You made me check, Dave. Wikipedia seems to say the friendly fire by British cruiser on beach as ordered by Eisenhower was on the day before the E-boats showed up and riddled a line-astern convoy in Lyme Bay. I was pleased that I remembered the number at Slapton Sands---946.
I'm sort of ambivalent, however, on a notion or obligation or plain good citizenship of remembering the days of battles. I'm reminded of a particularly nasty engagement in the mountains of Italy between Germans and Canadians where there were truces to clear wounded, literally no hatred, civil.
Which made it all the more obscene. I'm attending a little ceremony in Holland July 2 on the 70th anniversary of where my father's bomber was shot down with the loss of his crew; he parachuted to three years as a POW. It's enough for me to reflect on the sacrifices of all wars---and the waste, the waste.
