today in history
Jun. 6th, 2007 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyOn June 6, 1944, sixty-three years ago today, the invasion of Normandy began. This was the invasion of Europe by the Allied forces to overthrow the Nazi occupation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-day
The Germans had heavily fortified the beaches in many places. Family history states that my uncle on my father's side was a landing ship driver on D-day. From an armored cockpit, he took waves of fifty troops to the beach under murderous artillery fire. When the ramps went down, the interlocking fields of fire from the heavy machine guns in bunkers above tore into the men as they desperately tried to 1) get off the landing craft, 2) get out of the surf before drowning, 3) get to cover on an open beach under heavy (in volume and caliber) machine gun fire, and 4) advance to contact and attack uphill against the enemy bunker complex.
My uncle had dropped two loads of troops and believed that all of them had died. He went back to the ship for a third load. The men climbed down into the landing craft using nets and found in the landing craft hold what you would expect: dead bodies, blood, piss, vomit and shit.
One of the soldiers asked my uncle, "What are we getting into? What can you tell us?"
My uncle apparently replied, "It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad." and outlined the situation.
The questioner moved up to the front of the landing craft and was killed instantly when the doors went down at the beach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Normandy
On Omaha Beach, "The official record stated that "within 10 minutes of the ramps being lowered, [the leading] company had become inert, leaderless and almost incapable of action. Every officer and sergeant had been killed or wounded [...] It had become a struggle for survival and rescue". There were about 2,400 casualties on Omaha on D-day, most in the first few hours. Commanders considered abandoning the beachhead, but small units, often forming ad hoc groups, eventually took the beach and pressed inland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach
Over 9,000 American soldiers are buried at one cemetery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Normandy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_American_Cemetery_and_Memorial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-day
The Germans had heavily fortified the beaches in many places. Family history states that my uncle on my father's side was a landing ship driver on D-day. From an armored cockpit, he took waves of fifty troops to the beach under murderous artillery fire. When the ramps went down, the interlocking fields of fire from the heavy machine guns in bunkers above tore into the men as they desperately tried to 1) get off the landing craft, 2) get out of the surf before drowning, 3) get to cover on an open beach under heavy (in volume and caliber) machine gun fire, and 4) advance to contact and attack uphill against the enemy bunker complex.
My uncle had dropped two loads of troops and believed that all of them had died. He went back to the ship for a third load. The men climbed down into the landing craft using nets and found in the landing craft hold what you would expect: dead bodies, blood, piss, vomit and shit.
One of the soldiers asked my uncle, "What are we getting into? What can you tell us?"
My uncle apparently replied, "It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad." and outlined the situation.
The questioner moved up to the front of the landing craft and was killed instantly when the doors went down at the beach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Normandy
On Omaha Beach, "The official record stated that "within 10 minutes of the ramps being lowered, [the leading] company had become inert, leaderless and almost incapable of action. Every officer and sergeant had been killed or wounded [...] It had become a struggle for survival and rescue". There were about 2,400 casualties on Omaha on D-day, most in the first few hours. Commanders considered abandoning the beachhead, but small units, often forming ad hoc groups, eventually took the beach and pressed inland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach
Over 9,000 American soldiers are buried at one cemetery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Normandy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_American_Cemetery_and_Memorial
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 03:26 pm (UTC)Let June 6, 1944 stand as a monument to courage and to sacrifice.
Imagine it, if you can. Standing on the steel deck, wearing your own weight in battle gear and a steel helmet, clutching your rifle, smelling diesel fumes and the vomit of seasickness. Lurching under your feet and hearing salt spray and the whistle-and-BOOM of artillery shells seeking your life.
Then the ramp goes down and the men in front of you are killed violently, blood and guts splashing as you are pushed and stumble forward in the rush. "OUT! EVERYBODY OUT!" As you enter the surf and enter into Hell.
Or watch the opening sequence of "Saving Private Ryan." Today seems a good day for it. The director meant it as a homage to the men who died that day.
Would that the spirit of that time inspire Americans to know 1) that we are capable of acts of enormous bravery and 2) that the cost should be soberly considered so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 05:15 pm (UTC)Secondly, our attempt to defeat Germany by killing was misconceived. This was a war of ideology, and each German who died meant several Germans willing to avenge him.
