Latest news with #Dday
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
‘Papa Jake' Larson, D-day veteran and TikTok star, dies aged 102
D-day veteran ″Papa Jake″ Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy's beaches in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate the second world war and his fallen comrades, has died aged 102. An animated speaker who charmed strangers young and old with his quick smile and generous hugs, the self-described country boy from Minnesota was 'cracking jokes til the end,'' his granddaughter wrote in announcing his death. Tributes to him quickly filled his Story Time with Papa Jake TikTok account from across the United States, where he had been living in Lafayette, California. Towns around Normandy, still grateful to Allied forces who helped defeat the occupying Nazis in the second world war, paid homage too. 'Our beloved Papa Jake has passed away on July 17th at 102 years young,' granddaughter McKaela Larson posted on his social media accounts. 'He went peacefully.' 'As Papa would say, love you all the mostest,' she wrote. Born on 20 December 1922, in Owatonna, Minnesota, Larson enlisted in the National Guard in 1938, lying about his age as he was only 15 at the time. In 1942, he was sent overseas and was stationed in Northern Ireland. He became operations sergeant and assembled the planning books for the invasion of Normandy. He was among the nearly 160,000 Allied troops who stormed the Normandy shore on D-day, 6 June 1944, surviving machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha Beach. He made it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach, which were studded with German gun emplacements that killed many soldiers. 'We are the lucky ones,' Larson told the Associated Press at the 81st anniversary of D-day in June, speaking among the graves at the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach. 'We are their family. We have the responsibility to honour these guys who gave us a chance to be alive.' He went on to fight through the Battle of the Bulge, a gruelling month-long fight in Belgium and Luxembourg that was one of the defining moments of the war and of Hitler's defeat. His service earned him a Bronze Star and a French Legion of Honour award. In recent years, Larson made repeated trips to Normandy for D-day commemorations. In his TikTok posts and interviews, Larson combined humorous anecdotes with somber reminders about the horrors of war. Speaking to AP on the three years he was in Europe, Larson said he is 'no hero.' Speaking in 2024, he also had a message to world leaders: 'Make peace not war.' He often called himself 'the luckiest man in the world,' and expressed awe at all the attention he was getting. 'I'm just a country boy. Now I'm a star on TikTok,' he told AP in 2023. 'I'm a legend! I didn't plan this, it came about.'
National Post
16-06-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Why Russia is no longer a member of the G8
BANFF — When world leaders gathered for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, it was an awkward situation: Just months before, Vladimir Putin's Russia had invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea. Article content That invasion precipitated a diplomatic and military crisis that, more than 10 years later, is still unfolding. And in one of the earliest signs of the international community's resistance to Russian belligerence, the leaders of the world's advanced economies ejected Russia from the G8, in March of that year. Article content Article content Article content 'Personally, and I only speak for Canada here, I don't see any way of a return of Mr. Putin to the (G8) table unless Russia fundamentally changes course,' said then prime minister Stephen Harper at the time. Article content Article content In fact, Putin had been slated to host world leaders in Sochi, Russia, in 2014, but the now seven-member summit regrouped and reorganized the event for Brussels, in Belgium. Since then, Russia has dramatically escalated its war on Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion in February 2023. Article content John Kirton, the director of the G7 research group, said that in 2014 the sidelining of Russia was a 'very big deal.' Article content 'Russia, which had been a democratizing country — which is why it had become basically a full member of the G8 — was clearly turning back and in a very big, bold way, and even beyond that, that was a violation of the core membership criteria for being a G7 member, you have to be a democracy,' said Kirton. Article content Yet, on Monday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump, who's widely perceived as friendly with the Russian strongman, lamented the ejection of Russia from what was then the G8 in remarks before reporters after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Article content 'The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn't have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago,' Trump said. 'It was a mistake in that you spend so much time talking about Russia, and he's no longer at the table, so it makes life more complicated, but you wouldn't have had the war.' Article content Article content The story of Russia leaving the G8 is more complicated than that, however. For starters, Justin Trudeau wasn't prime minister in March 2014 — Harper was. And Harper was a bullish defender of Ukrainian sovereignty, becoming the first G7 leader to visit the embattled European nation following Russia's invasion and famously telling Putin at a Group of 20 meeting in November 2014 that he should 'get out of Ukraine.' Article content It was also not just Obama and the Canadian prime minister that condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Hague Declaration, signed by the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, the president of the European Council and the president of the European Commission, jointly condemned 'Russia's illegal attempt to annex Crimea in contravention of international law and specific international obligations,' and announced the member nations of the G8 would not participate in the Sochi summit, effectively bringing that organization to an end.
