Thank you to those that will always remember this day.
June 6
D-Day
The greatest amphibious assault in the history of man.
As a Marine, I salute all those who tread upon the beaches of Normandy.
Sword Beach, Juno Beach, Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, Gold Beach, and Pointe du Hoc.
True American Heros.
Point Du Hoc is the battle made famous in the opening minutes of the film ‘Saving Private Ryan’
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"When I was living in France in '94, and took the train up to Point Du Hoc (well Bayeux, and I cycled the rest). I spent the night in a 105 crater on the site and the next morning watched the 50th anniversary ceremonies. Met about 20 of the original 2nd Batt Rangers. After a 1st Lt from modern day 2nd Batt spotted the Scroll on top of my rucksack, I told my story and got to hang out with them for the afternoon. Quite the experience.
Anyway, before the ceremonies, a bunch of the old studs were watching a modern 2nd Batt Ranger prepare for a rappelling demonstration down one of the cliffs with a harness, gloves and snaplink. One old Ranger (had to be around 70 years old), just grabs the rope and steps over the safety barrier, swings the 3/16th inch triple braid diagonally around his body (no harness, no snaplink, no gloves, no belay, not saying a word or looking at anyone for encouragement) and just walks to the edge and body rappels down this cliff, almost face first (you guys know what a body rappel look s like). About 100ft. All the modern day Rangers just smiled and watched in amazement. One actually moved to stop him, but the other young Rangers pulled him back and told him to shut up and watch. I mean really, who the hell were we to tell this Ranger he couldn’t body rappel down a cliff he likely climbed under fire 50 years before? We were laughing and joking…‘what if he throws a hip…ahh so what, let him do what he wants, he’ s earned a new hip’. Etc, etc. Tasteless Ranger humor, and the other old guys loved it.
And those old guys were hard as woodpecker lips. You could see it in their faces that is they were asked to do it all again right there, they would have. Pretty
inspiring and humbling."
***The Rangers were the toughest, meanest and best-trained troops on Omaha Beach.They had to be.At one end of the beach, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was scaling 100-foot cliffs at Pointe du Hoc. The bony finger jutting into the channel divided the Utah and Omaha beaches and was reported to be defended by six long-range guns capable of blasting both beaches.With Germans firing machine guns and tossing down hand grenades, the Rangers used grappling hooks and ladders borrowed from the London Fire Brigade to reach the top. Of the 225 who started up the cliff, all but 95 were killed or wounded. *****In a Ranger helmet and old jeans, smiling more than he did 50 years ago and met by a cheering family instead of Germans, Don Pechacek scaled the dreaded cliff.‘‘Aw, heck,’’ he said Sunday, as freshly minted Rangers helped him scramble over the top and clucked at blood streaming from a scrape on his right hand. '‘I just got sensitive skin.’'For the little crowd clustered around him, the 72-year-old farmer from Ellsworth, Wis., symbolized the spirit of the men who came back to honor D-Day.On June 6, 1944, his job was to fling a grappling hook above the 120-foot-high cliff face and climb straight up into withering gunfire.
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**Eisenhowers message on D-Day
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one.
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*Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! *
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*I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! *
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*Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. *
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****Reagans 40th anniversary speech
*We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. * ** ** *We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. * ** ** *Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance. * ** ** *The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms. * ** ** *And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor.” * ** ** *I think I know what you may be thinking right now – thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him. * *Lord Lovat was with him – Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken. * ** ** *There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold; and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back. * ** ** *All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots’ Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet,” and you, the American Rangers. * ** ** *Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love. * ** ** *The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. * ** ** *You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you. * ** ** The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought – or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell. * ** ** Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: “Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.” Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” * These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies. * ** ** When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance – a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace. * ** ** *In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest. * ** ** *We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever. * ** ** *It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II. Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action. * ** ** We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it. * ** ** We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we’re with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny. * Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” * ** Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died. * Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
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Uncommon valor the likes of which the world may never again see on such a grand scale. Cannot imagine what was going through the hearts and minds of those boys (and many were, literally, boys) as they stormed those beaches. Simply amazing.
Thanks for the reminder.
clm
I’m starting my long bike trip in August and will be going out of my way to visit the beaches at Normandy. I’m taking the ferry from the south of Ireland and will spend at least a few days in the area.
I’m starting my long bike trip in August and will be going out of my way to visit the beaches at Normandy. I’m taking the ferry from the south of Ireland and will spend at least a few days in the area.
Im jealous
I’m definitely envious! My parents live in The Netherlands and make a pilgrimage to Normandy once a year. They said it’s very humbling and serene.
Yep - we’re too busy spending the last 50+ days trying to fix a busted oil well and trying to find someone to blame.
**I’m definitely envious! My parents live in The Netherlands and make a pilgrimage to Normandy once a year. They said it’s very humbling and serene. **
I was actually going to go from Ireland, across England and then the ferry to Hoek van Holland before heading south to Normandy. I have relatives in Holland as both my parents are Dutch. However, I thought taking a ferry and landing in the Normandy area would be pretty cool.
