Personnel and equipment arriving at Normandy by air and sea following the D-Day invasion in 1944.National Archives and Records Administration, 26-G-2517
Posted on 06/05/2022 1:14:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Personnel and equipment arriving at Normandy by air and sea following the D-Day invasion in 1944.
National Archives and Records Administration, 26-G-2517
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalww2museum.org ...
[snip] The fiercest fighting was on Omaha Beach where the enemy was positioned on steep cliffs that commanded the long, flat shoreline. Troops leapt from their landing boats and were pinned down for hours by murderous machine-gun fire that turned the beach into a vast killing field. “If you (stayed) there you were going to die,” Lieutenant Colonel Bill Friedman said. “We just had to . . . try to get to the bottom of the cliffs on which the Germans had mounted their defenses.” By midday, the Americans had surmounted the cliffs and taken Omaha Beach at a heavy cost: over 4,700 killed, wounded, or missing out of the total of approximately 35,000 who came ashore that day, a loss rate of more than 13 percent. [/snip]
Yogi Berra was one of the few who was in the front lines & didn’t so much as get a scratch.
It wasn't over until it was over (September 22, 2015).
I didn't know until a few years ago that the first wave of the Allies going in was a virtual slaughter sentence. One source using names listed a total American Armed Forces death toll of 2,499 on that first day, and 1,915 of other allies mainly British.
May God bless their souls for their sacrifice.
He was on a ship, and got a scratch and a Purple Heart, sez here:
I think it was virtually the entire HS graduating class of Lynchburg Va. that were casualties.
Then there’s the boating accident off Scotland training for the invasion. The info came out in the late 90’s. That’s 50+ years afterward. A couple thousand drowned. Worth it? Musta been republicans running the operation. We did win ultimately.
“Yogi Berra was one of the few who was in the front lines & didn’t so much as get a scratch.”
Actually Yogi did get scratched:
“During the invasion, Berra manned a landing craft support vessel from which he said he “sprayed bullets and rockets across the heavily fortified beach fronts before the troops landed.”
“Berra was wounded in the hand by incoming enemy fire; he was later awarded the Purple Heart Medal.”
His ship was off Utah Beach.
“Sports Heroes Who Served: From D-Day Vet to Baseball Legend”
Exercise Tiger
U-boats surprised a group of fully manned and outfitted landing craft.
I think you might be referring to Bedford, VA.
A book titled “The Beford Boys” chronicles how so many people from one small Virginia town all ended up in Company A, of the 116 Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division.
They were the first company to hit the Dog Green Sector of Omaha Beach on D-Day.
A National D-Day Museum is in Bedford, VA to commemorate their sacrifice.
While not officially a flag day, I like to post the colors, even though only older veterans immediately get it. Lots of other people pick up on it after pondering it for a moment.
Another famous D Day invader was the Beat Generation poet and City Lights bookstore owner and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
As commanding officer the 25 year old Ferlinghetti was at the helm of a submarine chaser, SC 1308, in the D-Day landing on the coast of Normandy in 1944.
He went to jail to fight for free speech to have Howl and other books allowed——while saying he couldn’t personally defend the views and language of the book but sank thousands of dollars into fighting censorship of unpopular ideas.
He died in 2021 at age 101.
Nobody goes to Normandy anymore, it's too crowded.
It was before my time, but even after being aware of Viet Nam and Gulf Wars 1&2, the meat grinder those men went through is incomprehensible to me even now, even though I’ve watched documentaries, read books and watched movies depicting what happened on that day. The only event that I can compare it to is 9/11.
And for me personally that day is such a study in contrasts, because 37 years later, on June 6, 1981, the Mrs. and I were married. Such a beautiful, happy day that was for us. It still is, but it might not have happened if our heroes hadn’t done their duty that day.
Thanks guys, RIP.
I had an uncle that landed D+7. He was on the front lines the whole way. He was in the first American unit that entered Berlin after the end of the war.
Never an exterior scratch. But, lots of internal damage.
My cousin asked him about it once. No one ever made that mistake again.
Really? I went on June 7, 1993, fifty years plus one day. There were a lot of people, but it was still accessible then.
Clinton had been at the cemetery the day before and there were still some yellow stains on the grass where he had alked.
I was struck by how very different it looked than it does in the movie, "The Longest Day".
I watched a documentary last night about a training mission about a month before the invasion. Our men were put on landing boats which sailed up the English coast and put ashore on a previously scouted beach. A nearby town was evacuated in advance. While they were being put ashore, they were being shot at by our own troops to simulate the German defenders.
An hour in advance, other ships were to begin shelling the beach to soften up any “opposition”. For some reason, the command to land the troops was given TWO HOURS EARLY, and the ships slated to shell the beach were not told.
So after the troops were landed, after enduring landing under fire with the “defenders” using Live ammunition, the ships started shelling the beach right on top of our men, killing many.
In the meantime the Germans discovered what was going on and sent motor torpedo boats from the French coast, which started attacking the troop transports. It turned into a big disaster, and to this day the exact number of our men that were killed is not really known.
My maternal Grandfather was there.
Normandy’s success was entirely dependent upon Patton’s deception of an invasion at Pas de Calais.
“I think it was virtually the entire HS graduating class of Lynchburg Va. that were casualties.”
You’re thinking of Bedford, Virginia the little town that, per capita, lost more men on D-Day than any other in the country. It was for that reason the National D-Day Memorial was built there.
If you’re ever near Bedford stop in and see the Memorial. It’s well worth the time.
While I’m huge fan of Patton, the success of those who actually landed was largely due to the actual fighting they did, and the offshore and aerial support.
There was lots of deception involved to try to tie down the Germans at Calais, including Double Cross, and the real ace up the Allies’ sleeve was that Hitler was a dumbass, or more specifically, he didn’t grasp either strategy or tactics.
The Higgins boats, LSTs, and Mulberry harbo(u)rs, and unprecedented airlift capability, and thee overall industrial output of the US, all contributed to the success.
For his part, Patton achieved more with less than most (or all?) commanders in the war in any participating armed forces. And he pissed in the Rhine, March 24, 1945 at Oppenheim, as he crossed over a pontoon bridge and into Germany, and [snip] sent a dispatch to Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower that read, “I have just pissed into the Rhine River. For God’s sake, send some gasoline.” [/snip] The bridge had been put in place on the 22nd, and a division of his Third Army had already crossed over.
https://www.skillsetmag.com/general-patton-at-the-rhine/
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