Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge D-Day - 64 years ago today

Just wanted to say thanks to those who climbed the cliffs of Normandy, or parachuted behind the lines.
You are NOT forgotten!!



Wendell

Long ago but let's not forget these or any of our brave warriors. Had an uncle that received a Bronze Star for what he did at the Battle of the Bulge later that year.

ditto. Good on all those boys. America's best in their time.

Good to know we still raise a few like em today.

Don't forget the Brits and Canadians who also fought their way ashore. The English speaking world rescuing freedom for Europe.

I did not forget them I was just speaking of our boys. Being the ever Nationalistic bastage that I am.

It was a helluva battle thats for sure. I bet ..hindsight being 20 20 that some of ours would have liked to have been assigned to "sword" as opposed to Omaha.

I still get chills when I think of those higgins boats sliding ever closer to Omaha under heavy indirect fire and having those kraut machine guns zeroing on the ramps as they came down.

We went camping in Normandy a couple of years ago (and I remembered the tentpoles Pony!).

We went to Omaha beach and the cemetary there.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010007.jpg

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010013.jpg

The British cemetary at Bayeaux.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010032.jpg

St Mer Eglise

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010045.jpg

It is quite chilling to see the number of headstones and the ages on those headstones.

Otherwise apart from the British American and Canadian soldiers who died there there are quite a lot of other graves from other countries too. Even German soldiers are buried at Bayeaux.

I always say that kids nowadays should be taken to war cemetaries just to show them what sacrifices have been made (and are currently being made) for them.

Yep! Sure was a good thing that the "Master Race" weren't quite as smart as they thought they were and were pretty much caught with their pants down. I'd hate to think of how worse the carnage on those beaches would have been if they had gotten wind of where and when Operation Overlord was to strike.

And so...Here's to those brave souls of the Allied Forces who helped vanquish those forces who attempted to obliterate the idea of freedom of thought, speech and personal beliefs, that storied day in 1944. May we never forget their sacrifices!

It's a good night to watch " Saving Private Ryan " , just try to get over the Hanks guy's ideology . Or if ya wanna make it a REAL longest night , load up the DVD with yer ammo box of " Band Of Brothers " DVD's . Even better .

I think it would be a good day for WGN to start reruns of Combat again.

If you're going to watch a movie on D-Day, pilgrim,
it better be 'The Longest Day'.

So, how many for having a few pints and blowing up a VW or Horch( Adolf's favorite car)?

My Grandad wasn't there - at this point in the war he was in Africa... less than a year later he was one of the first in to Bergen-Belsen. He won't talk about it.

Never forget.

Hey Stretchermonkey; Great Pics. It must have been an awsome feeling standing in that cemetery. What an amazing group of men they must have been. A lot of people in this country need to realize that there's no "CHEAP" way to achieve or keep our "FREEDOM".

World War II is such an important moment in mans history that i think it is something that should be studied by high school kids. As a kid i did not know much about the war, even though both my grandfathers fought, my grandmother served in the Womens RAF, and my grandmothers brother was a prisoner in a Japaneese POW camp. It was only ten years or so ago that i really started to read about the war and what the men (boys in some cases) went through to keep the free world free.

Incidently, as a book recomendation. I am currently reading 'Brothers in Battle - Best of Friends'. This is the stories of two paratroopers from the 101st Airbourne. William 'Wild Bill" Guarnere and Edward 'Babe' Heffron. These two men worked with Tom Hanks on the making of the HBO series A Band of Brothers. Their stories are written with such clarity, some of it is quite tear jerking.

http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Battle-Fr...9949&sr=1-1

Holy toledo I didn't know the pics would show up that big.

Anyway, for a bunch of other pics from Normandy, here's a link:
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e181/ssgrex/Normandy%20trip/

My father and me are not what you would call tight, but I always call on this day to say thanks for being there... to this day I have never heard a story about that day from him but he likes the fact that I call...god bless america

I wasn't sure if they left the parachute up there the whole time or not because I didn't ask.

