Papers ask if today’s generation could follow D-Day heroes

FOLLOWING the D-Day ceremonies for the soldiers who unflinchingly went into battle to liberate Europe from the Nazis 60 years ago, Britain’s newspapers wondered yesterday if today’s generation of young Europeans would be ready to make the same sacrifice.

"It is an open question whether the present generation that now takes peace in Europe virtually for granted and which is groomed to expect wars without casualties, could ever again be motivated in the same way as the soldiers of the second world war," said the Guardian newspaper.

The paper reminded its readers that 4,500 soldiers were killed on the first day of the Normandy landings and that the Soviet union, whose astonishing resistance in the East fatally weakened the German war machine, lost 20 million men.