A Polish destroyer

[PavelKirilovich]

One of my favourite photos of the Blyskawica.

Originally Posted by Ford Prefect

Those boys meant business for certain, people seem to forget the commonwealth troops, there were more british and common wealth troops put ashore on D-day than any other, and almost every ship was either british/commowealth or was manned by british/commonwealth sailors, even the vessels taking the american soldiers to normandy. It was the last great hurrah of an empire in decline.

Quite. Disturbingly, many of my countrymen forget that Canada was assigned its own beach during the D-day landings, and practically none of them know the role that Canadian troops played in preventing the 21. Panzer Lehr and 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" divisions from sweeping the Americans off their beachheads. This is just the single most famous example, we're not going to go into the book-long list of other actions.