For Hitler's Germany, D-Day, June 6, 1944, 65 years ago today. Germany was already being rolled back in the east by the Red Army, the tide had turned there in early 1943 when the German Sixth Army was defeated at Stalingrad. D-Day meant that both jaws of the vice were moving in on Germany.
Over 4,000 ships, 10,000 aircraft took part. Seven divisions were landed on D-Day alone. Planning for the assault began almost immediately after the US entered the war.
During the Battle of the Atlantic, fought to ship war material to Europe, over 30,000 merchant sailors were killed, over 3,000 merchant ships and nearly 200 warships were sunk.
The men who participated in the landings and in the convoys are mostly gone, now. Those left are in 80s or 90s. What they did lives on.
It is hard, for me personally, to acknowledge that it was so long ago. The men who fought in the war and the women who worked in the war industries (and who served in the armed forces) were vibrant adults when I was a kid. They were the fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles of my generation. Most of the leaders of the armed forces during the war were still alive: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Omar Bradley, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, Field Marshal Montgomery.
Time, however, marches relentlessly. In a couple of decades, there probably will be lavish funerals for the last man to have fought at Normandy and for the last veteran of the Second World War.
And then, not too long afterwards, the Second World War will fade into the history books, as have the wars before it. But what was done 65 years ago will not be forgotten.
7 comments:
I believe that most people today are so busy with feeding the "Me" that having any knowledge or interest in D Day and the thousands of people who fought and died so "Me" is now able to satisfy it's every want. We've allowed them to become a very different type of person than those that participated in D Day.
Australia's last WW1 veteran just died this week.
I took my 2 sons on a B-24 ride yesterday.
www.collinsfoundation.com
We met 2 veterans who had flown these in combat, both had Ploesti missions. We also met a woman whose late father had flown a Pleosti raid, crash landed in Armenia and spent a year as a POW.
After a 1/2 hr flight at 1500 feet in mid 60 degree weather, with no one shooting at us, I am again impressed with the men that flew cramped, deafening, cold, dangerous missions in flying crates by today's standards.
We rode a B-25 last year. It's hard to imagine flying one of these in the Doolittle Tokyo raid, 650 miles at wavetop level, with little hope for more than a crash landing (only one plane landed safely out of 16).
I was born in '49 so seeing the crude war machines and talking to the vets is my only connection to that war.
It must have been hell. D-Day is unimaginable for me.
I will remember them.
Dennis
Flew in a B17 a few years ago and I have to echo your comments. Same age so we probably remember a lot of the same big events.
Served in navy during Vietnam and tight quarters, bad food were bad enough, but had friends in the marines who told me stories that probably were not a lot different than D-Day. Unimaginable is about as close a word as I can think of. As has been said before all war is hell. You do it only as the last resort.
Utah. Omaha. Gold. Juno. Sword.
Never forget - and never fritter your liberty.
Have you seen this?
http://www.pbs.org/behindcloseddoors/
D Day was promised to Stalin by Roosevelt and Churchill 2 effing years before his Allies came through on it.
27 million Russians died in WWII, 9 million of them soldiers.
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