D-Day 80th Anniversary

On this most poignant day, it is hard to sum up the mixed emotions one feels as the ceremonies begin to mark the 80th Anniversary of D-Day. I was going to write more, but in the end I've left it to those more gifted than I:

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
   That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.  There shall be
   In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
   Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
   Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

The Kohima Epitaph
When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.

The Exhortation
They shall grow not 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.

We will remember them.