D-Day

Preparations and landing at Normandy  Photo slide show.

D-Day Mega Gallery 

Animated Map: The D-Day Landings

Launch the animation

 

D-Day 70th anniversary: Ministry of Defence releases rare aerial photographs showing planning – and chaos – of ‘largest single military operation in the history of warfare’

"With preparations in full swing for the world to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-day beach landings this Friday, the Ministry of Defence has released a series of photographs that show the chaos of the Normandy assault in fascinating detail."

"The images were captured in a series of around 30 sorties made by planes flying just 1,000ft above the battlefield on 6 June, 1944, and provided vital information about how the meticulously-planned operation was progressing."

 

Below: Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944. The difficulty of this landing is evidenced by the many vehicles destroyed at the waters edge.

 

 Aerial view of the invasion fleet  Raw footage with no sound.

 

British Pathe' news footage of the Normandy invasion

 

 The President's Prayer on D-Day

...And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.
And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas -- whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them--help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen. 

 

Someone in the Obama Admin Should Read This (out loud) to the Cabinet

Blackfive

 

EXCLUSIVE: Bergdahl declared jihad in captivity, secret documents show

Bergdahl declared jihad in captivity, secret documents show  " U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a "mujahid," or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

 Mushtaq Yusufzai: Taliban Commanders Say They Found Bergdahl Cursing His Countrymen


"The Taliban found Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl walking alone, acting abnormally and cursing his countrymen before they captured him in Afghanistan in 2009, two men who were Taliban commanders at the time told NBC News on Thursday.

 

"They said that Afghan locals first informed fighters about the soldier, and then the fighters rushed to capture him.

...

"The commander who left in 2010 said that, at least through that time, Bergdahl did not convert to Islam.

 

“ 'Think he had deserted his army with a mission and wanted to accept Islam, but our people didn’t trust him. That shattered his belief,” he said."   Full article

Admin Official Suggests Bergdahl Squadmates are ‘Psychopaths’    From The Right Scoop
"That’s why they are coming out now, to restore the truth in the face of lies coming from the Obama administration.

"There is NOT ONE soldier who has come out to defend Bergdahl. Not one. If there was any credibility to the White House’s ‘story’ on Bergdahl, I assure you there would be several, if not many."

Noted Right Winger Chris Matthews Blasts “Nasty Deal” to Get Bergdahl

American Glob  "Here’s a question for leftists like Van Jones, Michael Tomasky and Joan Walsh to chew on.
"If criticism of the Bergdahl deal is just another chapter in the vast right wing conspiracy, why does "MSNBC’s Chris Matthews have a problem with it?
"Via the Washington Free Beacon…

Matthews Blasts Bergdahl Deal as ‘Nasty,’ ‘Disreputable,’ ‘Driven By Our Enemies’
MSNBC host Chris Matthews has made no secret of his dismay over the Obama administration’s release of five Taliban commanders to get back suspected deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, calling it “disreputable” and a “nasty deal” in the “Let Me Finish” portion of Hardball Wednesday.

 

Bowe Bergdahl, Just Deserts

Ann Coulter

... "Keeping to the spirit of Death Penalty Month, let's review the execution of Private Eddie Slovick. Slovik's offense: desertion in wartime. (See the tie-in?)"

 

..."Slovik was like Bradley Manning minus the lipstick and eyeliner. "

 

Coulter then turns to Bergdahl. 

... "Three days before he walked off his base, Bergdahl emailed his parents:

 

-- "I am ashamed to be an american."

-- "The US army is the biggest joke ... It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies."

-- "These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid."

-- "The horror that is america is disgusting."

"These emails were given to the author of a 2012 Rolling Stone article on the case by Bergdahl's own parents.

"The overwrought soldier's father, Bob, emailed back: "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!" And then, according to the Rolling Stone profile reporting these emails -- as well as the Army report on the incident -- Bergdahl "decided to walk away."

"Bergdahl's unit commander, Evan Buetow, told CNN's Jake Tapper that intercepted Taliban "chatter" soon revealed that Bergdahl was looking for a member of the Taliban who spoke English. (Other than his father.)" ...

