One uncle jumped with the 101st. Another hit the beach with the Big Red One. A third went ashore later in southern France. The elder brother of the first two was wounded at Tarawa in 1943. These men were farm boys who answered the call. The Marine was in the first wave at Inchon. He was 40 years old and still humping.
My Great Uncle was on a tank destroyer with the 603 Battalion Super Sixth AD. He rode an M10 across France and Germany. I have some of his citations. He was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster. I have one of his letters home and he discusses liberating prisoners and slave laborers and the joy in their faces.
My Dad said he’d never talk about it other than one time my Dad asked what it was like to be wounded.
Never Forgotten Uncle Ronnie.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
Great uncle shot down over France and is buried in one of the US cemeteries there. I took a ferry from Portsmouth to Le Havre to pay a visit to Normandy when I lived in the UK in the 90s. The scale and planning of the operation was massive.
I'm currently re-reading Rick Atkinson's The Guns at Last Light, which is the third book in a trilogy about the US in WWII. This book covers the period that includes the preparation for the Normandy invasion through the end of the war. The material and human resources that the Allies put into this invasion are mind-boggling. At this point, five years into the war for them, the Brits were literally starting to run out of men. And yet they went, and pushed on.
One of the things the book brings out is that the US was so laser-focused on the landings that they didn't train or plan for the fight beyond the beaches. When they hit the hedgerows they were flummoxed and took a lot of casualties until they came up with the technology and tactics for them.
"Everything in life is really simple, provided you don’t know a f—–g thing about it." - Kevin D. Williamson
This was posted in the "Random Late Night YouTube Videos" thread earlier. But since somebody started a D-Day thread, it is worth re-posting here.
More videos will be posted every hour throughout the day at https://www.youtube.com/@D-Day24Hours-sm5pe/videos
⬆️ HOUR 1 - First Boots on the Ground - D-Day 24h
Landing by glider, the British 6th Airborne are the first into combat. All of Operation Neptune hangs on their success to secure and destroy a series of bridges, will it work?
This documentary was made possible with the backing of the TimeGhost Army
Hosted by: Indy Neidell and Spartacus Olsson
⬆️ HOUR 2 - Dropzone Cotentin - D-Day 24h
The US 82nd and 101st Airborne must secure the area behind the US sector beaches. Will they fail, so that the Allies have no viable path forward?
⬆️ HOUR 3 - Nazis Caught Sleeping - D-Day 24h
Nazi command, with Hitler, Rundstedt, and Rommel at its head has literally been caught sleeping, or even absent from Normandy - will they wake up in time to stop the Allied invasion?
⬆️ HOUR 4 - Neptune’s Armada - D-Day 24h
Off the coast of Calvados 7,000 Allied ships have gathered to launch a mighty force at Hitler’s Fortress Europe. Can they change the historically bad record for amphibious landings?
⬆️ HOUR 5 - Bombing the French Civilians - D-Day 24h
The French civilians face the rain of bombs by the RAF and USAAF, the German soldiers do not. Will the Atlantic Wall still be an impenetrable force after all?
⬆️ HOUR 6 - Shelling the Germans - D-Day 24h
After the rain of aerial bombs has mostly landed inland, the German defenders face a deadly, fiery storm of naval artillery without equal in history. Will this finally soften the Atlantic wall?
⬆️ HOUR 7 - H-Hour for Omaha and Utah - D-Day 24h
As the fighting for the beaches begins, the Nazi controlled German wire service breaks the news to the world, scooping Eisenhower’s PR plan. Who will control the narrative today?
Age Restricted. Hopefully they'll upload a non-restricted version of this later, as they've had to do with some of their "War Against Humanity" series in the past.
⬆️ HOUR 8 - H-Hour on Gold, Juno, and Sword - D-Day 24h
Will the British and Canadians have an easier time to navigate to the beaches? If they too veer off course, or get stuck in the German line of fire, the entire invasion may collapse.
⬆️ HOUR 9 - Hitler’s Fortress Walls Crumbling - D-Day 24h
The allied landings are punching hard into the German defenses, but will the amphibious troops and the airborne link up in time to hold on?
⬆️ HOUR 10 - The Greatest Press Story Ever Told - D-Day 24h
When Eisenhower releases the official Allied news communique, it triggers a worldwide murmur of relief - is the end of the war in sight? Is liberty and freedom now within a grasp?
⬆️ HOUR 11 - Where the Hell is the Luftwaffe? - D-Day 24h
While the USAAF and RAF pound the French coast with their bombs, there is no meaningful sign of a German aerial defense, but maybe it is coming soon?