Heres some more from St Mer Eglise.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010048.jpg

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010050.jpg

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm134/stretchermonkey_2008/P1010047.jpg

A good day to remember those who were there. Looked through the TV listings as you're usually guaranteed a good war film, but doesn't seem to be much on. Omaha was a mess (think it was omaha) The tide was out, meaning the boys had a long way to go from landing craft to cliffs. The boys who scaled the cliffs to find the gun battery had already gone must have been absolutely gutted to lose so many friends for some generals ****** up. I still can't believe that when shown a rope, headin up a cliff, with determined young men at the top, firing rifles, machine guns and lobbing grenades, that there were guys who just went and got on with it. Not sure I could! Thanks to them all. Raise a beer to all those who didn't make it.

Lets not forget that although the Americans showed up late for WW2, we couldn't have done it without them, an we'd all be speakin German and reporting our parents to the Gestapo fer bein anti Nazi.

When you have someone shooting at you and killing your friends, you don't really think about it. You just follow your first impulse, which is to make them stop.

Whilst in the spirit of national pride, here's my small contribution which has an interesting twist relating to the German/Soviet arena:

The following paragraphs are excerpts from a Telegraph (UK) article ...
___________________________________________________________________________

At the end of December in 1940, the victorious Greek army had not only repulsed the Italian invasion, but had gone on to push the Italian forces out of the southern one third of Albania completely. On December 28th, Mussolini had to acknowledge that his grandiose vision to show Hitler how Italy could easily conquer Greece was a complete failure and he asked for German military assistance. This amazing Greek victory over the Italians became known as The Epic of 1940 to the Greeks and to the rest of the world as the first defeat of the Axis powers that gave them reason to hope that the aggression could be halted.

The final battle of the German invasion of Greece was the airborne assault on the island of Crete. ... The German paratroopers suffered about 50% casualties (with almost 4,000 dead) out of 14,000 troops used in this final battle. So heavy were the losses that Hitler decided never to launch an airborne invasion again. General Kurt Student would later say, "Crete was the grave of the German parachutists". (My addition ... Thanks Mom!)

At the end of the war, the German officers on trial at Nuremberg had commented that if the invasion of Russia had taken place on schedule early in the spring of 1941, instead of at the end of June, they would have succeeded in capturing Moscow and conquering the Soviet Union before the winter of 1941, which proved to be the only thing capable of stopping the German advance. Field Marshall Keitel, who was Chief of Staff of the German Army, was very bitter when he said that "The unbelievable strong resistance of the Greeks delayed by two or more vital months the German attack against Russia; if we did not have this long delay, the outcome of the war would have been different in the eastern front and in the war in general, and others would have been accused and would be occupying this seat as defendants today”.

After the war there were 10% fewer Greeks alive than when the war started and the overall devastation of the country took years to recover from, but this small country showed the world at a time when it mattered the most that freedom is worth fighting for. The sacrifices made by the Greek nation ultimately changed the course of history and contributed in preventing the evils of Fascism and Nazism from dominating the world.
____________________________________________________________________________


The whole article:

Telegraph article.


We still celebrate the 28th of October as a public holiday - it is the day of 'NO' (the day in 1940 we said 'NO - eff off' when demanded to surrender to the Axis powers).

Don't forget the Poles. Military graveyards all over Europe are filled with them (to avoid the obvious cheap joke, I mean people from Poland !!). They're stubborn bas$*%rds too, thank God.
BTW..It's been suggested that the Battle of Britain may not have turned out quite so well without the Polish squadrons. That might have changed things a bit !!!

There were resistance fighters in all of the European countries. True, the French get the most press and that could well be a P.R. thing. But my Uncle, who was in Europe from D-Day until after the German surrender says (said) that they were real.

One of my high school buddy's dad was in the 82nd airborne, and took part in Operation Market Garden, jumping behind German Lines in The Netherlands.
He got caught in a tree and broke his leg and a few ribs. He was hanging by his parachute when he heard German sounding voices in the woods. Knowing it was Germans, and having lost his weapon, he prepared to die.
It turned out to be Dutch Resistance Fighters. They rescued him and got him back to England somehow.
He died in the early 80s, but his story was quite moving to hear him tell.
That also lead to him meeting my friend's mother, an army nurse.

Yes Bil no dought that small groups of French took up arms after the invasion. We've all seen the camera footage of Frenchmen sniping at retreating German troops in Paris.And shaving the heads of prostitutes.

But nothing like what happened elsewhere I did not mention the Warsaw Uprising.

Btw Polish Troops where also involved In Marketgarden.