Contrast with today’s media and how they would cover D-Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_XBJHrs4I
Can’t imagine being the first American G.I. to step foot on the beaches of Normandy and the hail of gunfire from German machine guns that immediately followed. Probably 99% fatality rate for those first arrivals.
Warships of the United Nations?
The warships of the Allied Nations didn’t do a very good job of bombardment.
Due to fog and low clouds most of the rounds overshot the beaches.
Because the Army Air Force instructed the air crews to delay dropping the bombs by several seconds, the majority of the bombs missed the target, some landing a mile or more inland.
The paratroops were scattered all over Normandy.
Few landed within a mile of their drop zones.
And at Omaha beach, the US 29th Infantry faced a battle hardened German unit on R/R from the Russian front.
Not “old men and boys”.
HOW COULD IT POSSIBLY SUCCEED?
Courage
Honor
Integrity
Leadership
A lot of average guys doing something they knew had to be done.
Not enough superlatives in all the languages of the world to honor those men and their deeds and sacrifices.
I listened to an account of the Dieppe Raid today from a 1942 radio show. Yikes