June 6 The Longest Day

There was a story on the news that one of the D-Day vets were telling where they were helping pilot the boats filled with soldiers to shore. His job was to open the door to let them out. He said he could hear the bullets hitting the door.

When e order came for him to open it, he hesitated because he knew what would happen. His commander repeated the order and cussed him out, so he opened it, and like in Saving Private Ryan, a bunch of soldiers died as soon as the door opened.

He said only a few out of the 90-something soldiers on his boat survived.

 

I have been privileged enough to interview a number of WWII vets, including a few who took part in D-Day. To the man, they have been humble about their service.

The last WWII vet I interviewed was a doctor (not during WWII) who worked on a medical ship off the Normandy Coast that day.


You're right, hyperbole is not needed for these stories.

 

Stephen Harper today at Juno Beach:

It is an honour for me to be with you here today, the 70th anniversary of D-Day, surrounded by Canadian youth and in the presence of our distinguished veterans.

We are commemorating a day whose successful end foreshadowed the ultimate conclusion of a long and bloody war and the triumph of the values for which Canada stands.

Freedom.

Democracy.

Justice.

All the things, in fact, that our enemies despised and had extinguished from every part of the continent they had conquered.

To truly understand how great the Canadian achievement was a lifetime ago, we should remember the obstacles our troops faced.

Poor weather had rendered ineffective the elaborate, pre-invasion naval and air bombardment intended to subdue the Nazi defences.

So, instead of landing amid smoking ruins and dazed defenders, the soldiers had no choice but to charge well-fortified guns and their fully alerted crews, through the smoke, through the minefields, through the barbed wire, through the obstacles on the beaches, always under accurate and deafening mortar fire and into the teeth of machine guns; the same kind of machine guns that had caused the slaughter of their father’s generation, during the First World War.

Only having run this deadly gauntlet could the survivors destroy the enemy strong points, and even then, only through savage hand-to-hand combat against some of the toughest soldiers in the world.

That is how they took the beach.

Here are some of the men who took it.

I should note in passing that yesterday, this famous assault of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was successfully re-enacted.

Now despite the fearful carnage, by the middle of the day the Royal Regina Rifles, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, The North Shore Regiment, Le Regiment de la Chaudiere, the Queen’s Own Rifles and other Canadian units, had punched through Hitler’s vaunted Atlantic Wall and secured their first objectives.

Canadians were now to fight in Europe until Europe was free of fascism.

And fight they did.

Such was the nature of the Canadian Army, such was their intensely aggressive fighting spirit, that during the Battle of Normandy that followed D-Day, they would suffer the most casualties of any division in the wider British Army Group.

As a Canadian, reflecting on this achievement I can only feel two emotions that are not usually reckoned together: fierce pride and the deepest humility.

http://www.citynews.ca/2014/06/06/text-of-stephen-harpers-speech-at-d-day-ceremonies/

 

What makes D-Day even more sobering is when you realize that it kicked off even more months of battling through hell for the Allies. Struggling through hedgerow country in the weeks after. Enduring the debacle of Operation Market Garden. Getting thrown into the meat grinder of the Hurtgen Forest. And of course, the Battle of the Bulge.

For a war that ended in Europe ten months or so after the initial landings, it finished off extremely bloodily. A lot more than dazed German soldiers stumbling out of burnt-out buildings with their arms raised.

 

As high as the casualties were in Normandy theatre; I am always staggered by the Soviet casualties in WWII; 12-15M military; total of 21M for the whole country; unbelievable.

 

I had not yet been born when the event occurred, but am fascinated by the stories. Amazing bravery that all of those men displayed. And, of course, there were heavy casualties on all sides.

 

D Day also was largely a British operation, not American.

 

Please explain that.

 

Given the lack of equipment ... Maybe Stalingrad, soldiers were grouped; those given guns and others given ammo, with the rational there was not enough of both to go around but the numbers would eventually balance.

 

It was completely an ALLIED invasion, both U.S. and Brits as well as Canadians, Aussies, etc. played huge roles.

 

They also didn't value life as much as the rest of the Allies. Stalin had already purged millions in the 30s. Soldiers to Stalin, et. al. were cannon fodder as far as they were concerned.