Getbig.com: American Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure
Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on June 05, 2011, 03:32:20 PM
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
wow - crazy film when its in color
-
Much of the historical record motion pictures of World War II were shot on 16mm Kodachrome film stock...When they were transferred they were transfered to bw stock.
-
This was the leitmotif of the Allie's efforts in WWII.
-
We have yet to be kicked off a beach.
-
We have yet to be kicked off a beach.
I love Maiden. One of the best bands ever.
-
-
-
Here is some Warner's contribution to the Newsreel every US military member had to watch each week.
-
Here is some Warner's contribution to the Newsreel every US military member had to watch each week.
Seems so innocent compared to now.
-
Cool. Just got back from touring the Mighty Mo (again). That is one impressive piece of hardware.
-
The guy with the bag pipe was actually there. Steve Ambrose (RIP) detailed it in his book.
-
Cool. Just got back from touring the Mighty Mo (again). That is one impressive piece of hardware.
We have a lot of young people on this site probably clueless about D-Day.
-
-
We have a lot of young people on this site probably clueless about D-Day.
Yep.
-
The guy with the bag pipe was actually there. Steve Ambrose (RIP) detailed it in his book.
That was a good book.
-
Cool. Just got back from touring the Mighty Mo (again). That is one impressive piece of hardware.
Been there twice. It's neat standing on the spot where the Japanese signed the surrender.
-
Bump.
-
June 6, 2011
The Boys of Pointe du Hoc
By Ronald Reagan
(Note: The following are remarks delivered by President Ronald Reagan on June 6, 1984 commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Invastion of Normandy.)
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.
Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.
And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor."
I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking "we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day." Well everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.
Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, "Sorry, I'm a few minutes late," as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold; and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.
All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots' Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's "Matchbox Fleet," and you, the American Rangers.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: "Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do." Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.
It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II. Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We're bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we're with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value [valor] and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States.
-
Will D-Day be forgotten?
1:21 AM, Jun. 6, 2011 | 3Comments
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20110606/NEWS01/106060326/Will-D-Day-forgotten-?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|News
Public ceremonies in Rochester to mark D-Day are, it appears, a thing of the past.
Sixty-seven years ago today, armed forces of the United States, England, Canada and other allies invaded Normandy, France, by sea and air. The vast operation contributed mightily to the defeat of Germany in World War II.
For a time, D-Day veterans gathered annually at Rochester's Ontario Beach Park to remember their comrades and their accomplishments.
But last year there was no ceremony, and this year there was none scheduled. That era may be over, because so many World War II veterans are in failing health or have died.
"Almost all the D-Day guys are gone. I doubt there's more than a half-dozen left in the city who were actively involved," said Jack Foy, a WWII Army veteran who's been active in commemorations.
So how, if at all, should D-Day be commemorated now?
John Cipolla, a Greece resident who as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division jumped into occupied Normandy in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, said some sort of ceremony should continue.
"It's something that should not be forgotten," said Cipolla, now 89.
Cipolla also fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the bloody World War II engagement in the Ardennes forests of Belgium and Luxembourg in December 1944 and January 1945.
He and other Ardennes veterans erected a monument to that battle at Ontario Beach, and used that location to stage commemorations of both the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day.
Perhaps a D-Day monument could be built as well, Cipolla suggested.
Foy, a founder of the group that put up the Battle of the Bulge memorial, said all the World War II groups are fading out.
The Ardennes group officially disbanded 1½ years ago, and Foy said in a moving speech last week at the Ontario Beach monument that this would be the last day he would march in the Memorial Day parade.
"It's hard to focus on one day anymore," said Foy, 85, an Army veteran who now lives in Greece.
"A few months ago we were going to Pearl Harbor Day, and I think there's one guy left locally who was involved in Pearl Harbor."
He, too, wants to ensure the momentous events of World War II aren't forgotten. His solution: education.
"I wish the schools would do a little bit more, just in recognition," he said. "You don't have to make a big celebration of it, but do something to let the kids know."
SORR@DemocratandChronicle.com
________________________ ________________________ _
Most people care more about bieber, AI, DWTS, and other mindless bullshit. No wonder we have you know who you know where.
-
I have these hanging in the office and when clients come in its all they want to disuss atfirst as they are originals.
-
Ernie Pyle from Normandy D-Day June 6th 1944
The Indiana School of Journalism ^ | June 1944 | Ernie Pyle
A Pure Miracle
NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 - Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore.
By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of shoreline.
Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach.
That plus an intense, grim determination of work-weary men to get this chaotic beach organized and get all the vital supplies and the reinforcements moving more rapidly over it from the stacked-up ships standing in droves out to sea.
*
Now that it is over it seems to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all. For some of our units it was easy, but in this special sector where I am now our troops faced such odds that our getting ashore was like my whipping Joe Louis down to a pulp.
In this column I want to tell you what the opening of the second front in this one sector entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.
Ashore, facing us, were more enemy troops than we had in our assault waves. The advantages were all theirs, the disadvantages all ours. The Germans were dug into positions that they had been working on for months, although these were not yet all complete. A one-hundred-foot bluff a couple of hundred yards back from the beach had great concrete gun emplacements built right into the hilltop. These opened to the sides instead of to the front, thus making it very hard for naval fire from the sea to reach them. They could shoot parallel with the beach and cover every foot of it for miles with artillery fire.
