Scenes From D-Day, Then and Now

The Atlantic Monthly via Robert Hope, former Marine at my duty post in Hawthorne, NV back in 1958. Thanks, Bob, and Semper Fi.

The body of a dead German soldier lies in the main square of Place Du Marche after the town was taken by U.S. troops who landed at nearby Omaha Beach in Trevieres, France, June 15, 1944. Click to view the same location on August 23, 2013.

 

(Posted on June 5th, 2014) "Tomorrow, June 6, 2014, will be the 70th anniversary of the D-Day Allied invasion of Europe in World War II. Seven decades ago, the largest amphibious invasion in history took place, changing the course of the war. Nearly 200,000 Allied troops boarded 7,000 ships and more than 3,000 aircraft and headed toward Normandy. Some 156,000 troops landed on the French beaches, 24,000 by air and the rest by sea, where they met stiff resistance from well-defended German positions across 50 miles of French coastline. Two photographers recently traveled to France, seeking to rephotograph images captured back then. Getty photographer Peter Macdiarmid and Reuters photographer Chris Helgren gathered archive pictures from the 1944 invasion, tracked down the locations, and photographed them as they appear today. Starting with photo number two, all the images are interactive -- click on them to see a transition from 'then' to 'now', and see the difference 70 years can make. [21 photo pairs] "

 A crashed U.S. fighter plane on the waterfront some time after Canadian forces came ashore on a Juno Beach D-Day landing zone in Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, France, in June 1944. Click to view the same location on August 23, 2013 

Plus this: 

"Here's a Normandy Beach landing photo they don't show you in textbooks. Brave women of the Red Cross arriving in 1944 to help the injured troops." 

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