D-Day plus 78 years
Landing on the coast of France under heavy Nazi machine gun fire are these American soldiers, shown just as they left the ramp of a Coast Guard landing boat, June 6, 1944. CPhoM. Robert F. Sargent. (Coast Guard)
NARA FILE #: 026-G-2343
WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 1041
It’s that time of year again, where we take a moment to remember D-Day. Not many veterans of that event left with us. What follows is a reprint of my post on it last year.
It’s a good day to re-read some of our old articles on the topic of Operation Overlord which commenced that day, better known as D-Day. Overlord was the Allied invasion of Fortress Europe on the coast of Normandy. It would be a marked success and the largest amphibious assault in history. At the time it was the largest airborne assault as well, and was only outdone several months later by Operation Market Garden (which involved many of the same units as Overlord). Opening a foothold on Continental Europe, from there the fate of the Nazis was sealed. Millions of Allied troops poured into France and in less than a year Germany had surrendered unconditionally and Hitler had killed himself.
US Army History Center’s D-Day piece
Brig. General Theodore Roosevelt – One of only a handful of men who received the Medal of Honor for actions on 6 June 1944 at Normandy.
AW1Ed’s 75-year D-Day Retrospective
Ex-PH2 reminds us of the importance of the weatherman on D-Day
Flak Bait – B-26 Marauder that flew more than 200 combat missions over Europe and always came back, including D-Day.
This delightful bit of bureaucratic nonsense that the war fighters had to death with from guys in the rear.
Category: Historical, War Stories, We Remember
On this day, I remember their sacrifice to give us the freedoms we hold dearly.
I also remember my grandfather. He was aN AD3 serving with a Navy VP squadron in the Pacific. They moved up thru New Guinea and some other islands to finish in The Philippines. He was training in Oklahoma with their new NaVy version B-24 when the war ended. He passed away in 2001.
That is the PB4Y-2 Privateer. I knew a lot about WWII Aircraft when I saw my first picture of one of those. (It hung on the wall where a contractor was working at 29 Palms who had flown in them.) I thought, “What the heck kind of B-24 looking thing is that?” He told me it was a B-24 derivative called the Privateer. Now that I am working at a major US company that has Consolidated in it’s lineage, I learned quite a bit more about it.
Near 80 years ago, brave men jumped into the unknown and sloshed thru the surf, waves upon waves risked it all in order to vanquish fascism in ETO.
Thank you Gentlemen.
“The Longest Day” Parachuting Fiasco.
Never Forget.
https://youtu.be/elwNOiCaRIs
“The Longest Day” The British Invasion.
https://youtu.be/Go6CJ0JVOUc
“The Longest Day” The Assault On Pointe du Hoc
https://youtu.be/ZFuV5x1drXU
The National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.
https://www.dday.org/learn/about-the-memorial-and-bedford/
Never Forget.
“The Bedford Boys.”
“Among the hundreds of thousands massed off the shores of Normandy on the morning of 6 June 1944 were 44 soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the town and county of Bedford, Virginia. Thirty-seven of these young men belonged to Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division. For almost all of them, this would be their baptism of fire. Of the 37 assigned to Company A, 31 loaded into landing craft and headed for Omaha Beach in the first wave; the remainder belonged to supply details and would arrive later. En route, a landing craft struck an obstacle and sank, stranding dozens far from shore, including five of Bedford’s own. The remaining 26 successfully reached Omaha Beach, where 16 were killed and four wounded within a matter of minutes. Three others were unaccounted for and later presumed killed in action. Another Bedford soldier was killed in action elsewhere on Omaha Beach with Company F, bringing Bedford’s D-Day fatalities to a total of 20. In comparison with its wartime population, Bedford suffered the Nation’s highest known per capita D-Day loss, a somber distinction for the rural Virginia community.”
Rest In Peace.
Salute.
Never Forget.
And that, my friends, is why they teach everyone to keep all the landing craft abreast while landing on a foreign shore. You get too far ahead, you become the prime target.
For those interested, here is a review of the gear and weapons carried by an average Joe.
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/a-soldiers-gear-on-d-day-pictures/null/
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/d-day-gadgets-and-gear.html?chrome=1
Larger new Equipment
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/7-clever-innovations-used-on-d-day
Good thing there was a lot of Toxic Masculinity available back when.
That such men lived…indeed.
Never forget.
And they were fighting against REAL Nazis
My uncle Jim McPhee was a Combat Medic. On that morning he was riding a Higgins Boat toward Omaha Beach, and the Coxswain kept saying; “don’t worry, boys, I’ll get you right up on that beach, you won’t even get yer feet wet…”
As soon as the bullets started hitting the ramp, and flying over his head, he pulled hard astern, and dropped the ramp. Jim stepped off the ramp into water up to his neck, and the Coxswain turned his boat around and boogied on back to his ship.