Wall Street Journal
06-06-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Uncle Frank's Dutch Family
Michael Johnson reminds readers that the Dutch beautifully remember the Allies' sacrifice in World War II by adopting gravesites at the Netherlands American Cemetery (Letters, May 28). The wait list for doing so is longer than one year, he notes, 'as most have been adopted and are passed down from one generation to the next.' The tradition is personal for me. In June 2019, after attending the 75th-anniversary commemorations of D-Day in Normandy, France, I travelled to Margraten to visit my great uncle's grave. I was the first in my family to have seen Frank A. Johnson since he departed for Europe in the autumn of 1944. During my visit I was met by Frank's 'adoptive' family: a wonderful husband and wife, who, having never met me before, drove three hours to join me at the site. They both said that if it 'were not for men like your great uncle Frank, we would probably still be speaking German.'
The Independent
06-06-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Churchill documents reveal D-Day landings boosted by import of ‘wonder drug' from America
Newly unearthed documents have revealed that the D-Day landings received a boost from the import of a "wonder drug" from America. Despite its discovery in London in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming, large-scale production of the antibiotic penicillin had struggled to take hold in Britain. Attempts to produce substantial quantities of medicine from the bacteria-killing mould had not been achieved by the start of the Second World War. Then prime minister Sir Winston Churchill became increasingly frustrated that Britain had not been able to produce enough penicillin in the preparations for the Normandy landings in 1944. Official papers released by the National Archive – containing handwritten notes by Sir Winston – highlight efforts to boost quantities of the antibiotic, with Britain eventually forced to import it from America. The documents were released ahead of the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. In one report on February 19, after the issue had been raised in the House of Commons, Sir Winston scrawled in red ink on a Ministry of Supply report noting the Americans were producing greater quantities: 'I am sorry we can't produce more.' On another paper, he complained: 'Your report on penicillin showing that we are only to get about one tenth of the expected output this year, is very disappointing.' Elsewhere in the same file he instructs: 'Let me have proposals for a more abundant supply from Great Britain.' With preparations for D-Day ramped up, efforts to deliver enough American-made penicillin for frontline military personnel soon became a matter of urgency. Decisions needed to be made on the quantities of antibiotic imported, how much to administer to individual patients, and how to get medical staff trained in time. Most British doctors did not know how to issue penicillin – until this point, doctors had nothing available to treat infections like pneumonia and many people died of blood poisoning after minor injuries because no drug existed that could cure them. Early in January 1944, Prof FR Fraser, the Ministry of Health's adviser on the organisation of wartime hospitals, wrote that 50,000-100,000 wounded could be expected from the Second Front. He proposed the Emergency Medical Services might need as many as five billion units of penicillin per month for this. Further documents show discussions on whether the antibiotic should be supplied as calcium or sodium salts, or in tablet form. Ultimately, it was agreed powdered calcium salts would be issued for superficial wounds and sodium salts for use in deep wounds. On May 24 1944, less than a fortnight before D-Day, Prof Fraser reported: 'Sufficient supplies of penicillin are now available for the treatment of battle casualties in EMS hospitals, but not for ordinary civilian patients.' Plans were made for casualties from the frontline in France to be brought back to coastal hospitals in Britain for treatment. A week before D-Day, on May 30 1944, hospitals were instructed to treat battlefield patients en route: 'In an endeavour to prevent the development of gas gangrene and sepsis in wounds the War Office have arranged for the treatment of selected cases by penicillin to be commenced as soon after injury as possible.' Injections of penicillin were to be given to them at intervals of not more than five hours and patients would be wearing a yellow label with the letters 'PEN'. The time and size of penicillin doses should be written on it, they were told. Dr Jessamy Carlson, modern records specialist at the National Archives, said: 'File MH 76/184 gives a glimpse into the extraordinary levels of preparation undertaken in advance of the D-Day landings. 'Only six weeks before, penicillin is just reaching our shores in quantities which will allow it to play a major role in improving the outcomes for service personnel wounded in action.' As Allied forces made inroads into Europe, restrictions on the use of penicillin for civilians began to relax, but only in special cases. In July 1944, Ronald Christie, professor of medicine, wrote to Prof Fraser to tell him: 'The War Office approves of American penicillin being used for medical conditions in service patients and for air raid casualties among civilians.' On the home front, demand for the new 'wonder' drug began to increase, according the National Archives. It was decided that penicillin for civilians should only be supplied to larger hospitals where the staff had been properly trained to administer it. Only in 1946 did it become fully available for the general public.
Fox News
06-06-2025
- General
- Fox News
Boston mayor under fire for comparing ICE agents to ‘neo-Nazi' group
All times eastern FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: American and allied veterans honored at D-Day ceremony at Utah Beach
