(Above) Some sources list this as Omaha Beach, but this is most certainly Utah Beach. The small dots on the beach are men standing and the longer ones are bodies laying down. Since troops moved quickly off Utah Beach and there was not quite as much debris buildup as on Omaha Beach where the beaches were covered with destroyed vehicles, it is probably Utah Beach. Omaha was covered with wreckage by the third wave. TD
(Above) Taken a few days after June 6th, this view is over the hedgerows of the Normandy bocage where so many thousands of lives were lost. Look back toward the beaches at the massive amount of ships involved in the landings. The area in the foreground was the graveyard of much of the 29th Infantry Division in the drive toward St. Lo. TD
The National Collection of Aerial Photography (UK) Labelled elsewhere as the Vierville draw at Omaha Beach, it is actually the neighboring landing site, the Les Moulins draw, where Gen. Cota went ashore, worked his way to the top of the bluffs, then moved west to the Vierville exit, where the worst slaughter took place. This beach is distinguished by the immense, 18-foot-wide anti-tank ditch inland. (Gen. Cota was portrayed by Robert Mitchum in the movie, "The Longest Day".) TD
Robert Capa photo of French fishermen gazing at the aftermath of the Normandy landings.
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This photo and many more at Boston.com
Updated Aug 20th: My educated guess about the above photo is this: At the top, just right of center is the bulge in the shoreline known as the Point et Raz de la Percee. About an inch or so to the left of that is the Vierville Draw where the Bedford boys and Co. A, 116 RCT, 29th Division were annihilated. The next draw to the left of that and close to the left margin is the Les Moulins Draw where General Norman Cota (or was it Robert Mitchum?) personally led his men off the beaches. This is either very early on D-Day as there do not seem to be many vehicles and boats jamming the beaches. (Or it is several days after as the line of sunken ships off the beach at Les Moulin would indicate? They were placed there for a breakwater.) More here. And here. TD
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Link replaced with this from History News Network: What We Might Remember This Memorial Day by Victor Davis Hanson
(Link fixed) "The list of American wars, interventions, and campaigns, past and present, is endless — a source of serial political acrimony here at home over the human and financial cost and wisdom of spending American lives to better others. Sometimes we feel we are not good when we are not perfect, whether trying to stop a Stalinist North Vietnamese takeover of the south, or failing to secure Iraq before 2008. But the common story remains the same: For nearly a century, the American soldier has often been the last, indeed the only, impediment to butchery, enslavement, and autocracy." . . . (National Review article no longer good
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Oldie, but a goodie: www.partamian.net
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3 comments:
Thanks for posting the excellent article on D-Day!
My dad was in the Navy and there on D-Day as a driver of a landing taking the soldiers into "Bloody Omah" - a German 88 managed to put a shell into the middle of his boat just after the G.I.s had cleared off. He was blown up in the air and landed in water just feet off the beach and under machine gun fire.
He said by this time he was very P.O.'d at the Germans (who turned out to be Poles, as they found out later) and started shooting back at them with an M-1 from a dead soldier. The ship wrecked sailors joined up with the infantry and attacked the German machine gunners, since it was clear that if they didn't kill them, the Krauts would get them.
Anyhow, long story short, he and his fellow sailors spent several weeks on the beach, (although no combat after the beach was secured) as the wounded had priority on shipping back to England, and the beachmaster needed all the help he could get...for example, putting the wounded on landing crafts and pulling the dead out of the water.
Did you see, "Saving Private Ryan?" The first part of the movie very accurately followed what dad told me years before about his part of D-Day. The thing dad said he would never forget about Omah was the sound the machine gun bullets striking the landing crafts made, which was portrayed in the movie as well.
They were tough old birds in those days! I think dad should have received a medal for D-Day, but on D-Day at that little piece of hell they were all heroes. My dad passed away in 1989 from a heart attack that took him out in an instant, but I'm sure he wouldn't like the Navy these days - They did away with the traditional "sailor suit!" Can you believe it? The bell bottoms and Dixie cup hat! Dad loved that uniform and that's why he joined the Navy just after Pearl Harbor!!!
I am saddened that the lives lost fighting faschism are being used to defend the present faschist America.There is no real "left" in america, only an Extreme "right" made of businesses and mafia, who denounce anything other than their views as commie or Left.Get real, there is a danger USA will become the next Germant ,39. Dont believe what these rightwingers say,.
Sad but true.
D
I do not see America becoming the Germany of 1939; I see Obama's America becoming the Britain of 1938, submitting to the socialistic, militaristic forces of the left. And Nazism was leftist socialism, nearly as murderous as it's cousin, communism.
The extreme right you speak of is the equivalent of the Kennedy Democrats of the 1960's who have only been made to seem extreme in comparison to the violence-promoting, racist, anti-free market policies of this new leftist administration.
Again you demonstrate that the left can be taught neither history nor economics. Socialists could not learn even after seven decades of misery brought on by the Soviet Socialist Republic's economic policies.
Oh, and you misspelled "fascism"
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