Posted on 06/04/2019 5:50:35 AM PDT by Kaslin
You might enjoy D-Day Through German Eyes
Sorry to say, both Cornelius Ryan's book and Darryl Zanuck's The Longest Day film versions dropped the ball on Rudder's Rangers assault to silence the gun on the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. While both the book and film showed the German cannons absent from the empty bunkers, they did not go on to the actual destruction of said by the Rangers who found them inland from the coastline.
So, when Fabian's Ranger character in the film says, "You mean... we come up all this way... for nothing?" it leaves the idea that the whole attack was for nothing. Not so, destroying those guns inland kept them from shelling our troops and possible making D-Day a disaster.
I read the book when it came out in 1959 and knew immeadiately that Ryan was wrong as my late father was friends with James Earl Rudder who commanded the 2nd Ranger Battalion assault troops on D-Day. So, while my father got the truth from the man on the scene, Ryan and Zanuck both dropped the ball in their efforts.
Otherwise the book and the film are great with few actual errors, but as they say, "You can't have it perfect all the time!"
The “Big Red One” also had some good D-Day scenes.
The rangers did in fact reconnoiter and find the guns. However the guns were in field storage and yet to be mounted for use.
At the moment the “we came all their way for nothing” was uttered, it was true.
Pretty good! But your dad was lucky for a few years. I was lucky for decades!
Still one of my favorite movies. My sixth grade teacher was in the 101st and he landed on D-Day. That Red Buttons character that hung on the steeple all night really happened as well as that guy who landed in the well.
I was born in 1960. DDay is to a child born today as the inauguration of Grover Cleveland was to me.
I will admit, I don’t know much about Grover Cleveland.
My point is the as time goes by these events which meant so much to my parents, and then to me through “contact” will mean little more than civil war battles to my grandkids.
I honor and respect those men. I have no possible way to imagine the terror of that day—and I have little desire to do so. However, I don’t expect my children to hold that same degree of reverence. They have their own war stories and moments of terror.
No one I knew who was on the beaches at Normandy (on either side) ever referred to it as “holy.” In fact, one or two of them made note of the absence of any sane God at the time.
Let’s not make it what it wasn’t. It was a brutal full frontal attack that was won with brute force. There wasn’t much choice. But I don’t think God had anything to do with it.
I know a lot of young men and women who have served, or are serving. Your estimation of the country’s young is distorted by the bullshit, one-sided stories you are reading on FR.
Sure they whine a lot...but who do you think are driving the ambulances and police cars you see? Who are flying the Jets you see overhead? Who are fighting those wars in the Middle East?
You cannot just look at a couple of dopes on TV or Facebook and make judgement.
Before that, the Commies loved Hitler, when he signed the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union. Many think only "right-wingers", like Charles Lindbergh were anti-interventionist, but many on the Left were as well, at least until Operation Barbarossa.
I know they didn’t think it was Holy. I was talking about the act, the act of sacrificing yourself for others. The British, Canadian and American soldiers believed they were doing this for their families, their countrymen and their country. If they had only been thinking of themselves, a few years in a jail cell for refusing orders would probably have been safer.
They were acting in a manner exactly as Jesus did for us.
Anyone interested in reading the Cornelius Ryan book The Longest Day the movie was based on can download a free Pdf version here:
https://www.bookyards.com/en/book/details/16305/Longest-Day-June-6-1944#
I tend to think more pragmatically. I think most of them would have traded their spots on the Higgins boats for a jail cell at the moment.
Bump
Ha!....my entire service was spent in Germany chasing Frauliens and drinking beer. Oh and sitting atop a tank on occasion. No one fired a shot so it was time to leave. Grenada happened two months after I left the army. I was a peacetime soldier. Heck, if I rotated out two months later, I could have joined the VFW! Hooyah!
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