RE: Don't burn it, but lets make money
June 3, 2016 at 10:50 pm
I'm highly amused by the misplaced concern here. Does anyone care to take a guess at how many American flags attempted to go ashore in Normandy June 6, 1944? Out of that population, will anyone hazard a guess as to the material condition of those that were actually recovered?
If this flag belongs in a museum then it is up to a curator to take funds to the auction. As I alluded to above, I think some are overstating the value based on some assumed rarity. For all I know, the Smithsonian and other museums have D-Day flags coming out their collective wazoos. This particular flag is there because some private owner wishes to part with it or it was collected from some dead person's belongings. Either way, an auction is perhaps the fairest in which to assess its value.
Another point to consider is authenticity. A museum curator won't simply buy a tattered 48-star American flag on the word of someone who claims it was at Normandy on D-Day. Depending on the demonstration of pedigree, a museum may find it worthless; whereas, a private collector at auction may have less rigorous standards. I have a difficult time believing that whoever is taking this flag to auction hasn't already tried to sell it to a museum and has been subsequently turned down because of its lack of value.
In addition, I find the following video to have much more significance than a flag that is purported to have survived the encounter (there are countless similar testimonies that can be found on YouTube alone).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBAt4egoKo
A flag doesn't get choked up decades later remembering the unusual breakfast spread that was offered the morning of the invasion and compare it to the last supper. A flag doesn't as a matter of fact describe dead bodies in the water as those that 'got there first'.
Impugning an entire nation and its heritage as being subject to the highest bidder is not only wrong, but warrants an apology if only in recognition of which of our nation's blood turned the water red on Normandy beaches and who's fascist led nation declared neutrality and sold goods to both sides.
