Posted on 06/05/2017 9:43:17 PM PDT by pboyington
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
SIGNED: Dwight D. Eisenhower
For years, George refused to talk about it. Whenever I pressed him, I would be met with silence, or a brief outburst of nothing more than staccato words: bangalores, shingle, terror, dead men everywhere. George, you see, as a young US Army officer, landed on Omaha Beach during the famed D-Day invasion of Europe 73 years ago, on June 6, 1944.
The last time I saw him, on Christmas Day 1998, he looked at me with misty eyes, threw down the rest of his bourbon and said that D-Day will forever be remembered as the greatest day of the 20th century. George, like so many members of his generation, is no longer with us, but on this anniversary of Operation Overlord, his words resonate strongly. And so they should.
In the late spring of 1944, World War II was in its fifth year in Europe. The German Army had suffered defeats in North Africa, Sicily and in the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk in Russia. But, the formidable Wehrmacht still controlled Europe from the Russian steppes to the Norwegian fjords to the English Channel.
Several months before, in the autumn of 1943, Hitler had discerned that the main threat to Germany loomed not out of the East, but the West. In Fuehrer Directive Number 51, he proclaimed, “I can no longer justify the further weakening of the West in favor of other theaters of war. I have therefore decided to strengthen the defenses in the West.”
He appointed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, The Desert Fox, to reconstruct the fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. Like the Fuehrer, Rommel believed that the invasion, when it came, could only be halted on the beaches. In just two years, the German Army had shifted from a blitzkrieg doctrine to a defensive posture hiding behind Rommel’s vaunted Festung Europa.
Despite around-the-clock Allied strategic bombing, Germany’s industry was producing arms and munitions at the highest capacity since the war began. Hitler’s insane fantasies of wonder weapons were becoming a reality as V-1 rockets, ME-262 jet fighters and the mammoth Tiger tank rolled off of German assembly lines.
In occupied Poland and Russia, the Nazis’ Final Solution (the complete genocide of European Jewry) was proceeding on schedule. Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler had promised Hitler that by 1945 almost all of Europe’s Jews would be dead.
In Western Europe, millions of subjugated people, living in a nightmare world of starvation, deportation and summary execution awaited their resurrection from tyranny. They would not have much longer to wait.
At 1600 on June 5, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower met once again at Southwick House with his key subordinates: Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, Gen. Omar Bradley, Air Marshal Arthur Tedder, Air Vice Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Adm. Bertram Ramsey, Maj. Gen. Kenneth Strong (SHAEF G-2) and RAF Group Capt. J.M. Stagg, his meteorologist. The night before, Stagg had predicted horrible weather conditions for the English Channel and the Normandy coastline. Ike had delayed the invasion for 24 hours. Now, Stagg’s forecast was more optimistic. The weather would clear, providing marginal conditions for up to 48 hours. After consulting with his commanders and staff and pausing to think on his own, Ike stared at his subordinates and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
Within an hour of Ike’s decision to go, the BBC began to broadcast its nightly “messages personnel” to the French Resistance. But, on this night, several of the messages were codes for the Maquis to begin sabotage operations. Two of them were: “Blessent mon Coeur d’une langeur monotone” (Wounds my heart with a monotonous languor) “Jean a une longe moustache.” (John has a long mustache.)
Those in the French Resistance knew that the hour of liberation was at hand. On the evening of June 5, 1944, the troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force quickly received word of Ike’s decision to go. Each man knew he bore a gigantic responsibility. The success of Operation Overlord would determine the freedom of a continent, and of the world for years to come.
The men of D-Day knew they could not fail. There was no substitute for victory. Winston Churchill knew the price of failure too. “If we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Churchill knew that with victory, “All Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.”
Operation Overlord commenced at just after midnight on June 6. As British Glider troops secured Pegasus Bridge near Caen, the American airborne armada was on its way to the Cotentin Peninsula. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had orders to secure the various causeways and roads connected to Utah and Omaha Beaches to the Normandy interior.
Within minutes of crossing the Normandy coastline, the vast air armada ran into thick clouds and intense anti-aircraft fire. Many of the 870 C-47s carrying both divisions separated from their “V-of-V” formations and became lost, with each plane flying seemingly blind toward the drop zones.