Then they had hidden machine-gun nests on the forward slopes, with crossfire taking in every inch of the beach. These nests were connected by networks of trenches, so that the German gunners could move about without exposing themselves.
Throughout the length of the beach, running zigzag a couple of hundred yards back from the shoreline, was an immense V-shaped ditch fifteen feet deep. Nothing could cross it, not even men on foot, until fills had been made. And in other places at the far end of the beach, where the ground is flatter, they had great concrete walls. These were blasted by our naval gunfire or by explosives set by hand after we got ashore.
Our only exits from the beach were several swales or valleys, each about one hundred yards wide. The Germans made the most of these funnel-like traps, sowing them with buried mines. They contained, also, barbed-wire entanglements with mines attached, hidden ditches, and machine guns firing from the slopes.
This is what was on the shore. But our men had to go through a maze nearly as deadly as this before they even got ashore. Underwater obstacles were terrific. The Germans had whole fields of evil devices under the water to catch our boats. Even now, several days after the landing, we have cleared only channels through them and cannot yet approach the whole length of the beach with our ships. Even now some ship or boat hits one of these mines every day and is knocked out of commission.
The Germans had masses of those great six-pronged spiders, made of railroad iron and standing shoulder-high, just beneath the surface of the water for our landing craft to run into. They also had huge logs buried in the sand, pointing upward and outward, their tops just below the water. Attached to these logs were mines.
In addition to these obstacles they had floating mines offshore, land mines buried in the sand of the beach, and more mines in checkerboard rows in the tall grass beyond the sand. And the enemy had four men on shore for every three men we had approaching the shore.
And yet we got on.
*
Beach landings are planned to a schedule that is set far ahead of time. They all have to be timed, in order for everything to mesh and for the following waves of troops to be standing off the beach and ready to land at the right moment.
As the landings are planned, some elements of the assault force are to break through quickly, push on inland, and attack the most obvious enemy strong points. It is usually the plan for units to be inland, attacking gun positions from behind, within a matter of minutes after the first men hit the beach.
I have always been amazed at the speed called for in these plans. You’ll have schedules calling for engineers to land at H-hour plus two minutes, and service troops at H-hour plus thirty minutes, and even for press censors to land at H-hour plus seventy-five minutes. But in the attack on this special portion of the beach where I am - the worst we had, incidentally - the schedule didn’t hold.
Our men simply could not get past the beach. They were pinned down right on the water’s edge by an inhuman wall of fire from the bluff. Our first waves were on that beach for hours, instead of a few minutes, before they could begin working inland.
You can still see the foxholes they dug at the very edge of the water, in the sand and the small, jumbled rocks that form parts of the beach.
Medical corpsmen attended the wounded as best they could. Men were killed as they stepped out of landing craft. An officer whom I knew got a bullet through the head just as the door of his landing craft was let down. Some men were drowned.
The first crack in the beach defenses was finally accomplished by terrific and wonderful naval gunfire, which knocked out the big emplacements. They tell epic stories of destroyers that ran right up into shallow water and had it out point-blank with the big guns in those concrete emplacements ashore.
When the heavy fire stopped, our men were organized by their officers and pushed on inland, circling machine-gun nests and taking them from the rear.
As one officer said, the only way to take a beach is to face it and keep going. It is costly at first, but it’s the only way. If the men are pinned down on the beach, dug in and out of action, they might as well not be there at all. They hold up the waves behind them, and nothing is being gained.
Our men were pinned down for a while, but finally they stood up and went through, and so we took that beach and accomplished our landing. We did it with every advantage on the enemy’s side and every disadvantage on ours. In the light of a couple of days of retrospection, we sit and talk and call it a miracle that our men ever got on at all or were able to stay on.
Before long it will be permitted to name the units that did it. Then you will know to whom this glory should go. They suffered casualties. And yet if you take the entire beachhead assault, including other units that had a much easier time, our total casualties in driving this wedge into the continent of Europe were remarkably low - only a fraction, in fact, of what our commanders had been prepared to accept.
And these units that were so battered and went through such hell are still, right at this moment, pushing on inland without rest, their spirits high, their egotism in victory almost reaching the smart-alecky stage.
Their tails are up. "We’ve done it again," they say. They figure that the rest of the army isn’t needed at all. Which proves that, while their judgment in this regard is bad, they certainly have the spirit that wins battles and eventually wars.
Column 2
The Horrible Waste of War NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 - I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.
It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.
The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck emblem. Sure. Hell yes.
I walked for a mile and a half along the water’s edge of our many-miled invasion beach. You wanted to walk slowly, for the detail on that beach was infinite.
The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable. And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours.
*
For a mile out from the beach there were scores of tanks and trucks and boats that you could no longer see, for they were at the bottom of the water - swamped by overloading, or hit by shells, or sunk by mines. Most of their crews were lost.
You could see trucks tipped half over and swamped. You could see partly sunken barges, and the angled-up corners of jeeps, and small landing craft half submerged. And at low tide you could still see those vicious six-pronged iron snares that helped snag and wreck them.
On the beach itself, high and dry, were all kinds of wrecked vehicles. There were tanks that had only just made the beach before being knocked out. There were jeeps that had been burned to a dull gray. There were big derricks on caterpillar treads that didn’t quite make it. There were half-tracks carrying office equipment that had been made into a shambles by a single shell hit, their interiors still holding their useless equipage of smashed typewriters, telephones, office files.
