The Greatest Generation of America participated in The Greatest Invasion in history on June 6, 1944. The Allies landed in France on the beaches of Normandy to finally liberate Europe. An 18-year-old American soldier who survived the invasion would now be 96 years old in the year of this article, 2022. For most people reading this tribute, they will witness the passing of the last veteran of WWII. We will never see their likes again.
In November of 1940 during the Battle of Britain, the American Ambassador to England, Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future President John F. Kennedy, said publicly, “Democracy is finished in England. And it may be over here in the United States.”
Kennedy considered fascism the “wave of the future,” and Hitler’s military unbeatable. After misrepresenting American foreign policies for two years, plus constantly disobeying orders from President Roosevelt, Kennedy was forced to resign. No man was happier to see Kennedy fired than the eternal optimist, Sir Winston Churchill.
English Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the right man in the right place at the right time in world history. A visionary with uncanny accuracy, three months before America entered WWII, Churchill told Capt. Lord Louis Mountbatten in October of 1941, “Unless we can go on land and fight Hitler and beat his forces on land, we shall never win this war.”
Churchill was certainly an optimist, but also a realist.
Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin was demanding that the Allies open a European front against Hitler to relieve the pressure the Nazis were imposing on Russia. Adolph Hitler’s munitions experts were developing new terrifying secret weapons. Numerous reports and rumors spoke of Nazi concentration camps, death camps, and human extermination, yet the reports were routinely ignored by American media giants like the New York Times. V-1 and V-2 missiles were hitting England. Something had to be done.
On Dec. 7, 1943, two years exactly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt met with General Dwight Eisenhower in Tunis to advise him he would be commanding the Allied invasion of occupied Europe. Eisenhower’s reaction is lost to history, but no doubt a big gulp occurred after he graciously accepted the next-to-impossible assignment.
During the preparation and implementation of D-Day, 17 million maps were drawn up. All information concerning the invasion was marked “Bigot,” a military classification higher than Top Secret for the clearance of personnel on a specific operation. Between 1942 and 1944, about one million U.S. soldiers arrived in England in preparation for D-Day. Security was strict, yet war correspondents were coming dangerously close to guessing invasion details deemed Top Secret. A concerned General Eisenhower called for a special briefing of the press corps and gave them a detailed outline of the planned invasion. Then he advised the correspondents, “You now know the details of the invasion. The details are Top Secret. If you report them, I will have you shot.”
No news leaks occurred.
In another effort to maintain security, at least 30 attractive members of the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force were recruited to wear civilian clothes and frequent the pubs near the bases and/or where soldiers were being trained. The girls were not privy to any information about the D-Day invasion, so their task was very simple: Use your feminine charms to ascertain the men’s mission. The women failed. None of the boys talked, not about D-Day anyway.
Apparently, the American boys talked about other things. The salary for a G.I. was considerably more than a British soldier. As a result, the American boys were very popular with young British women. Approximately 70,000 British women married American servicemen during the war. A less honorable outcome was over 9,000 kids were born out of wedlock to G.I. fathers.
Months before the invasion, General Eisenhower had an intense “difference of opinion” with Winston Churchill and the Royal Air Force’s strategic bomber commander, Arthur “Bomber” Harris. Eisenhower wanted all Allied bombers at his disposal to bomb the Nazi infrastructure in France leading to the Normandy beaches. Harris said, “No,” wanting Allied bombers at his disposal to continue the bombing of Germany. Churchill opposed Eisenhower, believing the bombing would cause too many casualties among French civilians. Eisenhower threatened to quit. He got the bombers. General Eisenhower smoked up to four packs of Camel cigarettes every day in the months before D-Day.
The beaches on Slapton Sands near Devon, England had an uncanny resemblance to the beaches in the Utah area of Normandy. A practice invasion using the beaches on Slapton Sands between April 22-30, 1944, proved to be an unmitigated disaster. Live shells fired for authenticity fell short, killing about 300 soldiers. Having caught wind of the practice invasion, nine German E-boats (torpedo boats like American PT-boats) attacked ships supporting the practice invasion. An accurate count has never been established, but around 200 U.S. Navy personnel and 440 Army personnel perished in the German E-boat attack. The practice invasion using British beaches resembling the beaches in the Utah area of Normandy cost more Allied lives than the actual invasion on Utah.