As the enemy fire intensified, disoriented pilots began to unload the airborne troops. In the dead of night, many of the paratroopers landed alone, miles from where they were supposed to be. Separated from their buddies, their officers, their platoons, even their divisions, the paratroopers nevertheless began to move out to their objectives. Some of them located other soldiers from their companies. Some fought with troopers from another division. Some fought alone.
As dawn broke on June 6, the Allied fleet opened-up on the German coastal defenses with naval gunfire and rockets. Under the impression that the bombardment had killed or wounded a large percentage of the German defenders, the troops of the 4th, 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions, and the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions, boarded Higgins landing craft.
Allied intelligence had claimed that the U.S. 29th and 1st Divisions would face the crippled German 716th Division – and only one battalion from that unit at that. Intelligence was dead wrong. Three battalions from the veteran 352th Infantry Division were dug in defending the area known as Omaha Beach.
Then a navigational error caused the 4th Infantry Division to land a mile south of its intended target. Utah Beach was lightly defended and became a quick success. Eyeing a tactical opportunity, Brig. Gen. Teddy Roosevelt Jr. ordered his commanders to “start the war from right here.”
By 0700, Omaha Beach had become a shambles. Gen. Bradley, who as commander of the 1st U.S. Army was responsible for the Utah and Omaha Beach landings, considered at one point pulling out of Omaha and shifting the incoming forces to Utah. Troops were pinned down at the water’s edge by intense machine gun fire. Zeroed mortars and 88s picked off disembarking soldiers like sitting ducks. But, still the men landed and attempted to move inland.
By noon, thousands of casualties littered Omaha Beach. Many soldiers huddled against the rocky shingle awaiting a certain fate. But others knew that they had to achieve a breakthrough. They had to get through the draws, climb the bluffs and destroy the machine gun nests and the pillbox crews.
One by one, junior officers and young sergeants inspired their men to get off the beach. Using Bangalore explosives, they blew obstacles and opened narrow gaps in the barriers. As the men moved inland, they set off numerous anti-personnel mines. Paths of dead and wounded men marked trails to follow.
By late afternoon, the U.S. forces had finally secured Omaha Beach. Across the Allied front, forces were gaining a small foothold in Normandy. D-Day succeeded not because of a brilliant plan, not because of special intelligence, and not because of technology. D-Day succeeded because of the ingenuity of 18-year-old-privates, the bravery of 22-year-old junior officers and the innovation of their commanders. D-Day succeeded because everyone knew the stakes at hand. They knew that to live in a world conquered by the Nazis was not an option.
What if the men of D-Day had failed?
It would have taken the Allies perhaps another year to launch a second cross-channel invasion. By that time, the Germans would have been equipped with thousands of their new jets. The V-1 and V-2 rockets would have wreaked extreme havoc on London and Southern England. The Final Solution would probably have been completed. German scientists, although behind the Allies in the race for the atomic bomb, may have gained precious time to create their own device.
Worst of all, Adolf Hitler would have continued to walk this earth.
In 1964, on the 20th anniversary of D-Day, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite – who as a young UPI reporter had landed behind enemy lines that night in a troop-carrying glider – interviewed Eisenhower on Omaha Beach. Gazing at the coastline, the former allied commander and retired president recalled why that mammoth invasion was different from famous battles in ancient history:
“It’s a wonderful thing what those fellows were fighting for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve our way of life. Not to conquer any territory, not for ambitions of our own. But to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world. I think it’s just overwhelming. To think of the lives that were given for that principle, paying a terrible price on this beach alone. But, they did it so the world could be free. It just shows what free men will do rather than be slaves.”
Perhaps correspondent Ernie Pyle most eloquently expressed what we owe these men today, more than seven decades later. In a column, written on June 12, 1944, Pyle said: “I want to tell you what the opening of the second front entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.”
The glory of D-Day will never die.
Just watched The Longest Day - we still kicked their ass, Our guys were 30 and 40 when I was growing up, best mentors ever
R.I.P., uncle Bill Warner, who was a 19 years-old at the time his LST hit the beach at Normandy (he lived to make it home).