We should have put the whole issue up for League of Nations arbitration, instead of using unprincipled cowboy tactics. After all, Hitler had all sorts of legitimate gripes against the Allies.
When will we learn the wisdom of restraint?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 12:20 am (UTC)At the risk of tangenting....
Date: 2007-06-07 01:24 am (UTC)Re: At the risk of tangenting....
Date: 2007-06-07 02:56 pm (UTC)Right.
We need to be very careful that we don't buy the argument that we are suffering "heavy casulaties" in the Mideast. If we do, then we will make ourselves incapable of fighting any protracted war, until the meme wears off, because almost any other war would be bloodier.
Re: At the risk of tangenting....
Date: 2007-06-07 03:10 pm (UTC)2) We're not taking "heavy casualties" in the Middle East. The average American has no idea what heavy casualties are.
We also did not take heavy casualties on 9/11.
3) I don't agree that American should be in the business of fighting protracted wars. We should hire others to do it for us.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 03:19 am (UTC)1) Germans were effective soldiers with better weapons, especially armor. We and the Russians buried them with bodies. This is a form of logistics war, if you have the casualties to soak up the enemy's more effective individual units.
That doesn't make our honored dead any less brave, by the way. It does mean a bitter lesson that the American military has taken to heart -- be better than your opponent. American forces are expected to fight and beat a conventional enemy formation one order of magnitude larger.
We have taken remarkably light casualties in the War on Terror. That doesn't mean we should go courting more. EVERY SINGLE DEATH IS WASTED IF WE DON'T WIN. Thus, the problem is to win.
2) There is all the difference in the world between Germany 1935-1945 and the Middle East today. Germany's soldiers were fighting for Germany as their homeland and an ideology of greatness pushed by the Nazi party. At bitter cost, we overturned Germany's ambitions as a world power and later shattered the German homeland from the air. A number of German troops were still willing to fight when we won, they had just run out of bullets and beans and most especially, fuel.
The jihadi terrorist is not concerned for Iraq, or for any group larger than his tribal faction and the safely nebulous "Allah." His only ambition is to fight for Allah's domination over the world, fueled largely by inability to imagine a brighter world combined with rage at the visible wounds inflicted on his tribe and his family. He doesn't need beans or fuel, let alone a modern industrial war machine. He only needs his AK, bullets and fertilizer to make IEDs with.
You can equip a jihadi fighter for about $300. By comparison, if you can find enough of him, it costs over $3,000 to equip a U.S. soldier not counting his pay and benefits.
The solution is two-fold, with carrot on one side and stick on the other. Make sure there's enough of an economy and education available that people see other choices than fighting, and establish peace through superior firepower in such a way that anyone who raises a weapon at us, gets to meet Allah in such a way that his friends, family and neighbors agree that he had it coming, the idiot, instead of seeking to emulate his example.
3) The League of Nations and the United Nations have much in common, with respect to positive (ideals) and negative (lack of useful power). If anything, we were slow to enter the European War despite some defiance of Congress by Roosevelt. Only the momentum of Pearl Harbor brought America into the war.
I commend to you a viewing of the movie "The Beast," about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. It may help you understand a little more about the jihadi worldview. Then again, it may not.
Less serious answer.
Is anything sacred to you? Or are these lives and deaths mere pixels on the flat view screen of your self-centered ego?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 02:58 pm (UTC)They are as real as are our lives and deaths today. That was my point. The roughly 500,000 men we lost in World War II were as real as the 4,000 or so whom we have lost in a similar time frame in this war; hence it is absurd to claim that we are taking "heavy" casualties.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 03:11 pm (UTC)To quote my own post which you just commented on, "We have taken remarkably light casualties in the War on Terror."
Do you actually read other people's comments, or skim them looking for something to attack?
no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 06:04 pm (UTC)He's an utterly worthless, contemptible piece of shit. I've written him off already.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-06 08:04 pm (UTC)I've also visited Normandy. Whatever one can say of the last hour and a half of "Saving Private Ryan"-- the first thirty minutes or so (the part showing the initial beach landing and assualting the cliffs) are entirely accurate. That men actually survived and got off that beach going farther inland in the face of determined resistance is amazing. Visiting the cemetery at Colleville-Sur-Mer (overlooking the beaches of Normandy) was quite a sobering experience. Lets ya know we owe a lot to the "greatest generation".