There were LCT’s turned completely upside down, and lying on their backs, and how they got that way I don’t know. There were boats stacked on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors knocked off.
In this shoreline museum of carnage there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big stacks of thrown-away lifebelts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved.
In the water floated empty life rafts and soldiers’ packs and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges.
On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of steel matting and stacks of broken, rusting rifles.
On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it.
We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all.
*
A few hundred yards back on the beach is a high bluff. Up there we had a tent hospital, and a barbed-wire enclosure for prisoners of war. From up there you could see far up and down the beach, in a spectacular crow’s-nest view, and far out to sea.
And standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload.
Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity would move the hardest man.
As I stood up there I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns.
The prisoners too were looking out to sea - the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance.
They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom.
If only all Germans could have had the rich experience of standing on the bluff and looking out across the water and seeing what their compatriots saw.
Column 3
A Long Thin Line of Personal Anguish
NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 17, 1944 – In the preceding column we told about the D-day wreckage among our machines of war that were expended in taking one of the Normandy beaches.
But there is another and more human litter. It extends in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach. This is the strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.
Here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out – one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.
Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. Here are broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.
Here are torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits and jumbled heaps of lifebelts. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.
Soldiers carry strange things ashore with them. In every invasion you’ll find at least one soldier hitting the beach at H-hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach – this beach of first despair, then victory – is a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lies lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its rack, not a string broken.
Two of the most dominant items in the beach refuse are cigarets and writing paper. Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarets just before he started. Today these cartons by the thousand, water-soaked and spilled out, mark the line of our first savage blow.
Writing paper and air-mail envelopes come second. The boys had intended to do a lot of writing in France. Letters that would have filled those blank, abandoned pages.
Always there are dogs in every invasion. There is a dog still on the beach today, still pitifully looking for his masters.
He stays at the water’s edge, near a boat that lies twisted and half sunk at the water line. He barks appealingly to every soldier who approaches, trots eagerly along with him for a few feet, and then, sensing himself unwanted in all this haste, runs back to wait in vain for his own people at his own empty boat.
*
Over and around this long thin line of personal anguish, fresh men today are rushing vast supplies to keep our armies pushing on into France. Other squads of men pick amidst the wreckage to salvage ammunition and equipment that are still usable.
Men worked and slept on the beach for days before the last D-day victim was taken away for burial.
I stepped over the form of one youngster whom I thought dead. But when I looked down I saw he was only sleeping. He was very young, and very tired. He lay on one elbow, his hand suspended in the air about six inches from the ground. And in the palm of his hand he held a large, smooth rock.
I stood and looked at him a long time. He seemed in his sleep to hold that rock lovingly, as though it were his last link with a vanishing world. I have no idea at all why he went to sleep with the rock in his hand, or what kept him from dropping it once he was asleep. It was just one of those little things without explanation that a person remembers for a long time.
*
The strong, swirling tides of the Normandy coastline shift the contours of the sandy beach as they move in and out. They carry soldiers’ bodies out to sea, and later they return them. They cover the corpses of heroes with sand, and then in their whims they uncover them.
As I plowed out over the wet sand of the beach on that first day ashore, I walked around what seemed to be a couple of pieces of driftwood sticking out of the sand. But they weren’t driftwood.
They were a soldier’s two feet. He was completely covered by the shifting sands except for his feet. The toes of his GI shoes pointed toward the land he had come so far to see, and which he saw so briefly.
-
What's fucked up is losing those photos from Omaha beach. >:(
-
D-DAY - June 6, 1944: the greatest generation saved the world from the Nazis
dday dot org ^ | 6-5-11
D-Day history
D-Day: It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitler's dream of Nazi domination. Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men.
After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied Forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run, and crawl to the cliffs. Many of the first young men (most not yet 20 years old) entered the surf carrying eighty pounds of equipment. They faced over 200 yards of beach before reaching the first natural feature offering any protection. Blanketed by small-arms fire and bracketed by artillery, they found themselves in hell.
When it was over, the Allied Forces had suffered nearly 10,000 casualties; more than 4,000 were dead. Yet somehow, due to planning and preparation, and due to the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied Forces, Fortress Europe had been breached.
After you have finished reviewing this site, return to this page and click the links below to find out more about D-Day.
-
Bump.
-
The USA's coming out party. A great day. The day we started our rescue of the ungrateful Eurotrash.
Long live America!
-
The USA's coming out party. A great day. The day we started our rescue of the ungrateful Eurotrash.
Long live America!
The Doughboys in the Ardennes in WW1 might have a bone to pick.
-
The Doughboys in the Ardennes in WW1 might have a bone to pick.
I meant coming out as the world's #1 power. Not discrediting anything those who fought in WWI did.
-
I meant coming out as the world's #1 power. Not discrediting anything those who fought in WWI did.
It was a joke. We have to save their asses there also. Actually WW1 was really freaking brutal in ways not too often discussed.
-
I'm in favor of pulling all military presence in Europe. They're ungrateful scumbags and, as Libya has shown, they think our army is for use at their discretion. Time for those socialist dumps to spend some money on their own defense. Let's see how long their already indebted utopias survive then.
