Amazing photographs of the Normandy beaches

Wikipedia

Notice the hedgerow country that was a deathtrap for so many troops that survived the murderous beaches - only to be killed by ambush among the tall hedges.

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Aerial photos of D-Day Normandy sites captured by drone

. . . "This photo taken on Thursday May 30, 2019 with a drone shows Pointe du Hoc, near Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy. At the Pointe du Hoc, where Allied forces had to scale cliffs to silence Nazis guns, the limestone and clay cliffs have eroded but remains of the fortified location part of Germany's Atlantic Wall defensive system are a powerful vestige of WWII. (AP Photo/David Vincent)" . . .

. . . "In this photo taken with a drone, a dummy paratrooper representing a WWII paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne hangs on the bell tower of the church of Sainte Mere Eglise, in Normandy, France, Thursday, May 9, 2019. Seventy-five years ago, American paratrooper John Steele dangled from a clock tower in Sainte-Mere-Eglise after his parachute got caught during the D-Day invasion, and survived. (AP Photo/David Vincent)"

Trump hugs the last survivor of Omaha Beach’s company A: The President pays tribute to 'tough guy' who stormed the beaches in ‘suicide wave’ and saw half of his comrades killed in minutes

Actually this Company A suffered more than half casualties; they lost about 95%.

UK Daily Mail

"Donald Trump today offered a rare show of emotion when he hugged a 94-year-old veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy during the Second World War. 

The President embraced former Private Russell Pickett and praised him as a 'tough guy' at the moving ceremony at the American cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy. 

"Private Pickett, who was aged 19, was among the elite troops of Company A, 116th Infantry, who were specially chosen to storm the sands of Omaha Beach during the first wave of the D-Day landings. 

"Their mission was so dangerous it was known as D-Day's 'suicide wave' - and the men gained notoriety for their ferocious fighting of the Nazis 75 years ago today - but unfortunately 50 per cent of them became casualties.

"The former private in the 29th Infantry Division was immediately injured by German gun fire as he ran on the sand and he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder." . . .

. . . "During the invasion, Trump said, 'Ray ran back into the water. He dragged out one man after another. He was shot through the arm. His leg was ripped open by shrapnel. His back was broken. He nearly drowned. He had been on the beach for hours, bleeding and saving lives when he finally lost consciousness. He woke up the next day on a cot beside another badly wounded soldier. He looked over and saw his brother Bill. They made it. They made it. They made it. At 98 years old, Ray is here with us today with his fourth Purple Heart and his third Silver Star from Omaha. Ray, the free world salutes you. " . . .

Also in this very same company with Private Pickett were the Bedford Boys: 

The Bedford Boys: A Time for Remembrance and Gratitude

. . . "On D-Day, 34 young men from Bedford and Bedford County were serving in Company A, one of the units spearheading the initial assault on the Normandy beaches. Before the day was over, 19 of those young men of Company A were dead, the highest per capita D-Day losses of any community in the nation. One soldier lost his twin brother. Two other brothers died there. Three more Bedford soldiers died in subsequent fighting. Another young Bedford soldier, Benjamin Hubbard of F Company, also lost his life that day." . . .

Pictured here: Company A, 116th Infantry, 29th Division: 95 % casualties in the first wave at Omaha Beach; June 6th, 1944

The UK Guardian reported in 2003: The suicide wave  "On 6 June 1944, the elite troops of Company A, 116th Infantry, stormed the sands of Omaha Beach as part of the first wave of the D-Day landings. Within minutes, most were dead, including 19 men from one small town in rural Virginia. In this extract from his gripping book, Alex Kershaw details the lives and deaths of these young men, and tells here for the first time how the bravery of a British naval officer helped save many of the Bedford Boys...   Read part two of 'The suicide wave' here" . . .

British singer Chris De Burgh had a deep reverence for those who fought in WW2 and paid homage to them in this song from the 1980s:  Say Goodbye To It All

The Real COST of ILLEGAL Immigration, and It's Not Avocados

Socio-Political Journal

"Last week, more than 1,000 immigrants surged through the U.S. southern border near El Paso, Texas — the largest number ever encountered by U.S. Border Control and Protection, with the previous record being set in the month of April, which was 424.

