Today marks the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the allied forces orchestrated a massive offensive that had been planned for years. Many of the people who fought in the offensive had trained for two years following the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
There have been many movies made about the invasion. Most famously are Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One and The Longest Day with a cast that includes John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery and Robert Mitchum. It was also a major plot point in the HBO 2001 limited series Band of Brothers, which was produced by Spielberg and Tom Hanks. It was based on the book by Stephan Ambrose about the Easy Company Paratroopers of the U.S. Army.
D-Day marked a changing point in World War II as it was the first time allied forces had been in Nazi-occupied Europe. Unfortunately, Germany had intel of an invasion and was ready. Saving Private Ryan recounts how the Paratroopers, which James Ryan (Matt Damon) was a member of were pretty much scattered all over the French countryside. In Band of Brothers, Richard Winters (Damian Lewis), as a lieutenant on D-Day, lose his weapons as he parachuted. One detail some may have missed in Saving Private Ryan is that the bombs were dropped killing the cattle in some areas because of bad intel.
The Nazis had prepared for another offensive from the North Sea that they buried the beaches of Denmark with land mines. However, this wasn’t the case. Still, after the war ended, the Danish military forced German POWs, most of which were mere teenagers by this time, to locate the mines and deactivate them. In the movie Land of Mine, it is shown the average German POW had nothing but a stick and were told to crawl on their stomachs to find the mines, dig them up with their hands and then deactivate them. Many young Germans died. Others were seriously injured.
Over 4,400 allied troops would be killed on June 6, 1944 along with an additional 5,800 reported injured. The offensive would last most of the summer of 1944 with about 73,000 allied troops killed in action and about 153,000 injured. Because of the bombing by allied forces, civilian casualties were at estimate at about 20,000 dead.
While I was working at the Wagoner Tribune in Wagoner, Okla., outside of Tulsa, there was a man, Arlie “Lee” Wilson, who was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army who had served during the Normandy Invasion and received the Purple Heart. He passed away in early January of 2013. There are not too many people still around who still remember that day.
Recently, some WWII vets gather in France on the beaches to remember those days and honor their fallen. It’s easy to forget that many young man, barely out of high school, did their duties to end the Nazi regime. While America declared war on Japan following Pearl Harbor, we never declared war on Germany. They declared war on us. Regardless, many Americans fought to wipe out the Fascist powers that wanted to dominate the world.
Yet, the more we don’t remember the past, the more we’re like to make the same mistakes. We can’t let someone like Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini rise to power again. While most dictators don’t have much time in power, it’s their tenure that causes so many problems. Hitler was only in power 12 years, a short time in the overall length of human history, but he did so many bad things. We don’t need to elect a President who admires him or the one who wants to be the 21st Century version.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 