-
I'm in favor of pulling all military presence in Europe. They're ungrateful scumbags and, as Libya has shown, they think our army is for use at their discretion. Time for those socialist dumps to spend some money on their own defense. Let's see how long their already indebted utopias survive then.
X 5. Then we would ot have to listen to TA anymore.
-
X 5. Then we would not have to listen to TA anymore.
how do you figure that?
-
how do you figure that?
If euros had to spend money on their defense and not their welfare state, he coulnt than go on and on how we should be more like them.
-
If euros had to spend money on their defense and not their welfare state, he coulnt than go on and on how we should be more like them.
Yes he would; since when do facts matter to TA? That guy is going to pop in with BS whenever he feels like it and nothing is going to stop that... It's a nice wish but it ain't happening.
PS. Good thread, thanks for posting it...
-
One last item Angry White Dude... I'm glad you discovered how to make avatars after 50,000 posts, but could you please for the love of god change it back to the "Obama Sucks" av.... ;D
-
One last item 3333, I'm glad you discovered how to make avatars after 50,000 posts, but could you please for the love of god change it back to the "Obama Sucks" av.... ;D
Ozmo called me the al sharpton of get big so I thought I would humor him a bit and piss off a few others at the same time.
-
June 7, 2011
Ike, D-Day and the Age of Accountable Leaders
By Mark Salter
In this age of "mistakes were made" and "I can't say with certitude," a reminder of a time when accountability was an essential virtue of leadership arrived with the 67th anniversary of D-Day.
The day before the greatest armada ever assembled set sail for the coast of Normandy, Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower walked among the men of the 101st Airborne Division, who were boarding the aircraft that would drop them behind German lines in advance of the landings, where many of them would die. Cheerful, seemingly at ease, he asked their names and hometowns and what they had done for a living before the war. One young paratrooper stopped just as he was boarding his plane, turned around and snapped a salute to the supreme allied commander, who returned it smartly and flashed a smile. Then Eisenhower turned away and wept.
Allied casualties in the initial landings were expected to run as high as 75 percent. The odds of success were believed to be no better than the odds of failure. Winston Churchill had confessed his doubts to Eisenhower that the invasion would result in anything more than the destruction of the "flower" of English and American youth.
The invasion had been scheduled for June 5 but had to be postponed because of gale-force winds and dense cloud cover. At 4:15 in the morning of the 5th, after receiving a report from his meteorologist that there might be a brief window of bearable weather the following morning, and consulting his senior commanders -- who were divided -- Eisenhower paced the floor in silence, chain smoking, for five minutes before lifting his head and ordering, "OK, let's go." Until he had commanded the U.S. invasion of North Africa and, later, the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, "Ike" had never held a combat command.
The heavy burdens of his command were plainly evident in his behavior. Eisenhower drank 15 to 20 cups of coffee and smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. He had high blood pressure and migraines. He suffered from insomnia, so he often worked through the night.
Ike had a bad temper, but he never complained or gave the slightest impression he thought he deserved anyone's sympathy. He disliked flattery and had no use for the perquisites of high command. He had been given a mansion as his quarters, and rejected it for a modest two-bedroom house in a London suburb. Only to his wife did he write of his loneliness and doubts. "No man can always be right," he told her. "So the struggle is to do one's best."
His statement to his troops was broadcast at every embarkation point, ending confidently with an assurance of success:
"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
In his shirt pocket, he carried another statement. He had written it alone, and informed no one of its contents:
"Our landings . . . have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."
Some hours later, off Omaha Beach, the commander of the invasion force, Gen. Omar Bradley, looked through binoculars at what he believed was an ensuing disaster. Allied bombers had missed the enemy pillboxes and artillery, which were chewing up the first wave of American soldiers, who sought the only cover they could find -- sand mounds created by enemy shells. Then they got up and pushed ahead and scaled the cliffs and destroyed their country's enemies.
Eisenhower wouldn't need his statement claiming sole responsibility for a disaster that would have cost him his command and likely meant a return home in disgrace. An aide rescued it from the wastepaper basket Eisenhower had tossed it in.
On June 7, Ike crossed the English Channel to observe the follow-up landings. He asked the British skipper to bring the ship closer to the beach. The ship ran aground; knocking Eisenhower and several other senior officers to the deck. When he returned to his base, Eisenhower wrote the British sea lord, taking responsibility for the incident and asking that the skipper not be punished for following his orders.
As America begins its quadrennial election of a commander in chief amid war and economic hardship, can we expect to find among the aspirants someone who will hold himself or herself to such a strict standard of accountability? Probably not. Times have changed. We will ask for promises, and promises will be made. But we should ask every candidate one question before any other. Whose fault will it be if you don't keep your word -- or if your program does not succeed? If we don't insist on an unqualified answer, then the blame will be ours.
Mark Salter is the former chief of staff to Senator John McCain and was a senior adviser to the McCain for President campaign.
-
Ozmo called me the al sharpton of get big so I thought I would humor him a bit and piss off a few others at the same time.
;D
-
Bump for reminder forv TJE historically illiterate on this board.
-
:)
-
bump
-
Absolutely, great thread. What an operation, one that almost failed....thank god it didn't.
For World War II - Operation Overlord:June 6th 1944 and Operation Uranus: August 23, 1942 are two of the most important engagements.
