I was born on D-day
As Shena Mackay celebrates her 70th birthday she asks was hers the 'most fortunate generation'?
By Shena MackayTue Guardian, Friday 6 June 2014
The allied invasion of France on D-day. Photograph: Hulton Archive
I was born on 6 June 1944 and if my mother had taken up the suggestion of the nurses my name would be Deeday. The mood in that Edinburgh nursing home must have been euphoric because the BBC had just announced that the allied troops had landed in Normandy. Nobody could have known then the horrific toll in casualties on that day or the scale of the atrocities still to come before the war was really over, but it marked a turning point on the long road to peace. Although I'm relieved that I wasn't called Deeday and that I haven't had to go through 70 years explaining my name, it always seemed an honour to be born on that historic day, and the date had an intrinsic beauty to a synaesthetic child who saw letters and numbers in colour. For me, June and 6 share the fragrant crimson of summer roses, while 19 is white and rich amber and 44 blazes in yellow gold. My birthday was a day of roses and gold even though D-day itself is starkly black and all the newspaper photographs are monochrome images of sailors and soldiers in combat gear, planes, tanks and landing craft.