On June 6, 1944, 160,000 American, British and Canadian soldiers stormed the beaches at Normandy, setting in motion the defeat of Germany and the freedom of Europe.
By May 1944, over 2,876,000 Allied troops were amassed in southern England. While awaiting deployment orders, they prepared for the assault by practicing with live ammunition. The largest armada in history, made up of more than 4,000 American, British, and Canadian ships, lay in wait. More that 1,200 planes stood ready to deliver seasoned airborne troops behind enemy lines, to silence German ground resistance as best they could, and to dominate the skies of the impending battle theater.
Against a tense backdrop of uncertain weather forecasts, disagreements in strategy, and related timing dilemmas predicated on the need for optimal tidal conditions, Eisenhower decided before dawn on June 5 to proceed with Overlord. Later that same afternoon, he scribbled a note intended for release, accepting responsibility for the decision to launch the invasion and full blame should the effort to create a beachhead on the Normandy coast fail.
Much more polished is his printed Order of the Day for June 6, 1944, which Eisenhower began drafting in February. The order was distributed to the 175,000-member expeditionary force on the eve of the invasion.
D-day statement to soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6/44, Collection DDE-EPRE: Eisenhower, Dwight D: Papers, Pre-Presidential, 1916-1952; Dwight D. Eisenhower Library; National Archives and Records Administration.
Below, the message is read over images of Eisenhower.
Having just observed Memorial Day, this would be a good time to remember and to breathe a prayer of thanks for those who fought for not just our freedom here in the U.S., but around the world. Remember, Japan was also our foe, who would not be defeated until August of 1945, about 3 months after Germany surrendered.
Daily Verse | Job 33:29-30 “God does all these things to a man—twice, even three times—to turn back his soul from the pit, that the light of life may shine on him.’”
Monday and a new week. A week ago was Memorial Day. Fittingly, yesterday was the 77th anniversary of D-Day: Tuesday, June 6, 1944.
After duping the Nazis into believing that the invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais (the closest point to Britain across the Dover Channel), the Allies instead landed at five sections of beachfront along the Normandy coast. They were codenamed (from West to East), “Utah,” “Omaha,” “Gold,” “Juno” and “Sword.”
“For the Americans of the 1st and 29th Infantry divisions waiting off Omaha Beach in the darkness that morning, almost everything was about to go wrong. Omaha is a gently curving natural amphitheater, dominated by 130-foot bluffs pierced by five “draws,” or gullies, each with its own road or cart track leading up to the plateau. At roughly six miles across, it was the broadest of the five invasion beaches—and the deepest, with more than three hundred yards of exposed beach at low tide. It was also the most strongly defended on June 6. Thirteen fortified strongpoints reinforced with steel and concrete and equipped with 50-, 75-, and 88-millimeter artillery pieces, overlooked the five draws and were situated to provide overlapping fields of fire. Each was surrounded by antitank and anti-fire ditches, and interspersed among them were batteries of artillery, antitank guns, mortar pits, armor-piercing howitzers, and rocket launchers, as well as eighty-five machine-gun nests—all well concealed, reinforced, and interconnected by a maze of camouflaged trenches, subterranean barracks, and command posts. Because of the tall cliffs and curving waterline, guns fired lengthwise from the heights at either end of the beach could cut to pieces anyone brave or foolhardy enough to try to come ashore.” /p.196
U.S. Army infantry men approaching Omaha Beach, Normandy, France on June 6, 1944.
Yet come ashore they did, and many paid the price.
“Terror intensified. As his landing craft shuddered to a stop, one soldier asked another, ‘Mac, when a bullet hits you, does it go through?’ His friend had no time to answer. The men kicked down the landing ramp and found themselves in what one survivor called ‘a new world.’ The Germans along the bluffs had largely held their fire until that moment. Now machine-gun fire ripped through many men before they could step onto the ramp. Scores more were hit in the water. Two companies were obliterated before they could reach the sand. Some wounded men made it to the waterline, then lay helpless amid the seaweed as the tide rose slowly over them.” /pp. 200-201
Altogether, the total number of Allied casualties was about 10,000, with nearly half of that number killed and the rest wounded or missing.
“Far fewer Allied troops had died than Allied planners had expected, but D-day still had been the bloodiest day in U.S. military history since Antietam. Some 2,500 American soldiers lay dead on and behind the beaches. Thousands more were wounded or missing.” /p. 210
The older I get and the more our country spirals into its self-destructive lunacy, the more I appreciate what these men did. Most of them were in their early twenties, 3,000 miles away from home, dying on desolate beaches in a foreign country.
Yet because they fought, the Allies were able to unload 2,500,000 men, 500,000 vehicles and 4,000,000 tons of supplies at two temporary harbors at Normandy over the remainder of the war. That allowed them to liberate France, which led to the liberation of Europe and, ultimately, to the liberation of the rest of the world. Due to their successful breach of Rommel’s “Atlantic Wall,” Germany signed an unconditional surrender less than a year later on May 7, 1945.
D-Day marked a decisive turning point in the war in Europe, beating back the aggression of Nazi Germany. As the National D-Day Memorial puts it, it took “valor, fidelity and sacrifice” to bring peace.