-
Absolutely, great thread. What an operation, one that almost failed....thank god it didn't.
For World War II - Operation Overlord:June 6th 1944 and Operation Uranus: August 23, 1942 are two of the most important engagements.
The funny thing is that Patton had a dummy army that was a complete fabrication just to throw off the Nazi's. Fake tanks, fake soldiers, etc.
-
The funny thing is that Patton had a dummy army that was a complete fabrication just to throw off the Nazi's. Fake tanks, fake soldiers, etc.
Inflatable tanks, wooden equipment. Deception was a gigantic part of the operation. It would have failed if the Nazi's didn't buy it and were able to bring entire Army Groups to bear on the thin slivers of beach. In fact, that was actually the plan if things got desperate on the Eastern Front in 1942-43. Operation Sledgehammer (I think) would have been the suicide charge into France in a desperate attempt to relieve pressure on the Russians.
-
Inflatable tanks, wooden equipment. Deception was a gigantic part of the operation. It would have failed if the Nazi's didn't buy it and were able to bring entire Army Groups to bear on the thin slivers of beach. In fact, that was actually the plan if things got desperate on the Eastern Front in 1942-43. Operation Sledgehammer (I think) would have been the suicide charge into France in a desperate attempt to relieve pressure on the Russians.
They just could not believe Patton was not a principal part of D-Day. LOL. Owned.
-
-
Took serious guts to make the decision on Ike's part.
-
Enjoy - this was a great film.
-
Teaching With Documents:
Message Drafted by General Eisenhower in Case the D-Day Invasion Failed and Photographs Taken on D-Day
Background
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were responsible for leading their nations to victory and jointly planned strategies for the cooperation and eventual success of the Allied armed forces. Roosevelt and Churchill had already agreed early in the war that Germany must be stopped first if success was to be attained in the Pacific. They were repeatedly urged by Stalin to open a "second front" that would alleviate the enormous pressure that Germany's military was exerting on Russia. Large amounts of Soviet territory had been seized by the Germans, and the Soviet population had suffered terrible casualties from the relentless drive towards Moscow. Roosevelt and Churchill promised to invade Europe, but they could not deliver on their promise until many hurdles were overcome.
Initially, the United States had far too few soldiers in England for the Allies to mount a successful cross-channel operation. Additionally, invading Europe from more than one point would make it harder for Hitler to resupply and reinforce his divisions. In July 1942 Churchill and Roosevelt decided on the goal of occupying North Africa as a springboard to a European invasion from the south. In November American and British forces under the command of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed at three ports in French Morocco and Algeria. This surprise seizure of Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers came less than a week after the decisive British victory at El Alamein. The stage was set for the expulsion of the Germans from Tunisia in May 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy later that summer, and the main assault on France the following year.
Because of this success, Eisenhower was named commander of all Allied forces in Europe in 1943. When in February 1944 he was ordered to invade the continent, planning for "Operation Overlord" had been under way for about a year. Hundreds of thousands of troops from the United States, Great Britain, France,Canada, and other nations were assembled in southern England and intensively trained for the complicated amphibious action against Normandy. In addition to the troops, supplies, ships, and planes were also gathered. One photograph featured with this lesson (Document 2) shows some of the equipment that was stockpiled in this manner. Countless details about weather, topography, and the German forces in France had to be learned before Overlord could be launched in 1944.
General Eisenhower's experience and the Allied troops' preparations were finally put to the test on the morning of June 6, 1944. An invasion force of 4,000 ships, 11,000 planes, and nearly three million soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors was assembled in England for the assault. Eisenhower's doubts about success in the face of a highly-defended and well-prepared enemy led him to consider what would happen if the invasion of Normandy failed. If the Allies did not secure a strong foothold on D-Day, they would be ordered into a full retreat, and he would be forced to make public the message he drafted for such an occasion (Document 1).
As the attack began, Allied troops did confront formidable obstacles. Germany had thousands of soldiers dug into bunkers, defended by artillery, mines, tangled barbed wire, machine guns, and other hazards to prevent landing craft from coming ashore. Document 3 featured with this lesson shows some of the ferocity of the attack they faced. About 4,900 U.S. troops were killed on D-Day, but by the end of the day 155,000 Allied troops were ashore and in control of 80 square miles of the French coast. Eisenhower's letter was not needed, because D-Day was a success, opening Europe to the Allies and a German surrender less than a year later.
Resources
Ambrose, Stephen E. D-Day, June 6, 1944. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Bliven, Bruce, Jr. The Story of D-Day. New York: Random House, 1956.
Eisenhower, David. Eisenhower at War 1943-1945. New York: Random House,1986.
Leckie, Robert. The Wars of America Vol. II. New York: Harper-Perennial,1992.
Sulzberger, C.L. The American Heritage Picture History of World War II. AmericanHeritage Publishing Co., 1966.
Thompson, R.W. D-Day: Spearhead of Invasion. New York: Ballantine Books, 1977.
-
The Boys of Pointe du Hoc
By Ronald Reagan
(Note: The following are remarks delivered by President Ronald Reagan on June 6, 1984 commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Invastion of Normandy.)
