80 years ago today Allied forces hit theGerman occupied beach at Normany, France. Of those thousands of soldiers 4,414 paid the ultimate sacrifice just on June 6 1944 for our Country and our freedoms. In total D Day combat over 73,000 Allied troops lost their lives and over 150,000 were wounded. Many of those wounded lost arms, legs, sight and they all bore the mental scars from seeing their fellow soldiers cut down by the heavily fortified and entrenched German forces. Most of the soldiers that survived had survivors guilt. Why not me? Many lost over 90% of the soldiers in their platoon and Company. They literally had to storm the beach and fight through a hailstorm of bullets and morters. The Germans had the entire beach covered with interlocking fields of fire with numerous mortars, pill boxes and concrete bunkers. The Allied troops had to fight for every inch of the beach. If they didn’t take the beach they had nowhere to retreat to.
Today I also remember my Grandfather. He was a part of the D Day invasion. He wasn’t on the beach but he was in a B17 flying missions over Normandy everyday through the D Day invasion. They had to fly through heavy anti aircraft fire and heavy flack bombing the German targets identified by the Allied forces. They also had to contend with German Messerschmitt fighter aircraft by themselves because their fighter escort didn’t have sufficient fuel to escort the bombers all the way from England to Normany and back to England. My Grandfather said that many times they might loose up to half of the B17 that were flying the mission on any particular day. Most bomber crews didn’t survive the 35 missions that they had to fly before they rotated home. My Grandfather was 94 years old when he passed away from a massive heart attack. He passed on June 26, 2014. It was just passed the 70th anniversary of D Day. He was active in the VFW. H e went back to England and France several times for his bomber group reunion. Towards the end he quit going to the reunions. He said it hurt too much every reunion to see how many friends and comrades that had passed away. I have a picture that is in my gun room just a few weeks before he passed away with my son, my Grandfather and myself. Three generations of my family are in that picture. That day we had 5 generations of my family present. Today most of them are now gone. I also have a shadow box with the flag that draped over his casket. It was presented to my Mother from the officer of the Honor Guard. I have a notebook documenting all of his mission reports. I have it stored in my footlocker with all of my military items. The footlocker is stored in my attic. I was able to find a part of one of his missions fron June 14, 1944.
You do. They didn’t just do it once either. They did have German soldiers shooting down at them once the Germans realized what was happening. The howitzers however that they were to take out weren’t there. If I remember correctly there were 4 or 5 actual beaches that was stormed on D Day. Many people don’t know that. Omaha beach is the beach most people know about. The heaviest fighting was on Omaha beach.
I remember them finding 6 of the 155mm ?after being pounded by the Navy.
Thus the reason for the climb was to take out the weapons firing out into the incoming troops and those on the beach.
The Germans shot and killed 1 Rangers.
** Guess I’m getting ready to do some research on this.
Now my memory is probably about as good as your’s @1911
You may be right and I am mixing up my beaches. One of the raids that occured before the actual start of D Day was to take out the Howitzers that had sufficient range to take out the transport ships that contained the Higgins boats and the invading Allied soldiers. If they weren’t taken out we would have had massive casualties before anyone got to the beach. I don’t trust my mind anymore. Long Covid brain doesn’t function as well as it used to. When they got to where the howitzers were supposed to be they had been moved because the ploy to make the German high command think that they weren’t attacking there so the Germans moved the howitzers to reinforce another location where they thought that we would attack.
Yes sir the Germans moved the 155s 2 days before the assault before the landing because they were getting pounded.
Our guys found 5 of the 6 later on.
** ( I just reread parts of this) **
It really is pretty cool that they had fake radio traffic that they knew that the Germans would intercept. They had all kinds of fake reports, an inflatable army of tanks and trucks just to throw the Germans off and it worked perfectly. I thought that the Germans had moved them before D Day to the other location that they were making the Germans think that we were going to land an invasion force. I don’t remember the name of the other location now.
No doubt that I’ve probably run all of this together in my mind and co mingled different parts and missions. I’m sure.
Thank you for your family’s service.
Hey I really don’t trust everything that I think that I know anymore. I just can’t process and remember things that was so easy for me before. This really bothers me more than anything else Covid did to me. Your memories make up who you are. Without those memories you are no longer the person that you used to be.
I am the exact same way. I have over 900 books stored on my phone that I would read anytime that I had available. Now I can’t remember songs, books, the end of movies just after a day or so. My reading comprehension used to be off of the charts. I have always done very well when tested on it. Now movies and reading isn’t as enjoyable as it was. I used to get the thickest books that I could find and I would get so engrossed in reading that time for me stopped. I would read for long hours and it never seemed that long to me. I have done 12 and 16 hours of reading when I was really enjoying what I was reading.
Thank you for all that you have done.