{"id":6966,"date":"2024-06-06T19:20:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T19:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6966"},"modified":"2024-06-06T19:20:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T19:20:46","slug":"operation-overlord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6966","title":{"rendered":"Operation Overlord&#8230;&#8230;.."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A poignant day as we mark the anniversary of <strong>D-Day<\/strong> and the pictures from <strong>Normandy<\/strong> were very moving. I was sent the following poem today.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Queuing for an Ice Cream<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>although he didn&#8217;t smoke grandad never went anywhere\u00a0without the old tobacco tin in his pocket one day me and my brother asked him what he kept in it\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 some sand, grandad said<\/p>\n<p>why do you keep some sand in a tobacco tin, we asked\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 where else would I keep it, he said<\/p>\n<p>but why keep sand <em>at all<\/em> we asked\u00a0 it&#8217;s special sand, grandad said it&#8217;s come all the way from France<\/p>\n<p>we peered into his tin and stared\u00a0 for a while\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 French sand didn&#8217;t look very special, it looked like ordinary sand to us<\/p>\n<p>why&#8217;s it so special, we asked\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0each grain represents an old friend of mine, he said<\/p>\n<p>grandad must of have had a lot of friends, we thought\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 did you go to the beach with them when <em>you<\/em> were a boy, we asked<\/p>\n<p>yes, something like that, grandad said, snapping the lit shut,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0asking the man for three 99s, two with red sauce<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>by Brian Bilston<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A poignant day as we mark the anniversary of D-Day and the pictures from Normandy were very moving. I was sent the following poem today. Queuing for an Ice Cream although he didn&#8217;t smoke grandad never went anywhere\u00a0without the old &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6966\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2D5Gc-1Om","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6968,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6966\/revisions\/6968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thestorytraveller.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}