Past Tunnel Wall D-Day articles and links

D-Day: Remembering the heroes

 

These posts contain many links for you to research and some are quite old. If you find any that are inactive, please let the Tunnel Dweller know in the comments section. If it is at all possible to restore inactive links, we will gladly do so.

1. The Tunnel Wall: Omaha Beach D-Day landings from above ...
2. D-Day- and beyond- Airborne site; one of the best I've ever seen ;   Related links
3. Some D-Day sites for you history buffs (Links added 1/20/2011)
4. 25 photos of D-Day from the Robert Capa collection
5. REMEMBERING D-DAY
6. D-Day; Omaha Beach then and now photographs (Updated, 12/3/2011)
7. Rich Terrell on D-Day plus posts from MilBlogs Mudville Gazette and Blackfive
8. This Haunting Tribute To World War II’s Fallen Will Give You Goosebumps
9. The Tunnel Wall: 'These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc'
10. The ruins of Normandy: Unpublished color photos taken in northern France in 1944 show the devastating impact of the Allied Force's battle to defeat the Nazis in WW 2
11. RIP Dick Winters  

New links:
What We Leave Behind    "The first story is a massive installation called The Fallen, by British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss. The Fallen is 9,000 human silhouettes drawn into the sand on the D-Day landing beach of Arromanches, Normandy, to commemorate the lives lost during D-Day. "

Unique photographic record of D-Day by Cambridgeshire veteran   "When Sub Lieutenant Brian Carter from St Ives led his troops onto the beaches at the age of 19, he was carrying a camera and the pictures he took tell their own fascinating story."  Via Support The British Army on Facebook

 

D-Day: "I picked up binoculars and saw bodies floating near the beach," says Normandy landings survivor Brian Carter    ... "As we headed for the beach I realised that we would have to land on top of them, but in no way could we abort the operation.

“ 'We carried on relentlessly until we beached. The door was dropped, the first tank started to roll off, then the officer in charge, standing head and shoulders out of the tank, was shot in the head."   More...

Foreign policy outlook for the near future

Will Hillary Clinton go down with Obama’s foreign policy ship?  "Whatever foreign policy credibility President Obama had left has crumbled in the wake of the backlash over the release of five Taliban terrorists, the decision by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to form a unity government and the newly candid criticism over his disastrous non-policy in Syria.

"The president’s approval ratings on foreign policy are at all-time lows according to CNN/ORC (40 percent) and The Post/ABC News (41 percent) polls." ...

Gitmo Fail   "Obama promised to close Guantánamo. Why is he releasing dangerous detainees and ignoring the rest?"

 

Why Are We Releasing Terrorists Who Kill Girls Because They Go To School?   "Democrats have been promoting the idea that they stand firmly against a “War on Women.” So how come President Obama just released some of that war’s worst aggressors?"

...

"But it seems some people have forgotten the long catalog of the Taliban’s crimes. Politico‘s Blake Hounshell was generally regarded as winning the stiff competition for the stupidest tweet defending the administration’s prisoner swap, when he asked:

 

Blake Hounshell        ✔ @blakehounshell Follow

What's the argument that these five Taliban guys are so dangerous? Are they ninjas? Do they have superpowers? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/02/how-obama-convinced-his-spies-to-support-the-taliban-prisoner-release.html …

...

"The best commentary on the moral status of the Taliban is from a Pakistani girl who escaped from her psychopathic father and brother, who were in the business of training suicide bombers. She told an interviewer: “The Taliban slaughter other people’s children. They turn women into widows. They should be made to suffer, too. I want these Taliban to be burned alive.”

"So no, these guys are not just ordinary, rank-and-file POWs. They’re the worst of the worst, and the only argument against keeping them at Guantanamo is that it’s too good for them." ...

Who's Racist?

Dennis Prager  "No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.

"Given the power of repetition, one consequence is that many Americans, especially young ones, believe that one side of the political spectrum -- the right -- is racist.