"This unprecedented invasion spurred President Donald J. Trump to slap a 5 percent tariff on goods from Mexico in an effort to get the Mexican government to take seriously the problem of undocumented immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

"The mainstream media, predictably, started lamenting on how the price of avocados for American consumers may potentially increase a few cents, and completely ignored the $200 billion American taxpayers pay each year in illegal immigration costs. Not to mention the cost of illegal drugs on our youth, and the cost to education and health care on American taxpayers.

"So, let’s take a look at these dollars and cents.

"According to a recent analysis done by Chris Conover, an American Enterprise Institute adjunct scholar, “all told, Americans cross-subsidize health care for unauthorized immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year.”

"Although current federal policy prohibits federal tax funding of health care to unauthorized immigrants through Medicaid or Obamacare, “rough estimates suggest that the nation’s 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who are unauthorized likely receive about $4.6 billion in health services paid for by federal taxes, $2.8 billion in health services financed by state and local taxpayers and another $3 billion bankrolled through ‘cost-shifting,’ i.e. higher payments by insured patients to cover hospital uncompensated care losses, and roughly $1.5 billion in physician charity care,” Mr. Conover wrote in Forbes.

"Public education of illegal immigrants’ children is also hemorrhaging the American taxpayer, as under federal law, all students are eligible to receive schooling regardless of their immigration status." . . .

"ANGRY PELOSI Slams Her Hands on Podium as She Attacks Trump’s Proposed Tariffs on Mexican Imports"

The Democrats are preventing Trump from securing the border
. . . "The answer can be found in Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which says, “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives…” The Democrats control the House of Representatives, and they have prevented him from getting the funds he needs for his other border security measures.

"For instance, the Democrats refused to provide funding for a border wall. Left with no other options, Trump declared a national emergency so he could start construction of the wall with money that had been appropriated for other purposes. But he still doesn’t have his wall, and the crisis at the border is escalating.

"He is turning now to border security measures that he can implement without additional funding, such as imposing a tariff on goods imported from Mexico. I expect others to follow." . . .

Deep State: First, the attempted coup. Now, the political prisoner ...

Monica Showalter  . . . Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez "gets a day off the idiot list for this principled political opposition. And whether she knows it or not, she's taking on a very sick political situation quite correctly."
. . . 

"Well, it's going on now, and Russia's Putin administration must be smiling in disgust at the U.S. hypocrisy, doing to Manafort exactly what the Russians did to Magnitsky and then haughtily placing sanctions onto the Russians as a human rights issue. And they didn't even know Manafort, Manafort's earlier crimes involved Ukraine, not Russia. 

"We are looking at a travesty of justice here, based on a deep state still way out of control. Ocasio-Cortez has put her finger on something important and for once, she's right."

Thomas Lifson: Dems need to be careful what they wish for

"It’s always dangerous to call for a standard for President Trump that you cannot live up to yourself. With Nancy Pelosi reportedly out to imprison President Trump, and House Oversight Committee chairman Elijah Cummings claiming that he “deserves the mark of impeachment, top Democrats seem to be calling for serious penalties for misconduct.  Real law & order fanatics?

"Maybe they should think that over, as Andrew Kerr of the Daily Caller News Foundation reminds them:" . . .

House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings’s wife has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from her charity to her private for-profit organization, according to a previously undisclosed cost-sharing arrangement that multiple experts said raises red flags.
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings’s charity, the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS), paid her for-profit venture, Global Policy Solutions LLC, over $250,000 in “management fees” between 2013 and 2015, according to the charity’s audited financial statements covering those years. The management fees were paid in addition to a cost-sharing agreement where the charity pays for its share of equipment, personnel and other expenditures.
Rockeymoore Cummings’s charity is funded by companies with interests before her husband’s congressional committee, according to the Washington Examiner.

. . .

