William Poaster <wp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Mark Kent wrote:
>
>> Matt <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> Mark Kent wrote:
>>>
>>>> amusingly, I think that some of the ultra-right were genuinely quite
>>>> surprised to find out that the US only contributed to 40% of the D-Day
>>>> landing armies ("we saved your a**" - err, not quite), and negligible
>>>> amounts of sea power.
>>>
>>> I didn't know that.
>>>
>>> So by a little simple arithmetic we can see that you Brits saved our
>>> Yankee asses ... thanks! :-)
>>
>> Well, joking aside, I think that everyone, every single person, who
>> stood up to the Nazi threat, did the world a major favour. If you look
>> at the numbers, you'll see that the Russians suffered by far the most
>> casualties of any of the participants, and you'll also see that the US
>> got off relatively lightly compared with eg., Czechoslovakia, which
>> proportionately had a terrible time. Still, being injured or dead is a
>> rather personal thing, not much affected by what kind of uniform was
>> being worn at the time.
>>
>>>
>>>> You see, they believed the hollywood version :-)
>>
>> Hehe... the main proportions were: UK: 40%, Canada 20%, US 40% in
>> nice round numbers, for the initial invasion. There was also
>> involvement from a great number of other countries, although not in the
>> same numbers.
>>
>> If you look at the RAF numbers for the Battle of Britain, a great many
>> pilots were Anzacs, Canadians, Poles, Czechs, South Africans. There
>> were even a couple of yanks in the RAF, presumably those who were not
>> happy about the position their government was taking at the time.
>
> The Americans were in the RAF's Eagle Squadron, 133 squadron RAF.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:133_squadron_crest.gif
>
> It's estimated that some 6,700 Americans joined either the Royal Canadian Air
> Force or the RAF.
>
Presumably the RCAF was relatively easy to get to, just being North,
as it were... you really have to take your hat off to the people who
volunteered to fight in another country's army. There were also huge
numbers of Irish fighting in the British forces, also rather disappointed
at the ambiguous position taken by their government.
Spike Milligan is one of the most fascinating here, born in India to an
Irish born British Officer, he served in the army in WW2, and was later
refused British Citzenship in 1960 (incredibly!), so he took an Irish
passport. Rather like the Gurkhas, it's a terrible indictment of the
attitudes of HMG.
--
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