I spoke on the phone to my Old Man earlier today. He's 91. He was born in Minsk in Belarus, and his family moved to Lithuania when he was a young boy, settling in Panevezys. At the age of 15 he was sent by his mother to join relatives in Southern Rhodesia, so that he would not follow his two older sisters into political activism and - where they both were when he left - jail. He arrived in Shabani in August 1928.
I asked my Dad what he remembered about where he was when he first got news of D-Day. It was a small town - he doesn't remember its name - not far south of Rome. He was the radio operator in a Sherman tank, part of a Rhodesian tank squadron with a regiment of the Sixth South African Armoured Division. They had been in North Africa before crossing to Italy (he thinks at Taranto). My Dad had to keep in regular touch with HQ, but in between times would listen to the news from a Forces radio station. This is how he first heard about the D-Day landings. It boosted everyone's morale, he says. They saw it as the beginning of the end of the war, confirming developments on the Eastern Front after the Battle of Stalingrad.
For my Dad and all the others.