Townhall

The Electoral College: America's newest "brain trust" wants to abolish it

How can people think that Hillary Clinton was ever, ever worth doing this damage to our nation and our Constitution? This has all been generated because of her bitterness, you know?
Do we want our nation's President chosen by the same people who elected Gavin Newsom and NY Mayor Bill de Blasio?  TD

Wreck the Electoral College, Destroy the Country

"While you were sleeping, the Democrats (abetted by some deviant Republicans) have been working on a plan that would destroy the diversity of the American political system and bring the nation to the brink of civil war. The plan is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and tens of millions of dollars have already been spent over several decades trying to implement it. Fourteen blue states and the District of Columbia have already joined the Compact, which means they are 70% on the way to making their proposal the law of the land." . . .
. . . "The Democrats’ plan is designed to eliminate the influence of the Electoral College in choosing the nation’s president, no doubt because while Hillary won the popular vote she failed win necessary votes in the Electoral College. Eliminating the influence of the Electoral College would end the diversity now embodied in the federal system with its division of powers between Washington and the fifty states. The fact that a party which presents itself as a defender of diversity should be leading the charge to eliminate the nation’s most powerful source of diversity should be all that is required to understand the threat their agenda poses to what has been the nation’s constitutional way of life for 232 years." . . .

What appears to deprive the populace of its power to decide a president is the very mechanism that preserves its power. The Electoral College works that way because the United States isn’t a pure democracy.  . . . "The purpose of the Electoral College is to balance voting power across states so no one region of the country can gain too much control. If a president is elected by a simple majority of votes, a candidate who is wildly popular in one region (e.g., Ted Cruz in Texas, Mitt Romney in Utah) can ignore smaller regions and campaign only where large majorities are possible. Or a candidate who kills in California and New York can write off “flyover country” completely.
"If, however, the Electoral College elects a president, a candidate who is wildly popular in one region must also prevail in a number of sub-elections to win. The Electoral College ensures a better result for the country as a whole than the democratic power play wherein 51 percent of us matter and 49 percent of us don’t." . . .

Her Majesty, the Queen of England honors America with her remembrance of WW2

Rich Terrell

We should honor the British and Prime Minister Winston Churchill for their courage and resolve as a nation. They were in the war from the very first day till the very last, suffering one disaster after another while seeing their beautiful, ancient cities reduced to rubble all the while.

The great landing ships used in the Pacific were largely of British design and theirintelligence  services saved many, many allied lives by knowing what the Nazis were planning even before their own commanders did. 

Could our two nations be capable of all this again? Could we have done it then with the type of elected government people we vote for today?  
Winston Churchill himself feared a conquest of Britain would be aided by some of their people in government who were sympathetic to the Nazis, just as many of ours are kindred spirits with countries that hate us. The Tunnel Dweller
Queen Elizabeth, then Princess Elizabeth served alongside the forces of England in the war:
As a mechanic:

My Father’s D-Day Memories

By Karin McQuillan at American Greatness

". . . A Quintessentially American Story "Here are the roots of my Dad’s optimism.  He was born in a small house with a dirt floor in the Jewish Pale of Settlement in the Soviet Union. His father escaped the Communists, made his way to America, and after several years, had earned enough to bring the family to join him.

"My Dad was 9 years old. He excelled in public school and won a place in the Bronx High School of Science, but had to drop out during the Depression to help his family. He never finished school. He did serve in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Oregon as a firefighter and a logger. Back home, he was a self-taught photographer with his gang of Jewish friends in the Bronx, taking girlie pictures and selling them to cheap magazines for a few dollars.

"When America entered World War II, my father, armed with his portfolio of photos, signed up immediately.  He was assigned to be a combat photographer with the Army Signal Corps.

Phil Schultz with his camera. (Photo courtesy of the author.)

"He soon shipped out to England, to prepare for the Allied invasion of Northern Europe. He was with the 165th Signal Photo Company, 29th Infantry Division. This was the “Band of Brothers” division that took Omaha Beach, the lead troops in the invasion that began on June 6, 1944.

"Being a combat photographer meant he served on the front lines of World War II from Omaha Beach to the liberation of Paris, including the Battle of the Bulge, as well as the battle to take the Remagen Bridge that led into Germany and ultimately Berlin.

"His films of the action are in the Library of Congress. During the war, they were edited by the Army and shown as newsreels in cinemas across America. . . "

. . . "And I know, experienced already, that if a tank is firing, someone is going to shoot back. I get my pictures and I leave, go around the corner. And my officer, he went to the spot where I was and got killed. You get that streetwise—battlewise. You are there, you do a job, and get out" . . .