On this day in 1944, nearly 160,000 American, Canadian and British troops stormed five beaches in Normandy, Northern France, by sea and by air. It was a bold (and very dangerous) move to establish an Allied foothold in France from which the Nazis could be driven out of the country (and then the rest of Western Europe). These landings involved superhuman bravery on the part of these frightened young men—the first waves of whom were likely to become canon fodder for the Nazis, who were perched on (and shooting from) elevated positions just above the flat and open beaches. And, yet, the landings at Normandy succeeded and became a significant turning point in the Allied effort to save Democracy.
Counting casualties in war can be difficult. Counting the injured and the dead is fairly straightforward. But some men (out of 160,000) will inadvertently go missing. Perhaps some fell into the sea, never to be recovered? Perhaps others were taken prisoner? Perhaps a few ran away? The Allied forces recorded 4,414 dead during the storming (2,501 of them Americans). Germany lost between 4,000 and 9,000. The greatest losses were at Omaha and Utah beaches. Imagine the bravery of these young men, standing in the amphibious landing craft, waiting for the front door to fall forward—at which point they would become sitting ducks on a wide and sandy plain.
Last week I saw the terrific new film, Pressure. The movie takes us behind the scenes, into the war rooms where General Eisenhower and Allied brass are planning the D-Day invasion—in particular, trying to decide when the weather might permit a successful landing. The top brass and their American meteorologist want to land on Monday 5 June. Our hero, the Scottish meteorologist, Captain James Stagg, disagrees. He anticipates a storm on Monday which would devastate the attack. Instead, he identifies a small window of acceptable weather the next day, 6 June. It's an excellent film. If you're interested, here's the TRAILER.
Servicemen have described warfare as "long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." In the days before "electronic preoccupation," soldiers, sailors and airmen had developed classic folk crafts with which they could keep themselves occupied during those long stretches of tedium. Some old time sailors made scrimshaw. Other servicemen made "trench art"—that is, clever and decorative objects fashioned out of the spare materials on-hand (in this case, empty artillery shells). The trench art ashtray, shown above, was fashioned from a bronze artillery shell. The rearing goat, at top, may represent the Navy (which has long adopted the creature as their mascot). It could also be the mascot or symbol of another particular unit (like "Harvey," the mascot of the 164th Infantry Regiment).
Click on the photo above to learn more about this handsome, historic piece.
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