May 31, 2019
Hello ,
It's the stories of individual people that make history real in our imaginations.
Norm has kindly agreed to help us remember D-Day this year, which comes up next week, June 6th. It's a day that should live in our consciousness as an critically important military victory that came at a staggering human cost.
Below, Norm gives us a brief overview of D-Day through photos and captions, and the story of the young men from Bedford, Virginia, part of the first wave of the historic
invasion.
D-Day:
The Largest Seaborne Invasion in History
Below: A U.S. Coast Guard-manned flatbottom boat, better known as a Higgins boat, approaches Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. Allied Naval forces crossed the English channel overnight and soldiers started landing at 6.30am.
As the LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) approaches, smoke on the bluff-restricted shore most likely emanates from seagrass set on fire by naval shells. The assault phase of Operation Overlord was known as Operation Neptune. This operation
involved landing the troops on the beaches, as well as all other associated supporting operations required to establish a beachhead in France. Operation Neptune began on D Day and ended on June 30, 1944.
Below: “Into the Jaws of Death” is the description of this image taken by Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert Sargent of the United States Coast Guard. Taken at 7:40 on the morning of June 6, it is one of the most widely reproduced photographs of the D-Day landings. It depicts troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division departing their LCVP and wading through waist-deep water towards the “Easy Red” sector of Omaha Beach.
The battle-hardened U.S. 1st Infantry Division and the untested 29th Infantry Division, suffered around 2,000 killed or wounded in the invasion. Two-thirds of Company E, the soldiers seen in Sargent’s photograph, were among the
casualties.
Earlier, a wave of U.S. Eighth Air Force heavy bombers had not even scratched the German defenses, much less created the promised instant foxholes (bomb craters), on the 3.5-mile stretch of exposed, concave-curved beach—the 13,000 bombs dropped missed their target by 3 miles.
The soldiers advanced up Omaha Beach into 4 batteries of artillery, 18 antitank guns, 6 mortar pits, 35 rocket launcher sites, 8 concrete bunkers, 35 pillboxes, and 85 machine-gun nests.
A high casualty rate of officers and noncoms left many low-ranking soldiers leaderless and confused on the invasion beach. Some of these soldiers were given field promotions by process of elimination.
German forward units reported to headquarters that the invasion had been halted at the water’s edge, though by 12:30 p.m. there were 18,772 men on Omaha Beach with thousands more arriving each succeeding hour.
Among those soldiers in the first wave of the murderous assault on Omaha Beach were thirty-five young men from rural Beford, Virginia.
The men from Bedford had enlisted in the Virginia Army National Guard. When their unit was mobilized into the regular army the men were assigned to the untested U.S. 29th Infantry Division, Company A.
Only nineteen Bedford Boys survived as the first wave hit the beaches that dreadful day. Three lost their lives later in the campaign. Thirteen sons of Beford survived the war to come home to their small town after the war.
This is kind of personal story that helps us understand the war better, and that Norm shares on his website. Here he tells us how he the project started.
After thirty years as a history teacher and a technical writer, in retirement, freed of workplace demands, I chose to begin researching and writing on a subject that had long interested me: World War II.
My carrier aircraft designer father and his two brothers who served in the U.S. Army were part of that “greatest generation” who answered their country’s call and gave us the world we live in today.
Other people of that generation, in this country as elsewhere, lost their lives or survived, though millions were scarred mentally or physically by their wartime experience. Heroes, average Joes, victims, and villains—all these people had stories to tell us from the period—some still do. I decided I wanted to be a part in sharing them.
On my website, The Daily Chronicles of World War II, I strive to preserve the stories of those who lived through that watershed era. Every day of the year I share a different story from a different theater of war and year, stories heroic or tragic or both. Of course heroism and tragedy can commingle in the same narrative.
“People say the men who died on the beach were heroes. I think the heroes are the ones who came back and had to live with it for the rest of their lives.”
Veterans for the most part were able to put their wartime experiences behind them because that was what the times called for.
Below: In a photo taken June 8 on Omaha Beach assault troops of the 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 1st Infantry Division, having gained the comparative safety offered by the chalk cliff at their backs, take a breather before pushing
inland.
Two days earlier Col. George A. Taylor, commanding the 16th Infantry Regiment on Omaha Beach, encouraged his men, most of them traumatized crossing the killing ground, to move up on to the bluffs where the German positions were, stating perhaps the obvious: “Two kinds of people are staying on this beach—the dead and those who are going to die.”
Below: Ten LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks, known to their crew as “large stationary targets”) put badly needed tanks, heavy equipment, artillery, rifles, ammunition, and other cargo ashore at Omaha Beach at low tide on D+3. Barrage balloons over
the LSTs were meant to deny German aircraft low-level airspace.
Toward evening on D-Day itself the Omaha beachhead bustled with activity, having been reported safe for wheeled and tracked vehicles. Kitchens were set up and served beans and wieners and hash browns to the survivors of the nearly 40,000 men who
were landed there that day.
More than 4,100 landing craft and ships were deployed to Omaha and the other four assault beaches that stretched across a forty-mile front. By D+26 the vessels had delivered one million troops, 566,648 tons of supplies, and 171,532 vehicles.
Many people who lived through World War II waited until their senior years to tell their stories; sadly, most of them took their stories to their graves, having shared little if anything beyond telling at the most a few people.
Like Kershaw and other students of history, I desire to rescue as many stories of World War II as I can by discovering and recording them and then playing them back to a new audience on my website.
My twin goals are to inspire this generation and caution its members about their responsibility to preserve and honor these legacies. It’s this desire that drives and energizes me every day.
Thank you, Norm! I really appreciate the way you tell events day by day, including pieces from different perspectives and sources, all in one place. He includes maps and photos, videos and books, as well as succinct snippets about the major campaigns and battles of the war. Click here for a map and overview of Operation Overload, which went down in history as the D-Day invasion.
Book recommendations today from Sandy!
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, According to the New York Time Book Review, it's "a page turner… among the first novels to chronicle the AIDS epidemic from its initial outbreak to the present—among the
first to convey the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years as well as its course and repercussions..."
On a totally different note, Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glenda Vanderah, involves a young girl who claims she's a space alien. The protagonist, Jo, discovers her alone in the middle of the Illinois forest, barefoot, wearing only her pajamas. The little star girl calls herself Ursa and says she's from planet Hetrayeh.
One reviewer says "In this gorgeously stunning debut, a mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again." Sounds quirky, but deep.
Sandy picked up The Editor by Steve Rowley because she loved his previous book Lily and the Octopus. The Editor is about a write in New York
City in the 1990s who after years trying to make it as a writer, finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
She also recommends Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly. Thanks Sandy! I think we're all set with our summer reading!
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To find out more about my books, how I help students, teachers, librarians and writers visit my website at www.MaryCronkFarrell.com.
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