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“Embark Upon The Great Crusade” June 6

Jim_S

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
“Embark Upon The Great Crusade”
June 6, 2020 by John Richardson

https://onlygunsandmoney.com/2020/06/06/embark-upon-the-great-crusade.html

Embarking upon a great crusade is how Ike described what the soldiers, sailors, and airmen were about to do on June 5-6, 1944.

Ike released this statement at 9am British Double Summer Time which would make it 3am in New York and Washington, DC.

At noon, Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced to the House of Commons that the invasion of Normandy was well underway and that the Allied Forces had captured Rome on June 4th.

I have also to announce to the House that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of the series of landings in force upon the European Continent has taken place. In this case the liberating assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada of upwards of 4,000 ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne landings have been successfully effected behind the enemy lines, and landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time. The fire of the shore batteries has been largely quelled. The obstacles that were constructed in the sea have not proved so difficult as was apprehended. The Anglo-American Allies are sustained by about 11,000 firstline aircraft, which can be drawn upon as may be needed for the purposes of the battle. I cannot, of course, commit myself to any particular details. Reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far the Commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place. It involves tides, wind, waves, visibility, both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen.

By 6pm local time, all five invasion beaches – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword – had beachheads established and troops were starting to move inland.

By 9pm local time, ground troops were starting to link up with paratroopers and glider troops from the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, the British 6th Airborne Division, the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, and other smaller units. At the same time, the first reinforcements are starting to arrive from England.

The invasion of France was not without cost. The number of first day casualties is estimated at around 10,000. It has been a challenge to get a precise figure. Many units didn’t file their “morning reports” until days later. Fighting to get off the beach and move inland was of greater importance as one might imagine.

The number of killed in action had previously been put at about 2,500. However, research by the US National D-Day Historical Foundation has provided a much higher and more accurate total.

The number of people killed in the fighting is not known exactly. Accurate record keeping was very difficult under the circumstances. Books often give a figure of 2,500 Allied dead for D-Day. However, research by the US National D-Day Memorial Foundation has uncovered a more accurate figure of 4,414 Allied personnel killed on D-Day. These include 2,501 from the USA, 1,449 British dead, 391 Canadians and 73 from other Allied countries. Total German losses on D-Day (not just deaths, but also wounded and prisoners of war) are estimated as being between 4,000 and 9,000. Over 100,000 Allied and German troops were killed during the whole of the Battle of Normandy, as well as around 20,000 French civilians, many as a result of Allied bombing.

I look back on D-Day 76 years after the fact and am still amazed how such an operation could not only be organized but succeed. There was no computers, there was no Internet, and operations research was done using slide rules. My graduate degree is in project management and this was the project of all projects.
 

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Jim_S

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
Worldwide, a Subdued and Somber D-Day Commemoration
BY RICK MORAN JUN 06, 2020 2:38 PM EST

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politi...ubdued-and-somber-d-day-commemoration-n503159


Commemorating D-Day, June 6, 1944, is usually accompanied by somber speeches, wreath layings, and hundreds of veterans of that awful/glorious day wandering among the headstones of fallen comrades.

Politicians usually give speeches, praising the sacrifice and the spirit of the times that moved millions to take up arms in defense of democracy. There are usually somber religious services and old friends hoisting a few to the many empty chairs that signify a loss of fellowship.

But the cemeteries in Normandy are eerily quiet and empty this year. The coronavirus pandemic has prevented the usual crowds from gathering to remember.

Fox News:

“The sadness is almost too much, because there is no one,” said local guide Adeline James. “Plus you have their stories. The history is sad and it’s even more overwhelming now between the weather, the (virus) situation and, and, and.”

French residents in the area remember too. They could usually be seen placing flags and wooden crosses on the graves of the dead, never forgetting the horrible cost in blood that purchased their freedom from the Nazis.

But this year, the beaches and fields nearby are empty.

Except for one Frenchman, who took it upon himself to recall the sacrifices of the fallen.

Despite the lack of international crowds, David Pottier still went out to raise American flags in the Calvados village of Mosles, population 356, which was liberated by allied troops the day after the landing on five Normandy beachheads.

In a forlorn scene, a gardener tended to the parched grass around the small monument for the war dead, while Pottier, the local mayor, was getting the French tricolor to flutter next to the Stars and Stripes.

“We have to recognize that they came to die in a foreign land,” Pottier said. “We miss the GIs,” he said of the U.S. soldiers.

An Englishman living on the Normandy coast who was a familiar face to families looking to remember their loved ones stepped forward to lay wreaths at several of the graves.

For years, Steven Oldrid, 66, had helped out with D-Day events around the beaches where British soldiers had landed — and often left their lives behind — be it organizing parking, getting pipers to show or getting sponsors for veterans’ dinners.

Laying wreaths though, seemed something special, reserved for families and close friends only.

But in pandemic times, pandemic rules apply. Oldrid was first contacted in March.

“I was actually choked up when I got the first request,” Oldrid said. “I’m always on the other side. Always in the background,” he said.

Oldrid kept getting requests to lay wreaths, which began piling up in his garage. Naturally, the families were nervous that Oldrid would be unable to lay them all.

Before he knew, it in this extraordinary year, he had become the extraordinary wreathlayer — proof that kindness cannot be counted in pounds, euros or dollars, but in time and effort to organize a day around the wishes of others.

As June 6 approached, the boxes of wreaths and grave markers piled up in his garage. And to soothe the nerves of families, he has also been filming live for Facebook several ceremonies and wreathlayings.

There is no great moral lesson to be learned from the warriors who took part in the D-Day landings. The average age of the GIs who landed at five beaches in Normandy was all of 20 years old. They weren’t thinking of the moral dimensions of their sacrifice. They wanted to live. They wanted to marry a sweetheart, or find a sweetheart, settle down, and have a long life.

So, so many of them didn’t. Many more were scarred physically and emotionally for the rest of their lives.

It cheapens their sacrifice to try and draw any kind of parallel to what’s happening in the country today. All we should do is remember. And bless them for their courage and heroism.





Roses are placed on the tomb of Morris H. Hilghman Jr of the PVT 507 Parachute Inf Regiment from west Virginia , who died on June 9, 1944, by French members of WWII veteran association "Les Fleurs de la Memoire", "Flowers for Memory", in the Colleville American military cemetery, in Colleville sur Mer, western France, Monday June 6, 2016, on the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landing. D-Day marked the start of a Europe invasion, as many thousands of Allied troops began landing on the beaches of Normandy in northern France in 1944 at the start of a major offensive against the Nazi German forces, an offensive which cost the lives of many thousands. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

 

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