat it out, thinking it was vinegar. We gave stockings to the women, which they loved, and in return, they gave us perfume for our girlfriends. I was too ashamed to admit that I was too young to have a girlfriend. But the villagers treated us like heroes, and for a brief moment, I felt that all the fear and danger had been worthwhile. But I also remembered my fiends who had died earlier that day, and wondered if they would have agreed.Winston Churchill’s SpeechesWinston Churchill is well-known as a statesman, politician and as the British Prime Minister during most of the Second World War. He is especially famous for his speeches which many believe made people even more determined to defeat the enemy. Many of these speeches contained lines which are remembered even today.Churchill made one of his greatest speeches in 1940, when he was invited to become Prime Minister of Britain, and the leader of a new government. The country had been at war for over eight months, and he knew that it would suffer many great defeats before it would begin to win the war. So on 13 May 1940 he promised the House of Commons: “I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the Government, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’”A month later, the Germany army had advanced across northern Europe, and the British Army had retreated to the coast of the English Channel. The only escape was to cross the sea back to England. Hundreds of small boats set out from ports on the English coast to bring back the soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk in France. But Churchill encouraged people that this was only a tempor ary defeat in a speech which included the words, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”On 18 June 1940, Churchill gave another fine speech when he drew attention to the courage of everyone defending Britain. “In years to come,” he said, “…men will say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”The Germans continued their attacks on Britain from the air. A small number of pilots resisted the much larger German Air Force. Germany lost many airplanes, and was forced to change their strategy. Britain was no longer threatened by an early invasion, and on 20 August 1940, he said, “Never in the filed of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”In two years, Germany began to lose some important battles. After a defeat in North Africa, on 10 November 1942 he made a speech with the famous words, “Now this is not theend. It is not even the beginning of the end. But is is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”Many people believe that Churchill’s leadership inspired people to remain brave in the face of Nazi Germany. His speeches are still remembered and quoted today, and remain some of the finest examples of spoken English.How the United Nations Tries to Keep the PeaceIf you see soldiers wearing sky-blue helmets, they are United Nations peacekeepers. The idea of UN peacekeepers began more than 60 years ago. They were the idea of Canadian Foreign Minister Lester Pearson, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.The first UN peacekeepers were sent to the Middle East in 1948. They only went to see what was happening, and were not armed. The first armed UN peacekeepers were sent to the Middle East in 1957 when there was a disagreement between the British and Egyptian governments about the Suez Canal.Since then, there have been more than 50 UN peacekeeping operations, many of them since the year 2000. In 2003, there were fifteen, involving nearly 37,000 personnel (soldiers and civilians).UN peacekeepers have included soldiers and other personnel from more than 120 countries. Since 2000, most of the personnel have come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Ghana. There have also been soldiers from China, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Ireland, Italy and Australia. During the 1990s, eastern European countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic also sent personnel.There have been many UN peacekeeping successes, but also some failures. The UN couldn’t stop a terrible civil war in the African state of Rwanda in 1995, despite warnings of the dangers from nearby states.。