http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27700479

I've been to the Normandy beaches and seen the memorials over France from the 2 world wars.

If you've never been it's very emotional. IT's difficult to stand there and read those names without feeling something deeply sad within you. I've never seen the horror of war except through archive footage or news reports, but you get a very small feel for what it's like just standing somewhere surrounded by the signs of death and destruction.

Those poor sods that crossed the channel, never to see home again. Many still teenagers. I've lived a decade longer already than some of them.

Observing the anniversary and maintaining this and other similar memorials are crucial. Books and movies will always teach us what happened and why; however, 'being there' to me has always left a very powerful emotional experience.

I have yet to visit Normandy, but have visited similar places such as Pearl Harbor and Gettysburgh. The 9/11 memorial leaves me with much the same feeling.

The thing about Normandy and WWII in general is that the last of those who participated as adults will soon be gone. My grandparents both served in the Pacific (Grandma was a nurse) and I will never forget the stories. Even if they didn't participate in D-Day it was interesting to get first person reactions and remembrances of the time.

Lest we forget indeed.

The AP has republished its original report of the invasion:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/U...5-10-08-50

Amazing - cheers Cato

Sadly, after listening to a news broadcast l suspect that these anniversaries serve merely to reinforce American misconceptions about our own importance. The news anchor commented several times how 200,000 "Americans" landed in Normandy. No. It was about 75,000 with an equivalent number of British and Canadians and some Free French.

And, a couple of weeks later the Russians unleashed Operation Bagration

Quote:Operation Bagration (Russian: Oперация Багратион, Operatsiya Bagration) was the codename for the Soviet 1944 Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation[15] during World War II, which cleared German forces from the Belorussian SSR and eastern Poland between 22 June and 19 August 1944.[16] The operation was named after 18th–19th century Georgian Prince Pyotr Bagration, general of the Imperial Russian Army who received a mortal wound at the Battle of Borodino.

The operation resulted in the almost complete destruction of an entire German army group, with the loss of Army Group Centre's Fourth Army, Third Panzer Army and Ninth Army. It is considered the most calamitous defeat experienced by the German armed forces during the Second World War.[17][18] By the end of the operation most of the western Soviet Union had been liberated and the Red Army had achieved footholds in Romania and Poland. German losses eventually numbered well over half a million men killed or wounded, even higher than the toll at Verdun in 1916.[19]

Bagration dwarfed Overlord.

I live in Gosport which seems to be ground zero for D-Day events. So far today we've had a red arrows display, marines assaulting stokes bay in landing craft and a flotilla of warships go past.

Thousands of troops embarked from Gosport for the Normandy beaches, the submarines that guided the ships to the beaches left from HMS Dolphin in Gosprt and most of the caissons of the Mulberry Harbour were built in stokes bay.

(June 5, 2014 at 12:39 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Sadly, after listening to a news broadcast l suspect that these anniversaries serve merely to reinforce American misconceptions about our own importance. The news anchor commented several times how 200,000 "Americans" landed in Normandy. No. It was about 75,000 with an equivalent number of British and Canadians and some Free French.

And, a couple of weeks later the Russians unleashed Operation Bagration


Bagration dwarfed Overlord.

So true, not to mention that the equipment and quality of soldier the Russians faced were superior.

Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword were certainly not surfing competitions, but the inability to clear obstructions and almost non-existent air and sea bombardment support initially made Omaha a special kind of hell. The concentration on Omaha I think lends itself to American misconception. The fixation on Omaha also leads to a general ignorance of how incredibly tough the next two and a half months were.

Capturing St. Lo and Caen didn't go as scheduled. Hitler's refusal to let Rundstedt redeploy made any advance sluggish and costly. If I remember right it took Montgomery three tries to take Caen and in the end the fighting was house to house. Bradley had better success at St. Lo, but how many people know what bocage means?

Yep, nasty shit. One 75mm A/T gun hidden in the hedge backed up by a squad of infantry with an MG-42 and you could tie that road up for hours.
And you wouldn't know they were there until they opened up. And the bocage was ubiquitous to Normandy.

I suspect you're right about Omaha in the American mindset. The other fuckup there was the reliance on duplex drive tanks - most of which sank before they reached the beach.

(June 5, 2014 at 2:31 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Yep, nasty shit. One 75mm A/T gun hidden in the hedge backed up by a squad of infantry with an MG-42 and you could tie that road up for hours.
And you wouldn't know they were there until they opened up. And the bocage was ubiquitous to Normandy.

I suspect you're right about Omaha in the American mindset. The other fuckup there was the reliance on duplex drive tanks - most of which sank before they reached the beach.

The Americans overcame those hedgerows by modifying their Sherman Tanks with hedge cutters welded together from scrap metal. Afterward they were able to punch through them with relative ease.