Too long forgotten

In France, D-Day evokes both the joys of liberation and the pain of Normandy’s 20,000 civilian dead

Although towns held remembrances locally…it wasn’t until 2014 that a French president — Macron’s predecessor, François Hollande — paid national homage to Normandy’s civilian dead.

Allied casualties during the Normandy campaign were 73,000 dead, 153,000 wounded.

In Normandy, the German Army suffered 290,000 casualties in total, including 23,000 dead, 67,000 wounded, and more than 200,000 missing or prisoners of war.

– Commonwealth War Graves Commission 

[Casualty figures for no war ever, even those long concluded and thoroughly studied, are precise.]