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
<script language='Javascript1.1' SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/N6296.8427.TRIBALFUSION/B6681439.2;abr=!ie;sz=300x250;pc=[TPAS_ID];click=http://a.tribalfusion.com/h.click/aHmOBZcRUJNXTZbq4Ebh4E70nErG1FBdWHfUomrKpG3noW3D5E3h2dAs56BEprYKYVrPYcFY1VBwnEf43rMRWbvCUmYTRTYQPVZboQdJr0WvmWmfM4sv5YbZbJV6io4mUbQPMF2WBm1WYZand2w5P3Y5VU7VcUjWsb7P6nwUt3VTrJ55b2DgFJy9I/;ord=25569785?"> </script> <NOscript> <A HREF="http://a.tribalfusion.com/h.click/aHmOBZcRUJNXTZbq4Ebh4E70nErG1FBdWHfUomrKpG3noW3D5E3h2dAs56BEprYKYVrPYcFY1VBwnEf43rMRWbvCUmYTRTYQPVZboQdJr0WvmWmfM4sv5YbZbJV6io4mUbQPMF2WBm1WYZand2w5P3Y5VU7VcUjWsb7P6nwUt3VTrJ55b2DgFJy9I/http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N6296.8427.TRIBALFUSION/B6681439.2;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;pc=[TPAS_ID];ord=25569785?"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N6296.8427.TRIBALFUSION/B6681439.2;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=300x250;pc=[TPAS_ID];ord=25569785?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 ALT="Advertisement"></A> </NOscript>
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.
Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.
And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor."
I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking "we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day." Well everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.
Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, "Sorry, I'm a few minutes late," as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.
There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold; and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.
All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots' Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's "Matchbox Fleet," and you, the American Rangers.
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: "Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do." Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.
In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.
It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II. Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.
We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We're bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we're with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value [valor] and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
-
No teleprompter needed.
-
D-Day medic still haunted by 'the boy on the beach'
By Joshua Rhett Miller
Published June 06, 2012
FoxNews.com
Seen here at a 2009 event honoring New Jersey veterans, Bernard Friedenberg, a 90-year-old World War II medic who took part in the D-Day invasion, visited a local school in Atlantic City on Tuesday to commemorate its 68th anniversary, sharing his experiences with students who hung on his every word. But he will otherwise not mark the day in which he “lost so many friends,” he said. (YouTube)
The passage of 68 years has not dimmed Army medic Bernard Friedenberg's memory of "the boy on the beach."
Friedenberg was just 22 when he took part in the storied invasion of Normandy, hitting Omaha Beach with the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, or “The Big Red One” on June 6, 1944. Moments after reaching the heavily-fortified French coastline, and as Nazi artillery rained down from the cliffs above, Friedenberg found a young, mortally-wounded soldier gasping his last breaths.
“He was shot through the chest and as he would breathe, the air would blow out of his chest, so I had to seal off the wound,” Friedenberg told FoxNews.com. “At the same time, I was hearing ‘medic, medic,’ from other soldiers. It was a massacre, an absolute massacre, and I was in the middle of it.”
Faced with the dilemma of continuing to treat the wounded soldier or turning to others, Friedenberg gave the soldier morphine and moved on. It’s a decision that still haunts the 90-year-old New Jersey man long after the invasion that allowed the Allies to gain a foothold in Normandy and begin the march across Europe to defeat Adolf Hitler.
“It was really rough,” he said. “I have some terrible memories. I was patching up guys right and left, on all sides of me.”
More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft took part in the D-Day invasion, which Gen. Dwight Eisenhower called a crusade that necessitated “nothing less than full victory.” By day’s end, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded. But more than 100,000 soldiers survived, including Friedenberg, who would eventually trek through England, Algeria, Tunisia, Belgium, Germany and Czechoslovakia, earning two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars and two Silver Stars along the way.
"I lost so many friends on that day. God only knows how I came through without getting hit. But I did get through."
- WWII medic Bernard Friedenberg
Friedenberg, of Margate, N.J., visited a local school in Atlantic City on Tuesday to commemorate the anniversary, sharing his experiences with students who hung on his every word.
“The day is very significant to me,” he continued. “I lost so many friends on that day. God only knows how I came through without getting hit. But I did get through.”
Friedenberg, as a way of treating his post-traumatic stress disorder — "they called it 'shellshock' in those days" — chronicled his experiences as a near-sighted soldier who nearly wasn’t accepted into the service to his return to Normandy on his 80th birthday. The book, “Of Being Numerous: World War II As I Saw It,” published by Stockon College’s Holocaust Resource Center, is now mandatory reading at area college courses on the war, he said.
Despite the book’s near-universal praise for its candor and humor, Friedenberg does not enjoy recounting his war stories.
“He still gets nightmares, and he thinks back to the men he couldn’t save,” Friedenberg’s wife, Phyllis, told FoxNews.com.
“I have scars on my body, and scars in my head as well,” he said. “They will never heal.”
Other soldiers interviewed by FoxNews.com who took part in the D-Day invasion, including Rufus Broadaway, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, recall the day in a much different light.
“I had forgotten that [today] is D-Day,” Broadaway told FoxNews.com when reached in Gainesville, Fla. “We don’t have any plans but to have our flag on our lawn.”
Sixty-eight years ago today, Broadaway leaped from his "hit" plane from the lowest altitude he had ever jumped — maybe 300 feet, he said — and landed on an apple tree.
