So, what can I add to the countless books and films that have already been produced about the Normandy Landings?
I’m not a military historian. There are people who I’m sure could tell you what Eisenhower had for breakfast on the morning of June 6th 1944 or that Tom Hanks had the wrong boot laces in Saving Private Ryan. I’m not one of them.
All I can give you is my reaction to being there plus a few bits of historical trivia.
Standing on Omaha Beach on a beautiful day in late May it’s hard to really grasp what took place there. It’s a nice day for a walk on the beach. And that’s what it is today, a beach. I have to remind myself that something very important happened there, something big.
A lot of people died here. Over 4,000 Allied troops lost their lives on the first day. As did 3,000 French civilians.
What did it feel like to be one of those men in the landing craft? Knowing that your number was probably up? To pilot a C-47 and watch every fourth plane in your squadron shot down? To be a German defender, huddled in your bunker, knowing you won’t be able to stop the coming onslaught? A French civilian knowing your hour of liberation is at hand, but you might not live to see it?
I know raw, gut-clenching fear and I know there was a lot of it that day.
Better writers than I have extensively covered the history of the D-Day landings so I’m going to just hit the highlights.
An extensive, and highly successful, deception campaign led the Germans to believe that the landings would take place at Calais. That would seem to be the logical place since that’s the shortest distance across the Channel.
Hitler, always having to be the smartest guy in the room, fell for it. By the time the Germans could react, we were there.
“All warfare is deception” — Sun Tzu
While our bombing didn’t do much to the actual defenses at Normandy it did make it difficult for the Germans to move reinforcements there. The bombers did a lot of damage to the French transportation network, as did sabotage by the French resistance.
The Allies had air supremacy over the Normandy beaches. That’s why you see the prominent “invasion stripes” on so many WWII aircraft. Friendly fire was a greater danger than the Luftwaffe at that point.
I read somewhere that the British actually stopped trying to kill Hitler later in the war when they realized he was doing more harm than help to the German war effort. I can’t confirm that so take it for what it’s worth. Makes sense though. Knock off Hitler and someone who actually knew what he was doing might take over.
It’s been said many times, but armchair generals talk tactics and real generals talk logistics. To assemble 1,200 aircraft, 5,000 vessels and 160,000 troops in complete secrecy was both a triumph of logistics as well as operational security. All this had to be coordinated with American, British and Canadian forces plus the French resistance.
Historians tend to focus on weapons like tanks, warships and fighter planes, probably because they’re cool.
Eisenhower credited three less glamorous inventions as instrumental in winning the war: the Jeep, the Higgins Boat (landing craft) and the C-47 (Douglas DC-3).
Once the beachhead was established we had over two million troops in France by the end of August. One thing the military is really good at is moving large amounts of people and material.
So much in the military comes down to luck of the draw. If you were assigned to the first wave of landing craft on D-Day it just wasn’t your day. I can imagine all you could do is clutch your rifle and hope that you don’t end up trying to occupy the same space as a bullet.
I know the term “Greatest Generation” gets used a lot, but these were ordinary people in extraordinary times. I’m sure most of these guys would have rather been home building Chevys and making little baby-boomers - not crashing through the waves in a metal box waiting to get machine-gunned.
War is scary. People try to kill you. Everyone knows they’re going to die someday, but it’s another thing altogether when you think you’ve got your ticket. Those guys in the landing craft and the C-47s had to be scared sh*tless. But they got in and went anyway.
That to me is greatness.
To see it properly would probably take several days. The half day we spent there was barely enough time to skim the surface. We toured one of the museums, of which there are several. These pictures are from the Memorial Museum of Omaha Beach.
I have no idea what these pictures were. The captions are all in French and they appear to show French women happily fraternizing with American GI’s.
I really don’t know what to make of this. Anyone know what these are?
I have trouble looking at stuff like this, because I figure some guy probably died wearing that helmet.
Nazi uniforms. Those were the bad guys, by the way.
These next pictures are from the Overlord Museum, which we didn’t go into. My father was in armor so I had to stop and get him some tank pictures.
This is an odd vehicle. It looks like a tank, but it isn’t. Technically it’s a “tank destroyer”.
Time to go off on a tangent because I’m a bit of an armor geek.
I’m sure by now most of you know that the M-4 Sherman tank wasn’t very good when it went up against the German heavy tanks like the Tiger and Panther. The Sherman, however, was really meant to support the infantry. The job of stopping German armor was to be done by dedicated tank destroyers.
An American tank destroyer had an open turret, which allowed it to carry a more powerful gun and reload faster than a tank. Conceived in 1940, when the Germans were Blitzkrieging all over Europe, the idea was for these to rush to the scene of a German armored breakthrough like a fire brigade.
The Germans and Russians also had tank destroyers, but they were very different animals altogether. Those tended to be massive vehicles that traded mobility (and a turret) for heavier armor and firepower.
The US tank destroyers generally did well when used for their intended purpose but often got pressed into service as mobile artillery fighting enemy infantry. The open top left them vulnerable to infantry attacks and artillery.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. After the war we decided it was more logical to just build better tanks and do away with tank destroyers.
Here is another odd tank-like vehicle. This is usually referred to as self-propelled artillery, or sometimes as an “assault gun”. Basically it’s an artillery piece mounted on a Sherman tank chassis with enough armor to protect the crew from small-arms fire.
Artillery wins battles. Having artillery that can keep up with advancing infantry and armor is very important and often overlooked.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon
American troops always complained about “All those damn German machine guns” they had to face. German troops complained about “All that damned American artillery”.
The speed, accuracy and devastating power of American Artillery won confidence and admiration from the troops it supported and inspired fear and respect in their enemy.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
I do not have to tell you who won the war. You know, the artillery did.
General George S. Patton
Finally we have a VTR (Vehicle Track Retriever), which is basically a tow-truck for tanks.
The Normandy beaches cover a fair bit of territory. We had to drive about 30 minutes on country roads to find the remains of the German battery at Longues-sur-Mer. These massive concrete bunkers were part of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall”.
This battery duked it out with British, French and American warships on June 6th.
The German battery was captured by advancing British forces on June 7th.
“Fixed defenses are monuments to the stupidity of man.” — George S. Patton
Time for some more history. Keep in mind that while all this was going on, the Soviets were busy smashing the bulk of the German Army in Operation Bagration. We made heroic sacrifices at Normandy and the ensuing battles, but the Soviets for all their faults did most of the heavy lifting against Germany.
Finally we visited the American cemetery. It’s a sight to see. Beautiful when you don’t think about the 9,388 people who are buried there.
When I visit a cemetery I like to pick one monument somewhat at random. I chose this one because he was from Illinois and was in an armored division.
Based on the unit and the date, I would say that Lt. Alderson was probably killed at the Battle of Saint-Lô, during the breakout from Normandy. My research tells me he was from Chicago. He was born in 1918, so he would have been 25 or 26 years old. I could find no picture or obituary so I can’t put a face to the name.
I leave you with this picture, where I step back and try to give you some idea of the scale.
These men died to save the world from Fascism, which now rears its ugly head again. I left saddened and angered.