Jim was wounded several months later, and made it home alive. He was my hero to the day he died back in 1991.
Brave men all.
11/8/1942
7/9/1943
9/9/1943
1/22/1944
8/15/1944
Those are less famous D-Days, but that is the list them my Grandfather made. Casa Blanca, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio and Southern France, respectively.
His story can be read here. That is on the VI Corps Combat Engineer Website run by a friend whose father was in one of the units my grandfather served in (540th Combat Engineer Regiment).
Those are some great pictures! Thanks for sharing.
That itinerary you listed is the one Audie Murphy took.
Once again, not Normandy related, but likely shares a lot of experiences/feelings.
Anzio
Golden sands and water blue
Verdure marshes bright with dew
Sheep and shepherd in the dell
Stiffened cattle felled by shell
Distance mountain white with snow
This I saw at Anzio
Ruins old and modern homes
Sulfur springs and catacombs
Silver cows with silver tails
Diving planes with vapor trails
Nazi captives in a row
This I saw at Anzio
Air armadas massed in flight
Tracers winging through the night
Crosses white in fields of green
Screeching shells from guns unseen
Flaming ships with sky aglow
This I saw at Anzio
Towns engulfed in smoky haze
Cruisers with their guns ablaze
Burned out tanks with blackened hull
Cannon roar without a lull
Men who fought and killed their foe
This I saw at Anzio
WJM
10 April 1944
Anzio Beachhead
This was a poem written by Walter Miller – 36th Combat Engineer
I can’t speak for everyone here, but my own service and combat experience pales in comparison to what those brave men undertook in 1944. To know that so many of America’s (and our Allies’) finest braved the unknown while storming those beaches is awe-inspiring. They took on the juggernaut that was Germany, which despite its wide setbacks in the Soviet Union and our advancements in Italy was still one of the most powerful and advanced military forces to have ever existed.
While Hollywood can never truly do justice for the men and women who have survived brutal conflict, the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, with adequate volume and immersion, helps us to recognize the brutality those men endured–many of whom are long gone–who sacrificed so much for so many of us. Different and, dare I say, simpler times. Before we had everything thrust at us from every possible angle, no Bud Light spokes”woman” pun intended.
The director John Ford may have been there. He claims he was and this is supported by some facts. He also may have gone in the next few days say some conflicting sources.
Either way he was filming the landings for the U Army and was wounded in the process.
My neighbor recalled that in high school, his history teacher came ashore with the 4th ID at Utah Beach. Strange to think he was there as a kid, in a classroom being taught by a man in his mid-40’s who was a part of that, and how it was so common for the day — not unlike a Desert Storm veteran in the workplace today.
I shake my head, thinking that all my life many in my generation associated that war and its veterans as old men of a bygone era.
I had teachers that served in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. My dad served in all 3. It was pretty common at the time (graduated in 1980). Looking back, nearly every adult male I grew up around had military service of some sort, many of them draftees. Never gave it much thought, it was just the norm in my little rural county. These were the men I learned from, looked up to, and learned from although I didn’t realize it at the time.
In 1964, when my family moved from the farm to the big city (population 24,500 salute) almost every man I knew was a veteran. The gentleman three houses up the street was a WWI veteran. Those who weren’t veterans were refugees. It was interesting hearing the French, Polish, Lett, Yiddish, Italian. etc that was spoken at this or that store, church, school… When I was in high school, I found out that some of the refugees were also veterans of the US military.
The high school administrator who was a B-24 pilot, the math teacher who was in the infantry in Korea, the gym teacher who served in the Navy in WWII, the list was endless. The college professor, the lawyer, the medical doctor were all veterans. Even the janitor who was in the USAAF but wouldn’t talk about it; they all have my respect.
My father recalled Spanish American War veterans marching in parades in the late 1950’s and a small corner store owner/clerk who served with the infantry during the Philippine Insurrection.
And today we have women who think they’re pregnant men on Glamour magazines and deranged boys who think they’re women on cans of piss beer. How far we’ve fallen.
And fuck this guy:
https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/06/06/john-kerry-compares-climate-battle-to-d-day-n556035
Agreed, fuck Jawn Fucking sKerry!!!!
“…in the manner of Genghis Kahn,” for which liberals celebrated him.
Yes, because nothing says “fighting for climate change” like the expenditure of millions of tons of petroleum to fight Nazis, or something like that.
He thinks Counterterrorism is this: