Author Topic: D-Day 70th anniversary  (Read 3857 times)

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Offline Alphabet Soup

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Re: D-Day 70th anniversary
« Reply #20 on: June 09, 2014, 09:55:50 PM »
One last glimpse (for now)...

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/06/scenes-from-d-day-then-and-now/100752/

Then & now pictures from Normandy.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Offline LadyVirginia

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Re: D-Day 70th anniversary
« Reply #21 on: June 09, 2014, 10:09:10 PM »
If I remember correctly they were going to go on May 1 with 3/5th of what they used on D-day.
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Offline Libertas

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Re: D-Day 70th anniversary
« Reply #22 on: June 10, 2014, 07:03:28 AM »
They had 60, 70, 80 pound packs, really who thought that was a good idea?  Some landing craft were hit and guys sunk or they stopped short and guys drowned.  A lot of guys just dumped those things and ran like hell.  Things could have been better, it is amazing the losses were not worse.


Yeah I really hate to think about the number who just drowned in the surf. A lot of the paratroopers drowned too, when they landed in fields that the Germans had flooded.

I think in retrospect a better idea might have been to have the initial assault waves with a very light combat load for good mobility, then resupply them with subsequent landing waves. Everything was a huge question mark though, and I guess they erred on the side of bringing too much rather than not enough.

My granddad was in the Navy and spent the war in the Pacific Theater, piloting the amphibious landing craft. He had a lot of stories about the boats being raked with machine gun fire and shore artillery.

My other granddad spent the war on U-boat patrol, mostly in the Caribbean where the tankers transited out of the Gulf on their way to Europe. His uncle -- which I guess would make him my great-great uncle -- was a tank commander who was killed in action in the battle for Sicily. He was the first person from his county to be killed in the war and the American Legion post there is named after him.

I think it's very difficult for us to truly appreciate how "all in" the whole country was.

Yup, I agree, they should have gone lighter up front and heavier in succeeding waves, but, what happened happened...

And it didn't take too long to get from a generation going "all-in" to generations mostly not giving a rip and saying "don't overreact to a few thousand dead" on 9/11.  I had half thought those attacks would cut through the BS and wake this nation up to the mortal perils that Islam poses to Western civilization, our Judeo-Christian tradition and especially our version of American Liberty...but I say half thought because in the back of my mind were the hippie remnants that contaminated America for decades and gave us trash like the Clintons (who lest we forget loathed the military as well as most of our traditional values and notions of freedom), their selfish heirs and the plethora of libiot enclaves that loath war of any kind (there is no such thing as a "just war" in these fools minds, except of course US)...and I was sad and angry to see my doubts manifest into reality.

So, it will be up to us to save/restore America...but unlike our Founders, we'll need more than 3% (actually it was closer to 3.18%) of the population to do the heavy lifting...because unlike then where principle combatants on land were outnumbered 1.63:1 (at peak) as well as out-gunned and vastly out navied, we would be going up against more than 6-7% of the nation...

We'll see if another greatest generation can be found...Good Lord willing...
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.