Supplies and men continued to pour into England. By D-Day, the United States had shipped over seven million tons of supplies to England. On the eve of invasion, the Allies had over 15,700 aircraft to fly against a depleted German Luftwaffe; the pride of German aviation was now outnumbered by more than 30:1. Anti-aircraft fire brought down 113 Allied aircraft, but none were lost to the Luftwaffe. Over 7,000 vessels were used, including 139 major warships, 221 smaller combat ships, more than a thousand minesweepers and auxiliary ships, about 800 merchant ships, 59 blockships, and 300 other types of smaller craft. The crossing took about 17 hours. To transport men to the beaches, over 4,000 landing craft were used.
Shortly after midnight on June 6, 1944, about 24,000 U.S., British and Canadian paratroopers jumped into France. Five out of every six paratroopers landed in the wrong place. Lt. Den Brotheridge was the first Allied casually on D-day, mortally wounded during the glider assault on the Orne bridges. U.S. paratrooper John Steele dropped into Sainte-Mere Eglise on the night of June 5. His parachute became stuck on the town’s church, and Steele was left behind by his unit. Taken prisoner by the Germans, he later escaped. An effigy of John Steele hanging from his parachute on the church in Sainte-Mere Eglise continues to remind us of the cost of freedom. Behind enemy lines, around 350,000 French resistance fighters harassed the German military machine.
The invasion ran on fuel. U.S. tanks alone guzzled about 8,000 gallons of fuel per week at that time, plus Jeeps, trucks, armored personnel carriers, all the vehicles on Normandy needed fuel. PLUTO supplied the fuel. No, not Mickey Mouse’s pet dog, but PLUTO, Pipeline Under The Ocean. A pipeline was laid from England to France underneath the English Channel before the invasion.
The first shots fired from a ship on D-Day were fired by HMS Belfast, now docked on permanent display on the River Thames in England. The first building in France to be liberated was a café. The oldest battleship in action on D-Day was the USS Arkansas, commissioned in 1912.
The soldiers storming Utah Beach were given 50/50 odds of survival. Of 20,000 men put ashore, there were only 300 casualties. Troops were off Utah Beach by noon. On Omaha Beach, however, the U.S. 116th Infantry Regiment’s A Company lost 96% of its strength in one hour. Of the 34,000 soldiers who landed on Omaha, 2,400 were killed. When the guns of D-Day finally fell silent, the Allies had suffered an estimated 10,000 killed, wounded or missing in action. Total German casualties are not known, but an estimate most often touted is between 4,000 to 9,000.
The Greatest Invasion is normally remembered for the efforts of American, English and Canadian soldiers. But they were not alone. Support in the air, on the ground and at sea came from Polish, Norwegian, Australian, New Zealand, French, Belgian, Dutch, Czech, Rhodesian and Greek forces.
As the sun set on June 6, 1944, the Allies had established a firm foothold along the Normandy coastline and could begin fighting their way into France. By midnight, over 132,000 Allied forces were on French soil, with another two million soldiers on the way, comprising a total of 39 divisions to bring down the Nazi scourge. Hitler and his henchmen were doomed.
This tribute to the men of D-Day may sound like a trivia game of little-known facts, but the objective is to voice the cost of freedom. Nothing is trivial about freedom. To say I have been honored to personally interview several veterans of D-Day is not sufficient to relate the awe I felt interviewing old men who as young soldiers pulled off the impossible. The men of D-Day still with us may be confined to wheelchairs, their mobility dependent on walkers, dragging around oxygen tanks, their memories fading as are their lives, but for the younger generations allow me to make one thing perfectly clear: you may see an old man, but the men who stormed the beaches on D-Day were bigger bad-asses than you ever thought about being.
Respect them; honor them. They’ve earned it, and they deserve it. After all, they did it for you.
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