America’s finest. Thanks to all who have served, all who are serving and all who will serve in the future. Thanks to all of their families and all of their friends.
love
It’s always good to remember our history, and recall that D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Nazis and Hitler.
Ronald Reagan gave a masterful speech in honor of D-Day in 1984, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.
The next major anniversary would be in 2019, for the 75th anniversary. I hope that Trump and other world leaders gather at Normandy then, as they have periodically over the decades, to once again join in remembrance of that event, and of the triumph of good over evil in World War II.
, is that what Juneteenth is all about?
Totally off topic, but, nice to see, that:
1. Ike called it a “crusade”. Back then, we were allowed to use the word “crusade” as we were not compelled to be politically correct then.
2. Ike asked for blessings of God. Something else which would offend the sensibilities of the perpetually offended nowadays.
3. Back then, Ike wasn’t compelled to consider the carbon footprint of military operations. Has Trump rescinded that inane military regulation put in place by Obama and his boys???
Ping
moon landing
So true
I’m about the same age as you. All of our dads of kids I knew had served in World War II.
Amen to that.
A generation on young Americans who were called on as never a generation of Americans ever were. They gave us our world and they gave Europe back the freedom it had lost. But sadly, look were Europe is today. This isn’t 1944. Islam has invaded Europe. There isn’t going to be a “Greatest Generation’’ to save them and Europe has only itself to blame.
I was born in ‘56. same in my town.
Eisenhower and His Paratroopers
General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrived in London to command Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) for the last five months of planning for D-Day. During that time he achieved much more than the oft repeated portrayal of someone managing a political/military alliance. Though he never led troops in combat, his leadership sustained many unprecedented initiatives for the successful Normandy landings. The air assault exemplifies the frightful uncertainties plaguing this “Day of Days”.
The night before D-Day, 20,400 American and British paratroopers dropped behind the Normandy beaches from 1,250 C-47 aircraft plus gliders. This massive assault was attempted just 17 years after Charles Lindberg flew the Atlantic solo for the first time.
To the last moment Ike’s air commander, British Air Chief Marshall Leigh-Mallory, saw only tragic forebodings reinforced by memories of American paratroop losses in Italy and Sicily, and the German catastrophe on Crete. The German losses there were so severe that Hitler forbid any further massive air assaults. Leigh-Mallory anticipated over half the planes and gliders would be destroyed before reaching the drop zones with surviving paratroopers fighting isolated until they were killed or captured.
The transports would arrive over Normandy the night of June 5 in three streams from 160 to 300 miles long; thereby allowing the Germans up to two hours to reposition night fighters and anti-aircraft artillery for maximum slaughter of the transports. Most pilots were flying their first combat mission and many would make multiple trips that night. Leigh-Mallory had received specific intelligence the German 91st Air Landing Division, specialists in fighting paratroopers, and the 6th Parachute Regiment inexplicably moved into the area around St. Mere-Eglise, where the American divisions were to land. Many questioned whether these movements meant the deception plan for D-Day directing attention to Pas de Calais was breaking down.
Ike remained strategically committed to the airborne assault. In the American sector it would enable the early capture of Cherbourg. Without port facilities, the limited logistic support across the beaches could doom the entire invasion. In the British sector the paratroopers would secure the left flank of the entire invasion.
At the same time he was devoted to the men. The evening before D-Day, Eisenhower left SHAEF headquarters at 6 PM and traveled to Newbury where the 101st Airborne was boarding for its first combat mission. Ike arrived at 8 PM and did not leave until the last C-47 was airborne over three hours later.
In My Three Years with Eisenhower Captain Harry C. Butcher says, “We saw hundreds of paratroopers with blackened and grotesque faces, packing up for the big hop and jump. Ike wandered through them, stepping over, packs, guns, and a variety of equipment such as only paratroop people can devise, chinning with this and that one. All were put at ease. He was promised a job after the war by a Texan who said he roped, not dallied, his cows, and at least there was enough to eat in the work. Ike has developed or disclosed an informality and friendliness with troopers that almost amazed me”. The famous picture of Eisenhower supposedly forcefully delivering last minute instructions to the troopers actually involved talking about his experience working in a store when he was a kid.