“The roadway was covered with debris, a lot of dead bodies, injured soldiers, and soldiers so petrified that they couldn’t even move,” Broadaway said. “The air was full of shots and shells. But my captain had us going along. It was a miracle that we got across that causeway. By that time, the Germans had retreated.
“I wouldn’t take anything back,” Broadaway continued. “I will forever be proud of it and hold that experience close. I’m so thankful that I was a part of it.”
FoxNews.com's Maegan Vazquez contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/06/06/68-years-later-wwii-medic-paratrooper-recount-d-day-invasion/#ixzz1x2YHdwyU
-
Bump
-
Ok scumbags, one last bump before I bump this next year. Keep obsessed w Kim k , jersey shore, etc and avoid your history.
-
The greatest generation.
-
The greatest generation.
By far. notice that disgusting communist leech said nothing today about D Day?
-
By far. notice that disgusting communist leech said nothing today about D Day?
He was too busy releasing a campaign video with Marc Anthony.
-
He was too busy releasing a campaign video with Marc Anthony.
he fact that democrats are not speaking out on this daily fail machine is telling. at least Bill Clinton is trying to send a message. and he is. however the rest of TJE blind drones are to blind to see the wreckage being done.
-
http://cdn.pjmedia.com/tatler/files/2012/06/obama-sched-june62012.jpg
This is why I fucking hate Obama like the plague as well as every disgusting communist piece of shit. Voting for him.
he is not American. He is a communist traitor and a neo-terrorist punk.
-
bump
-
-
-
Isn't it a little bit ironic given your hatred of "communists" that it was the communists who won the war in Europe? The 150K Allied troops that landed in France in '44 were small potatoes compared to the tens of millions of Russians who had been fighting and dying on the Eastern Front since '40. The Western Front was a sideshow relative to what had been going on in the east.
The communists in Russia used their people as cannon fodder worse than anything - they sent people into battle wo weapons just to pick up weapons of the dead of men mowed down in front of them. It was a sheer game of numbers and we helped supply Russia w materials for the tanks etc
-
The communists in Russia used their people as cannon fodder worse than anything - they sent people into battle wo weapons just to pick up weapons of the dead of men mowed down in front of them. It was a sheer game of numbers and we helped supply Russia w materials for the tanks etc
[/
It's true that the Russians suffered heavy casualties (I'd like to see how we'd have handled the onslaught of the 100 best German divisions) but the Russians also made tremendous gains in technology. At the end of the war, there was arguably no better heavy tank than the Russian one. The only one that would have come close would be the German one. US designs didn't compare. The Russians also designed some of the best rocket technology and their infantryman's rifle was pretty good as well (it was the Russians who designed the AK-47 later on). If you think the Russians won WWII only because of "numbers" you don't know much about it.
The Russian tanks were good - but don't forget that we greatly hampered the ability of Germany to pump out the Tigers and newer tanks w the bombing runs on the factories etc.
And lets not forget the Russian winter.
Hitler invading Russia was no doubt probably his biggest mistake of the war considering the inability to re-stock the soldiers at the front lines as the winter came on .
-
8)
-
The Germans never ran out of tanks. They ran out of men and oil.
Americans like to overplay the role they played in the war in Europe, but Europeans know what's up. Had the Russians capitulated in '40 the Allies would have negotiated a peace with Germany. No way the US would have taken the casualties necessary to defeat the Germans. Americans don't like to suffer. So instead of a cold war with Stalin we would have it with Hitler.
Many of the Russian casualities were needless as those in power had zero regard for losses on the front.
-
Interesting. I'm sure you know what number of casualties would have been acceptable against a 100 German divisions comprised of a couple million men that were taking no prisoners. Fortunately, the US and its many internet warriors has never experienced anything comparable to that.
On another note, Stalin never left his desk in the desk in the Kremlin when the Germans were only miles away. He is one of history's great Alphas.
Stalin: "The death of one man is a tradgedy - the death of millions is a statistic"
-
The Germans never ran out of tanks. They ran out of men and oil.
Americans like to overplay the role they played in the war in Europe, but Europeans know what's up. Had the Russians capitulated in '40 the Allies would have negotiated a peace with Germany. No way the US would have taken the casualties necessary to defeat the Germans. Americans don't like to suffer. So instead of a cold war with Stalin we would have it with Hitler.
As a Tanker I can tell you that the American Army has a secret fasination with the German war machine. I have most of the German main armor as either models or large diecast "toys". I have a massive king tiger that dominates my man cave along with a bunch of the large historical German tank aces and other historical figures from the Dragon 9 inch series. I've got books on the SS and I guess would easily be mistaken for a neo nazi...if my british airborne stuff want all over the place.
That said. German armor for themost part was great but wasn't mass produced like the T34. Plus with our bombing mentioned above, things would have taken longer for the Russians. No second front and top line German formations would have been grinding russian armor in the east instead of facing us in the bocage.
-
http://www.blackfive.net/
check out the above link...a buddy is currenty at the ceremonies covering things and has a bunch of great blog posts. We're not supporting like we have in the past. The Brits and everybody else is there as usual.
-
Canada did more for WW2 than America. I'll be remembering that.
-
Lol how is that?
-
Canada did more for WW2 than America. I'll be remembering that.
Says the guy with a "team dime piece tranny" .....how are the NHL playoffs working out for Canada.
-
Says the guy with a "team dime piece tranny" .....how are the NHL playoffs working out for Canada.
