D-Day 🇺🇸

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June 5th another D-Day in our history.
With all that's happening around us lately today has almost come and gone with no respect to those who paid the ultimate price for not only our freedom but other country's as well.
Over 6600 USA soldiers died that day on the shores in Normandy France
I for one will be forever thankful for those lives that day !
Thank you is not even enough for what they gave us all !!🇺🇸
 
Absolutely. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Our generation has its head in the sand when it comes to the realities of our history as a nation. We are at a tipping point, which way will we fall?
 
Hard to imagine what those men suffered landing on those beaches... Especially Omaha beach...

Men going out of landing boats in some places with water well over their heads... Weighted down with a lot of weight many drowned. If they survived that they had to survive a hail of machine gun fire from the cliff tops overlooking the beach... The demolition crews that went in first had extremely dangerous work to even try to perform... Men pinned down behind obstructions and then pinned down on the beach had to find a way to advance their position against a enemy in a perfect position to take them out. Climbing the cliffs and taking bunkers and pill boxes was exceptionally dangerous has well... There had to have been hand to hand combat at times in those encounters. And this was just the beginning of their ordeal and fighting.. The hedgerows came next where the enemy was very well concealed and could attack extremely fast with no warning. The canals in the area were also places were fought for. The paratroopers almost always landed in the wrong areas west of the beaches. This made their task even more difficult than it already was... Trying to coordinate anything had to have been very hard in that first day and likely was that way for several more days... The Navy's massive bombardment of the beaches largely missed their intended targets. This left those cliff top bunkers and pill boxes largely intact and manned when the Allies landed. Many circumstances were not in our favor that fateful day on June 6th 1944... And yet our great men somehow overcame it all to establish a beach head that started the end of the Reich.

Two things were in our favor that fateful day... Hitler did not believe that we would make a attempted landing on Normandy beaches. He did not even believe the first reports that came out of Normandy once we landed. Which caused the second thing that did not happen that was in our favor... The armoured tank reinforcements were not moved that way at all that first day and for several days after that. Those two big miscalculations by Hitler would be critical in helping the Allies truly establish a viable army on the European continent.


D day was a day of tremendous loss of life, many seriously wounded, and extremely difficult circumstances. It was also a day of overcoming it all to eventually put an end to a reign of terror that had encompassed all of Europe, northern Africa and into Asia.
 
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I watched Saving Private Ryan in the theater in '98. What a harrowing experience for those young men. Honor their sacrifice.
 
I traveled on a long bus ride with a group of WWII vets to the then D-day museum for the 65th anniversary. I'll never forget that day as it was about the last time there would be vets from that time there in any numbers.

I noticed some of the old guys walked with a limp or were hard to get around. They were all b/t 85 and 93 years so figured that was to be expected. However, then I got to talking to one of them A soft spoken man from Arkansas and he pulled up his pants leg. There was huge scare were he took a hit into his calf. He was out of service for a month or two as they spliced some of the skin off of his upper thigh to repair his calf wound. Then he went back and later ended up getting wounded again at the battle of the bulge. He told me when you are the machine gunner you get lots of attention!

Another man I later learned heard an incoming mortar shell as he was standing on one of those hedge rows. He jumped to the ground below only to land on a mine that blew up and shattered his ankle. I learned more history during that weekend than all the years of school and college combined.
 
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We must never forget their sacrifices! True heroes, one and all.
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my late dad was in the 210th m.p. co and landed on easy red sector, omaha beach on the morning of 6/6/44. he survived without a physical scratch. on the way to shore he crapped his pants. the landing craft next to him took a direct hit. his landing craft stopped in too deep water, at 6'2" he was in over his head. a short guy behind him panicked and grabbed my dad, pulling them both to the sea bottom. my dad fought him off and got to the surface. he never knew what happened to the other guy and it haunted him for the rest of his life.

as scared as he was at that time, he always said that the allied invasion was like an unstoppable diesel train; they were well trained and well equipped, and thus confident that they couldn't lose. from his spot on beach shingle he was in awe of combat engineers and infantry who assaulted a german pillbox head-on. a few years before he died he returned to normandy and sat in the exact spot where he dug his first foxhole just off the beach. a teenaged french girl saw him and asked if was ok. after he explained she went into a shop and returned to give him u.s./french flag lapel pin.

my dad was lucky to have survived a famous event. many others survived, or didn't, less heralded events. 6/6 belongs to them all.
 
I could be wrong but I believe that the invasion of D-Day should of happened the day before but the weather was too bad.?
 
Originally Posted by jstert
my late dad was in the 210th m.p. co and landed on easy red sector, omaha beach on the morning of 6/6/44. he survived without a physical scratch. on the way to shore he crapped his pants. the landing craft next to him took a direct hit. his landing craft stopped in too deep water, at 6'2" he was in over his head. a short guy behind him panicked and grabbed my dad, pulling them both to the sea bottom. my dad fought him off and got to the surface. he never knew what happened to the other guy and it haunted him for the rest of his life.

as scared as he was at that time, he always said that the allied invasion was like an unstoppable diesel train; they were well trained and well equipped, and thus confident that they couldn't lose. from his spot on beach shingle he was in awe of combat engineers and infantry who assaulted a german pillbox head-on. a few years before he died he returned to normandy and sat in the exact spot where he dug his first foxhole just off the beach. a teenaged french girl saw him and asked if was ok. after he explained she went into a shop and returned to give him u.s./french flag lapel pin.

my dad was lucky to have survived a famous event. many others survived, or didn't, less heralded events. 6/6 belongs to them all.


This brought a tear to my eye. Thank you for sharing and men like your Father make me proud to be American.
 
Originally Posted by Direct_Rejection
The Greatest Generation.


And rightly named...
 
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