⬆️ HOUR 12 - Allied Planes Hunt in Packs - D-Day 24h
With full aerial supremacy, the Allied tactical air forces have free range on the Germans. Will it be enough to pave the way for the 1st and 2nd army to reach their objectives?
⬆️ HOUR 13 - Where the Hell are the French? - D-Day 24h
The Allies have arrived to liberate France from Nazi occupation, but what is the French Resistance doing, and why are they largely absent from their own liberation?
Yippee ki-yay
Hard to imagine the National will we had at that time.
My father and grandparents were in a slave labor camp liberated by Americans - you never know? Thank you Uncle Ronnie and the men like him!Originally Posted by Coyotesfan97
I have great interest in the TD units in WWII. Would have loved to have heard his stories.
A portion.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/...gels-of-omaha/Looking at D-Day through the actions of three of Operation Overlord’s bravest soldiers.
At the western end of Omaha, the first wave of soldiers was all but wiped out, barely able to shoot back against the Germans. Succeeding waves piled up on the sea wall. Chaos reigned. The Americans were paralyzed, unable to mount an attack against the German defenders.
With more than 1,000 dead in just a few hours and bodies strewn everywhere on the beach, the American high command began to consider evacuating the beach. This would have left a German-controlled beach area between American troops on Utah Beach and the other three British/Canadian beaches — a serious problem for the Allies.
Amid this looming tragedy, a company of roughly 150 men from the 1st Infantry Division commanded by Captain Joseph Dawson miraculously landed on the beach where there was a tiny gap between the interlocking fields of heavy gunfire coming from the German fortifications. They safely got to the sea wall and reorganized to prepare an attack on the strong fortifications as their orders dictated.
The famous historian Stephen Ambrose chronicled in his book D-Day that when Captain Dawson observed the piles of bodies to his left and right and sized up the grim situation, he decided to ignore his orders, which were to make a direct, suicidal attack against the formidable German fortifications. Instead, his company would move straight inland between the fortifications and try to pick its way between some smaller hills and ravines, with the goal of reaching the high bluffs overlooking the beach.
In his personal combat memoirs, Captain Dawson recalls that as, his company began to move inland, he saw a couple of dead soldiers who had been killed by a detonating landmine, so he used extreme caution leading his men through the minefield unharmed. Continuing to move forward and higher by crawling and crouching, the company eventually came under fire of a German machine gun up on the bluff that wounded several of his men.
After telling his men to find cover, Dawson began crawling through the brush and sand to work his way up and to the side of the machine gun position on the bluff. According to his memoirs, he looked back down and saw another platoon of Americans commanded by Lieutenant John Spalding coming up the hill to the side of his company. Lieutenant Spalding’s platoon had landed in almost the same spot on the beach a few minutes after Dawson’s company and decided to follow it inland, given the human carnage on the beach. Using hand signals, Dawson managed to get the attention of Sergeant Philip Streczyk, a seasoned combat veteran on whom the inexperienced Spalding relied. Dawson directed Streczyk and his man to put a suppressing fire on the German machine-gun nest so he could sneak the rest of the way up the bluff undetected by the Germans.
As Dawson reached the top of the bluff to the side of the machine-gun nest, he pulled the pin out of two hand grenades. The Germans spotted him about ten yards away and quickly tried to turn their gun on him, but he made two perfect throws with his grenades and killed all the Germans. At this moment in time, Dawson was probably the first American to reach the top of the bluff towering above Omaha Beach. The first opening was now cleared for Americans to exploit and turn the tide of battle.
Every June 6, my throat becomes tight and the allergies affect my eyes. As it should be.
You and me both. The courage and bravery of those young men going into harm's way, so many never to return, was a sacrifice we can never repay but must continue trying to earn.
I only hope that I would have measured up were I among them.
There's nothing civil about this war.
My dad entered the army in Aug. 1942 and was discharged in Dec. 1944. His first campaign was with the 3rd ID in Italy shortly after Anzio. From there it looks like he went to France and on into Germany. Apparently he was in Italy during D Day. I have his original discharge papers. Mostly I had to piece this together because he never documented any of it, nor did he like to talk about it. I do know he liked the British Enfield a lot. He cut one down and made a sporter out of it to hunt deer.
Hard for me to imagine the sacrifice of that generation.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
Could not have said it better myself.
Especially given the more modern, recently made movies documentaries and such that show how much of an absolute true hell those men on the beaches faced.
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