America got all the big bucks, you buy all the good players off.
-
The leafs gave the bruins a hell of alot more trouble then Sidney the bitch and the rest of that team.
-
Lol how is that?
We secured sea lines to Britannia, in addition to financial loans and fighter pilot training, making them able to withstand the barrage from Hitler when they were fighting the good fight all by themselves. Not to mention several pivotal battles that Canadians lead and finished.
We joined from day one, for moral reasons not like america waiting on the sidelines like a snake.
-
Yeah but we supplied alot of pilots, cash and equipment before we got involved. Plus Canada was a commonwealth nation...no way they'd stay on the sidelines. We had alot of different political shit going on here
-
As a Tanker I can tell you that the American Army has a secret fasination with the German war machine. I have most of the German main armor as either models or large diecast "toys". I have a massive king tiger that dominates my man cave along with a bunch of the large historical German tank aces and other historical figures from the Dragon 9 inch series. I've got books on the SS and I guess would easily be mistaken for a neo nazi...if my british airborne stuff want all over the place.
That said. German armor for themost part was great but wasn't mass produced like the T34. Plus with our bombing mentioned above, things would have taken longer for the Russians. No second front and top line German formations would have been grinding russian armor in the east instead of facing us in the bocage.
Cool. Post a pic.
-
We secured sea lines to Britannia, in addition to financial loans and fighter pilot training, making them able to withstand the barrage from Hitler when they were fighting the good fight all by themselves. Not to mention several pivotal battles that Canadians lead and finished.
We joined from day one, for moral reasons not like america waiting on the sidelines like a snake.
and that was more than what America did? ::) lol troll much?
-
Cool. Post a pic.
I'll be accused of being a neo nazi. I bought one figure that was marked as just a generic Gestpo officer and it turned out it was Adolph Eichmann. I've got pretty much all the general staff.....and 2 versions of Rommel. I've also got all or most of the British airborne figures from Arnhem through the Falklands including Connery's character from "A bridge to Far". Dragon and some of the other companies put out figures every couple of months. My wife accuses me of playing with dolls but I've got figures that went from $65 to $300 in a year. They share space with my Pats stuff. I think its important that everybody have a man cave to retreat to.
-
I'll be accused of being a neo nazi. I bought one figure that was marked as just a generic Gestpo officer and it turned out it was Adolph Eichmann. I've got pretty much all the general staff.....and 2 versions of Rommel. I've also got all or most of the British airborne figures from Arnhem through the Falklands including Connery's character from "A bridge to Far". Dragon and some of the other companies put out figures every couple of months. My wife accuses me of playing with dolls but I've got figures that went from $65 to $300 in a year. They share space with my Pats stuff. I think its important that everybody have a man cave to retreat to.
lol if you aren't already. I love German WW2 stuff two, although no where near the collection you have. All i have is scale models of a King Tiger, Tiger 1 and a Panther. I used to have a red Nazi arm band and Nazi road atlas from 1935, but they "magically" disappeared in my divorce lol. I am sure you have "Tigers in Combat, Panzer Tactics, and Combat history of Tiger tank battalion 503, all Stackpole books.
-
I've got alot of the Gordon Williamson books on the SS. I stopped buying the models and went to the large diecast. There was a huge hobby shop near FT Knox that had tons so I was able to build a collection over time. The models don't move well..I've lost tons over the last 15 years.
-
We secured sea lines to Britannia, in addition to financial loans and fighter pilot training, making them able to withstand the barrage from Hitler when they were fighting the good fight all by themselves. Not to mention several pivotal battles that Canadians lead and finished.
We joined from day one, for moral reasons not like america waiting on the sidelines like a snake.
America joined because Japan sneak attacked us, and Germany declared war five days later. Plus, the lend-lease act the prior year, we helped Britain more than you're giving credit. Read a book man.
-
I'll be accused of being a neo nazi. I bought one figure that was marked as just a generic Gestpo officer and it turned out it was Adolph Eichmann. I've got pretty much all the general staff.....and 2 versions of Rommel. I've also got all or most of the British airborne figures from Arnhem through the Falklands including Connery's character from "A bridge to Far". Dragon and some of the other companies put out figures every couple of months. My wife accuses me of playing with dolls but I've got figures that went from $65 to $300 in a year. They share space with my Pats stuff. I think its important that everybody have a man cave to retreat to.
The last line is so true.
And dont sweat the neo-nazi thing. One of my friends have a similar collection never thought of him as a neo-nazi. But i know what you mean people can be pretty judgemental at times.
-
:) ;)
-
:) ;)
Who is that old drunk?
-
One of our better presidents since JFK
-
Who is that old drunk?
The best president in the last 48 years. After him everyone that has sat in the White House have been utter garbage. Obama being the biggest pile of dung.
-
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/07/obama-fails-to-commemorate-dday-n1615206
Obama has failed to say anything about D-Day in 3 years. Typical communist keyan foreigner thug pos
-
One of our better presidents since JFK
I like Reagan but imagine if Obama had done this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair
-
I like Reagan but imagine if Obama had done this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Contra_affair
Obama has done worse
-
Obama has done worse
Grow a pair.
Obama makes Reagan look weak on foreign policy.
-
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/07/obamas-non-commemoration-of-d-day-is-inexcusable
FUCK OBAMA