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D-Day
NeoBlackdog
Member Posts: 17,184 ✭✭✭✭
I can't imagine what that must have been like. The courage those men had to muster up to charge up a beach like that while under fire is unfathomable to me.
Comments
not many of the young of today would..........
I think D-Day was the closest thing to hell one could experience on earth. My dad had it "good" as he landed three weeks later with an artillery battery. Remember them all.
I’ve heard the expressions, the longest day and day of days. These expressions could only come from people that witnessed the horror on such a large scale on that day. The debt they paid in are behalf, so that we may live a free life, I pry will never be forgotten.
My Father in law landed on the second day at Omaha Beach. He said that was the scariest thing he did during the war, followed by the Battle of the Bulge.
Joe
I've mentioned before on here that Dad landed, I think it was day three, with a Thompson with one loaded mag. When he questioned this, he was told he could get more on the beach. Little did he know that it was meant he could scrounge from fallen brothers in arms. He, like a lot of others, never spoke much about it and when asked he acknowledged being there and changed the subject. It truly was the greatest generation and will probably never be equaled. Bob
...they were truly, the "greatest generation"...Dad landed on Utah Beach, June 6...quite the adventure for a farm boy from Pickton, Texas...he made it into France, Belgium, Germany...shot twice and frozen feet in the Ardennes...as a 12 year old I would pester him for "war stories"...he shared very little since he had been a sniper and it had been really personal for him, several years later I completely understood...too long a story to go into but I have a German Bayonet & a rosary a German sniper gave him as he was dying as my Dad held him...RIP to all the good men who didn't make it back and God bless the few who are still with us...
This is a great place & well worth a visit if you're in the area. Plan on spending several hours in awe.
Note that it received NO Federal Funding.
I would love to hear more about your fathers story @Texas1911DE !! You must really be proud!
Ages ago, in the old Royal Drive In in Greenville, Texas, I used to have coffee with some D-Day vets. Old guys. Unassuming. Humble. They never bragged about their exploits. Often they appeared to be deep in thought. When asked about June 6, 1944, all they would acknowledge was, "I was there."
They are gone now, may they rest in peace.
Picture I took in May 2017 of Utah Beach. Not high tide, as you can see from the vegetation. Landing was at low tide and crossing several hundred yards of beach under fire - unreal.
Brave men.....we should also remember all the other D-Days. Partial list...Anzio, Salerno, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima...and others.
Ultbrowingman... yep, thats the beach Dad landed on so many years ago, sure it was a lot "busier" that day, all the landing beaches had to be a living hell for those guys...cant even imagine running into a wall of fire that it had to have been...
...Hey Brookwood, and anyone else...
...my Dad was sent up front because a German sniper was picking off Americans...my Dad spent an evening and all night crawling in the direction he thought the German was...just after daylight the German sniper and him got into a "duel" of sorts...like a movie, my Dad caught a glint off something in a tree a few hundred yards away...Dad shot, and the German fell out of the tree...my Dad made his way to the German and he was still alive, and spoke perfect English...seems he had gone to college at one of the Ivy League colleges up in the North East before the war...he knew he was dying and gave my Dad his wallet and ask him to do his best to send it to his wife and kids in Germany when the war was over, because he knew they would lose the war, said Hitler was a "crazy man"...he then told my Dad to take his rosary and bayonet and if Dad ever thought back to that moment, and it made him feel bad, "look at the rosary and bayonet and know that "I would have killed you if I could have"...then the German died as my Dad sat on the ground holding him...think that bothered him more than the hell he went thru in Ardennes...
@Texas1911DE
Wow. Just wow. As I said when I started this thread, I just can't even imagine.
Those of us who have been shot at in anger can tell you that after the first time or three, it becomes routine. But those first ones...well...
There are no universal truths about being in combat. there is only, "There I was, when suddenly..."
And they don’t even know what the day means even the ones going in the military.
I work part time at a Military Entrance Processing center. I had 27 new applicants yesterday. I write the date on the board so that they can write it on some of their work.
Not a SINGLE ONE could tell me what that date meant.
I have been to the D-Day beaches. Standing on the dunes and looking out to the ocean it is just wide open no cover at all.
Then to go to the cemetery and see thousands of white crosses was the worse.
All I could think about how it must have felt to be so young and so far from home and no one from your family to be there for your final moments.