On the comparison with those fighting on the beaches of Normany...My Grandad was a Captain in the Royal Army Service Corps, one of the last out at Dunkirk (we think the last Destroyer) and one of the first in on D-Day. Mentioned in Dispatches for bravery in taking in his men to put out a massive fire one of the first fuel ships into Cherbourg. He was nearly captured a number of times but out his foot down on his BSA and shot at a lot, part organised and lay the supply routes for the front line into Bruge and Berlin and endured the horror of being one of the first into a number of concentration camps including Belsen.
He couldn't understand it when people who had never been near a battlefield compared everyday situations with war. As he said many times, people of his generation would and frequently did, 'moan like buggery' when they saw something in the everyday that could have been done better not being done with sufficient care and attention to detail. I think he found it an insulting comparison in the round, somebody who had not been near a pile of burning bodies thinking they had any right whatsoever to invoke the memories of those people in relation to the relatively mundane to make a point of extremely questionable substance.
He also questioned a generation that was gifted liberty, a welfare state and a peaceful Europe making such a poor fist of doing anything particuarly useful or building a legacy for the next generation. 'It is easy to be selfish, self-obsessed and incompetent...it is much harder to do things right and do the right things for people'.