The Longest Day (I'm referring to D-Day, not the tour)

As Jeff and I were planning the European portion of our trip, one visit we immediately agreed we needed to make was to the D-Day beaches in Normandy.  As luck would have it, Normandy was the final area that Mom and Lee wanted to explore in France, and so they decided they would join us for a long weekend on the northern coast of the country.  As I said in an earlier post, my mom was unfortunately not able to go, but Lee made the trek to enjoy a beautiful weekend with us.

In anticipation of our visit, I scheduled a day-long tour of the key beaches taken by American forces.  On Friday, we woke up bright and early to drive an hour to a McDonald's where we met our guide for the day, Eddie, a retired Lieutenant Colonel who served 28 years in the British Royal Marines.  Eddie's background showed through during the day, as he was able to give us deeper insight into the military tactics and strategy involved in the landings.  Having taken a couple classes on World War II during college, both Jeff and I had a fairly decent understanding of the war and D-Day.  Getting to step onto the beaches where these critical events took place and to have someone with military experience explain what had happened gave us a deeper appreciation for what occurred on that day than any book or class lecture ever has.

D-Day was supposed to kick off the First Front in the Allied offensive against Germany. Stalin promised that the Russians would later join the effort against Japan.*

There were to be five major landings on D-Day. Utah and Omaha were to be secured by the American troops while British troops landed at Gold and Sword and Canadian Troops landed at Juno.*

One thing that never ceases to amaze me about D-Day is all that went on leading up to the attack and all the coordinated assaults that took place on that day from land, sea, and air.  The night prior to the landing, thousands of paratroopers were dropped in behind enemy lines in order to assist in isolating the beaches so that German reinforcements could not reach them.  As was the case with many of the plans for the invasion, things did not go quite as hoped.  A combination of insufficient training, terrible weather, and enemy gunfire caused many of the troops to be dropped far from their objectives.  We began our day in the small town of Sainte-Mère-Église where members of the 82nd airborne landed and where there is now a museum dedicated to the American airborne troops.

Gliders, which are little more than canvas and wood with a little steel, facilitated the dropping of troops and supplies in France

A dummy hangs suspended on the town church as a memorial to paratrooper John Steele, who landed in the same place that night.  Steele pretended to be dead for two hours while he was caught up there until Nazi troops cut him down and took him prisoner.

Stained glass windows inside the church pay homage to the members of the airborne (much of the original stained glass was destroyed during the war)

Following our trip to the museum, we made our way to Utah beach, which was actually not part of the original invasion plans, but was added later by Eisenhower.  Interestingly enough, bad weather and the loss of three of their four control crafts to mines, caused the U.S. 4th Infantry to land over 2,000 yards east of their designated landing point.  Those in command (including Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who was the oldest solider to land on any D-Day beach at 58 years old) quickly saw that this was in fact a windfall, as they had landed in an area that was less heavily defended than where they had originally planned to attack.  This serendipitous event helped make the Utah landing more successful than had been anticipated.  Something that cannot be said off all the beaches where forces landed on that day. 

In the days prior to the landings, the Allies carried on a number of air strikes, bombing strategic French rail centres and road networks as well as German airfields, radar installations, military bases, and coastal artillery batteries.  Air assaults were carried on through the morning of the landings, with the intention of  disorienting and scattering the enemy prior to the ground offensive. Our third stop was to Pointe du Hoc, which lies between the Utah and Omaha beaches and where we were able to see the massive craters created by these aerial onslaughts.  To our guide's knowledge, this is the only area in Normandy where artillery craters remain, as most terrain has been leveled by farmers.

I was amazed at how massive the holes were. Following the war, many of the holes were filled in by farmers. Point du Hoc is the only place where they were not filled.

Huge craters were everywhere

The landing at Pointe du Hoc was planned in order to take out heavy guns that were stationed at the elevated position and could potentially cause problems for naval ships and the troops landing on Omaha and Utah beaches.  Army Rangers were to scale the cliffs and then neutralize the guns.  Looking over the cliffs, I could not possibly begin to imagine how a person could get up them, let alone get up with heavy machine fire being aimed at them.  Ironically, the guns the troops were sent to neutralize were not there.  The Rangers eventually did find the guns a little over 500 yards away, aimed at Utah beach. Though they lost half their men, they were able to accomplish their mission of taking out the guns and held on to the area until help arrived two days later. 

Of all the landing spots, Omaha, where we made our fourth stop, was far and away the most difficult. Eddie described this beach as a "killing zone," noting that "no tactician could have devised a better defensive situation."  The landing, however, was necessary because the distance between Utah and Gold would have been too great otherwise. 

To make a difficult situation worse, almost nothing went as planned at Omaha beach.  Instead of being manned by low-quality units of 800 Poles and Russians, as had been reported by intelligence, the area was in fact guarded by the elite 352nd Divison.  The aerial assaults that were supposed to neutralize the German bunkers and create craters that could be used as foxholes by the American forces, did not happen as planned.  Poor flying conditions and cloud cover caused the pilots to drop their bombs three miles inland, completely missing Utah beach.  Additionally,  the "overwhelming" assault of men and machinery that had been planned did not come to fruition.  Only 2 of the 29 amphibious Sherman tanks that had been launched for the attack made it to shore.  The others sank on the way over due to the choppy waters caused by the bad weather.  The weather further complicated things, causing most of the troops to land in the wrong places, causing great confusion.  Despite all of this, the brave troops were able to battle their way forward, killing 1,200 of the Nazis defending the beaches, who, thanks to the work of the airborne troops, did not have any reinforcements coming. 

Eddie used a lot of diagrams to facilitate our understanding of what took place on the beaches.  Don't worry, I was listening while I took these shots!

Jeff and I spent a good part of the day marveling over how amazing it was that the Allies were able to emerge victorious given all that did not go as planned on that day.  Some of these mishaps were actually fortuitous, such as the landing on Utah beach.  Others, including the events on Omaha beach, were serious tragedies that resulted in heavy Allied losses.  The scattering of paratroopers ended up being mixed a blessing.  Many lives were lost to drowning and enemy gunfire when troops did not land in their designated areas.  This catastrophe, however, was in some ways helpful because it further confused the Nazis who were unable to figure out where the assault was going to take place.  The ingenious deceptive tactics of the Allies in the months leading up the invasion, along with the extraordinary leadership on the day of the landing that was able to work around all the various cataclysms enabled the Allies to emerge victorious despite the odds.

Most important, however, were all the men (boys?) who so bravely went into battle knowing that it was very likely they would lose their lives on those beaches.  We ended our day at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial where many of the people who lost their lives on that day are buried.  As we walked through the grounds I was overcome with mixed emotions of extreme sadness and pride.  All these men, many of them younger than I am now, gave their lives so that we could be free.

* These two diagrams are some of the many Eddie used to help us understand the events of D-Day. Gotta give credit where credit is due!