"Having been involved with conservatives for about 30 years, I have long known that this isn't true. In fact, the charge of conservative racism is so easily refuted that it is difficult to imagine anyone without a vested interest in libeling conservatives believing it. How, for example, does one explain that the most conservative Republicans were the ones who most supported Herman Cain, the one black running for the Republican presidential nomination n 2012?

"Left-wing commentators offer this response: Conservative support of Cain was essentially a ruse to fool people into believing that conservatives are not the racists we liberals know them to be.
...
"But while I've never associated conservatives with racism, I also never used to associate liberals with racism. But I was naive in this matter. While there are liberals and leftists who are not racist, I have come to understand that many are -- considerably more than conservatives.

"Here are some proofs:"  Read more:
 

Count Mad Magazine as the first pop culture institution to target President Barack Obama’s Taliban prisoner swap.

 

Top Right News  "It’s hard to imagine any other humorist in any other medium hitting back quite so hard in the days to come.

"The magazine posted a fake movie advertisement for Trading Private Bergdahl, a takeoff on the Oscar-winning film Saving Private Ryan." ...
Via Josh Bernstein at Guardian Eagles

If Bergdahl turns out to have been a hero, we'll have a lot of crow to eat.
 

"Death by queueing": Single payer is Root Cause of VA Deaths

Deane Waldman  "The problem with the VA system is the system, a single-payer model. Newspaper headlines shrieked outrage over unconscionable wait times to see a doctor; inadequate operating rooms; and needed medicines not available. This should come as no surprise. That is the way single-payer systems work. That is the norm, not the exception.

"Look to our north for proof, to the single payer system in Canada. Fifteen years ago, a Canadian surgeon named Dr. Ciaran McNamee sued the Alberta Provincial government claiming that patients were dying needlessly, while waiting for authorized (but not funded) care. He had good hard medical data to back up his claim, showing that there were not enough operating rooms, too few nurses or doctors, and insufficient medicines, all due to a government budget allocation process. The phrase applied to these patients, equally appropriate for our veterans, was death-by-queueing."

Deane Waldman MD MBA -- “Dr. Deane”-- is author of The Cancer In Healthcare; Host of The Hidden Enemy Newsletter-&-Forum; member of the Board of Directors of the NM Health Insurance Exchange; Adjunct Scholar for the Rio Grande Foundation; and Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science

My Two Favorite Questions for Global Warmists

"Global warmism remains the most colossal hoax ever perpetrated."

Paul Jacobson     Now it’s time for my Favorite Global Warmism Question #1:

• Did you know that there’s no such thing as a greenhouse gas?

... "Hey, I admit it: Question #1 is something of a semantic teaser. But now it’s time for Favorite Global Warmism Question #2, and this one is really serious:

• How much actual CO2 is there in the atmosphere?

 

 

 

 

... " This means that anthropogenic CO2 emissions must be examined in full context with numerous other climate variables such as solar activity, volcanism, magnetic field shifts, etc. An inquiry like this is certain to be dauntingly, perhaps overwhelmingly, complex if conducted like authentic, inductive science. Global warmism advocates have shamelessly evaded this monumental evidence burden -- and the burden is entirely on them -- by resorting to garbage-in-garbage-out computer models, even outright data fraud and deceitfulness."

Team Hillary distancing themselves from Bergdahl swap?

Hot Air  "The first hint that Hillary Clinton didn’t want to tie herself to the spike-the-football strategy from the White House strategy for the Bowe Bergdahl swap could be described as a dog that didn’t bark. The former Secretary of State held her tongue for two days, and then only tepidly defended the deal in which Barack Obama traded five of the most dangerous men in Gitmo for the captive US soldier:
...
"Forget the bandwagon analogy, and think of sinking ships instead. Within less than a day after that statement, “former officials” in the State Department were busy talking with The Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin to explain that Hillary Clinton would have driven a much harder bargain than Obama, and even then may not have done the swap anyway:" ...

Harry's just wild about it all: Harry Reid: 'Glad' to Get 5 Taliban Out of Gitmo and Into Qatar:

Let's release more yet! " 'Guantanamo has been there far too long, and I think that we should get them out of there as quickly as we can," he said of the remaining 150 prisoners still classified as "enemy combatants" and held without charges."
 

Newsday