In Crusade in Europe General Eisenhower says, “I found the men in fine fettle, many of them joshingly admonishing me that I had no cause for worry, since the 101st was on the job, and everything would be taken care of in fine shape. I stayed with them until the last of them were in the air, somewhere about midnight. After a two hour trip back to my own camp, I had only a short time to wait until the first news should come in”.
One of the first D-Day reports was from Leigh-Mallory with news only 29 of 1,250 C-47’s were missing and only four gliders were unaccounted for. That morning Leigh-Mallory sent Ike a message frankly saying it is sometimes difficult to admit that one is wrong, but he had never had a greater pleasure than in doing so on this occasion. He congratulated Ike on the wisdom and courage of his command decision.
Today we rest in the comfort of historical certainty and will never understand the courage required to live this history forward. The above represents only one of many crushing anxieties Eisenhower persevered through. Most planning discussions aroused the specter of Gallipoli, the Somme and Passchendaele, where the British incurred murderous losses for gains of only yards. And this time the allies were intending to undertake an amphibious and air assault more daunting than any campaign of WW I.
Partial bibliography:
Crusade in Europe by General Dwight Eisenhower
My Three Years with Eisenhower by Captain Harry C. Butcher
The Secret Life of Stewart Menzies Spymaster to Winston Churchill by Anthony Cave Brown
D-Day by Steven E. Ambrose
Top 10 Deadliest Battles of World War I
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-bloodiest-battles-of-world-war-i.php
Battle of Messines (1917)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_(1917)#Casualties
Invasion of Normandy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy
This example helps one appreciate the anxieties aroused from memories of Gallipoli, the Somme and Passchendaele, where the British suffered catastrophic losses for gains of only yards. By some historian assessments, the most successful attack by British forces in WW I was the Battle of Messines in 1917. The battle lasted June 1-12, and involved 216,000 men of whom 24,562 became casualties. They attacked on a five-mile front and penetrated 10 miles.
Taking this battle as a starting point, the Normandy invasion from five beachheads established a lodgment about 10 miles deep on a 40 miles front. The effort required 50 days. Therefore, a WW I veteran could make an optimistic estimate of about 400,000 casualties, given he completely disregarded the fact that the D-Day landings were significantly more hazardous than any offensive attempted on the Western Front. In fact by July 24 there were 120,000 casualties.
Picture of Eisenhower
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/pings?more=330525619
D-Day Pictures
http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/06/05/the-65th-anniversary-of-d-day-on-the-normandy-beaches/#
D-Day: Presidential radio address to the nation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jeI3vwz3p4
JUNE 6, 1944: THE GREATEST DAY OF THE 20TH CENTURY
http://usdefensewatch.com/2017/06/june-6-1944-the-greatest-day-of-the-20th-century-2/
List of German World War II night fighter aces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_World_War_II_night_fighter_aces
Password Overlord page 221
Ronald Reagan’s D-Day Address
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganddayaddress.html
WWII Widow Lasting Love
http://www.youtube.com/embed/8TT1XFS1LA0
http://worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/normandy/airborneAssault/eisenhower101st.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEyCjN9riiY
Finally “The Letter” in case of failure, the true sign of a great leader:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/57144/eisenhower-wrote-letter-accepting-blame-d-days-failure-just-case
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
Without their bravery our lives could have been lived in slavery.
Eternal gratitude to all the brave troops of the Normandy invasion .
Not even close. Different continent. Different war. Different century.
Contrast these brave and committed young men with today’s absolutely contemptible infants populating the campuses of colleges. Although of a similar age to those heroes of Omaha Beach, they are light years behind them in maturity and emotional development. Can you imagine these infants who, when exposed to an idea counter to their own opinions, needing to cower in “safe spaces” comforted by crayons and teddy bears, pushing down the hatch to their amphibious boat and dashing directly into an oncoming barrage of bullets and worse? As much as I appreciate what those young heroes did for me and for my country, I have nothing but the deepest contempt for these emotionally retarded neotenous cretins who will never reach adulthood. I shudder to think of how they will function in society, and what they will do to our beloved country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.