[Jalapeno]

The scale of devestation in regards to the Normandy Invasion operation are mind blowing.

[Numbers Guy]

I read a book on that incident a number of years ago, Smalls' book was published in 1988, but I thought I had read a book around 1980 on the topic. At the time they had to cover it up because of preparations for Overlord. But in subsequent years there was no reason not to come clean on the tragedy.

[CWOJackson]

"One of Britain's grimmest wartime secrets...can now be told."

I've known about it for over thirty years now...and my knowledge came from published material that anyone could read.

[FReepaholic]

I find it hard to believe that soldiers would continue shooting after seeing that they were killing their own.

>>...US serviceman Harold McAulley, who tells of dragging dead soldiers off the sands and later helping to bury corpses - the faces black with oil and burning ...<<

Consistent with an explosion on a ship.

[luvbach1]

If true it was worse than any recent "friendly fire" incident. Common sense has told me that the phenomenon was not exclusive to today's forces.

[Riley]

Can anybody verify that there was blue-on-blue small arms fire with live rounds? I had never heard this alleged before.

[Husker24]

How could they not tell that they were firing live ammo? Why and the hell wouldnt they stop firing when they saw people falling over and blood spraying everywhere.

[CholeraJoe]

*ping!

Does this pass the smell test?

[Jeff Gordon]

What kind of dumb ass soldier can't tell the difference between having and firing live ammunition as opposed to dummy ammunition?

[PISANO]

Should have fired the SecWar, called off the invasion and congress should have had an investigation by appointing a committee to find out what went wrong. Then we should have replaced General Ike, Monte and impeached FDR.

Everyone reading this has to KNOW we could NO LONGER fight a war like WWII......the American people have turned to GHANDI like tactics while our ENEMY is killing children, their own people, women and beheading everyone in their path. WAKE UP AMERICA!!

[Pilsner]

This story is BS aimed at people whose "knowledge" of weapons comes from Hollywood. Anyone with five minutes training in firearms can tell a military ball cartridge from a blank, which generally has its end crimped shut and no bullet. (The Russians sometimes used bullets made out of soft wood with so little mass that it it is not dangerous except at very short ranges.) In fact WWII infantry were specifically trained on telling live cartridges and blanks apart because rifle gernandes of the time were fired with an adapter on a rifle and a blank cartidge. A live cartridge would detonate the rifle gernade about two inches past the muzzle with fatal consequnces.

Could a couple of lunk heads have somehow gotten hold of live ammo and plugged five or six guys? Maybe. But the idea that so many died that it took a two acres mass grave (thats 9,680 aquare yards!) to bury all the dead is about as believable as that alien who keeps showing up on the cover of the Weekly World News.

[jnarcus]

And your pint is? WWII was a bloody mess, had lots of botched stuff happening, why bother with this bit of still unacknowledged history? Other than making the US look bad because there was live ammo rather than dummy , what is the purpose? This is meaningless to the living as well as the dead. These soldiers died in a valiant effort to defeat the Axus powers why diminsh that with this?

[TalBlack]

More and more I feel a relic of a dead age, and I'm only 45!

War is HELL! Shite happens! The frustration of the Men involved must have been unspeakable but that's the way anything involving imperfect humans can go. The need to get this out is, I suspect, a modern thing. Hell, didn't Churchill let some 5,000 Brit troops go to their deaths rather than save them and thus let the Germans know that their code was cracked? War is Hell--there is nothing else to say.

[TAP ONLINE]

Saw this story on History Channel. A British Officer claimed he protested use of live ammo. He was told by a US General (un-named)that he would be Court Marshalled if he said another word. According to the Brit the live ammo was used intentionally because they needed to know how troops would react. I distinctly remember this show because I had just read article on how Patton was almost fired for slapping a soldier. I was livid that this story of intentional fire at US forces is not mentioned when discussing Patton's "crime."

[flying Elvis]

If the beach was not used for any other training exercises, a metal detector will solve the "mystery."