**Im jealous **
Well, you live near a Dairy Queen so we’re even 
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**I’m definitely envious! My parents live in The Netherlands and make a pilgrimage to Normandy once a year. They said it’s very humbling and serene. **
I’ve been to the cemetary many times and have seen the large Dutch contingent represented there, with young children walking very solemnly through the grounds. Very touching.
I’ve been spending a good bit of time in the Holocaust Museum lately; far too much to absorb in just one or two visits. The implications of a failed D-Day invasion are made vividly clear in those haunting halls.
The following is a description of the findings at the concentration camp in Nordhausen, (Mittelbau Dora) liberated by my wife’s grandfather’s Division (medic, 3A. Joined by the 4th just prior to arrival) in April of 1945:
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“In Nordhausen the Division found a large German concentration camp for political prisoners, discovering 5,000 corpses among the 6,000 inmates in various stages of decay. The corpses were scattered throughout the buildings and grounds of the large camp and all of them appeared to have been starved to such an extent that they were mere skeletons wrapped in skin. Most of the bodies apparently lay untouched since death had overtaken them, but some were stacked like cordwood under stairways. In almost all bunkers and buildings the living were found lying among the dead. In one corner was a pile of arms and legs. All medical personnel that could be spared in the Division were rushed to the scene to give medical aid. Hundreds of the male citizens of the town were ordered to the camp, where under guard, they worked several days carrying litter cases and collecting corpses by hand. They dug mass graves on a prominent hill near the camp and carried the corpses through the town to the graves.” Sergeant Ragene Farris of the 329th Medical Battalion,104th Infantry Division, was there and explained the impact of the gruesome sights at Nordhausen upon the men of the 104th:
"For days and weeks, even months afterwards, the word Nordhausen brought us a mixed response of emotions. We were battle-tired and combat-wise medics, and we thought there was nothing left in the books we didn’t know. Yet in a short period of two days I and many others of the Division saw and lived a story we shall never forget.
The strongly Nazified town of Nordhausen fell before air-armor and night attack on 11 April. Our S-2, Captain Johnson, brought the news that we were needed to evacuate patients from a concentration camp in one of the large factory areas of the city. Lying among the multitudes of dead were reported to be a few living ‘beings’, and with quick medical attention some might be saved. Colonel Taggart called into action, early 12 April, the litter bearers and medical technicians as well as any other men available from duties with our own wounded. In a caravan of trucks we rushed into a job which proved unbelievable to an American; a job distasteful and sobering; one created by the fanatical inhuman Nazi machine. We found out the full meaning of the words ‘Concentration Camp.’
Bombs had ground flesh and bones into the cement floor. Rows upon rows of skin-covered skeletons met our eyes. Men lay as they starved, discolored, and lying in indescribable human filth. Their striped coats and prison numbers hung to their frames as a last token of those who enslaved and killed them. In this large motor shop there were no living beings; only the distorted dead. We went to the stairs and under the casing were neatly piled about seventy-five bodies, a sight I could never erase from memories. Dying on the second floor were, upon later count, about twenty-five men or half-men. Some of these, lying in double-decked wooden bedsteads, were grotesquely still, yet hanging tenaciously to life’s breath. They were still alive.
We saw, at a quick survey, this was to be as big a medical job as we had been called upon to do. Speed would save lives, so we fell into a day of evacuation, hospitalization, and feeding, unparalleled to any day of combat. It became evident almost immediately that our few medics could not evacuate hundreds of patients, set up improvised hospital wards, and feed many mouths without help. So under the leadership of Colonel Jones and Chaplain Steinbeck, who spoke German, we rounded up German civilians on the streets of this Nazi city as we saw them. The order was, “You will work.” In this manner, about one hundred German litter bearers were gathered up and rushed to the scene.
I was accosted by a less emaciated prisoner who asked if anyone spoke French. When I answered, he brightened and related that a group of Frenchmen had established a small colony in the large cellar of another building, and would I please bring aid to them. This was my signal to get into gear, and off across bomb-cratered grounds we picked our way to this particular building. There were many bodies strewn about. One girl in particular I noticed; I would say she was about seventeen years old. She lay there where she had fallen, gangrened and naked. In my own thoughts I choked up - couldn’t quite understand how and why war could do these things. But my job crowded out any serious impressions at the moment. Only later I thought of what I had seen. Now we approached the cellar stairs leading to the French group. I heard ‘monsieur’ very softly, and at my feet, lying as if dead, was a cadaverous man; he raised up and said, in beautiful Parisian French, that if he were stronger he would honor me by the traditional kiss on either cheek. I learned that he was a captain from France’s famous Saint Cyr Military Academy and had received particularly sadistic attention from the SS Troopers. He looked to be seventy-five but was only forty-five. His last step had taken him to the edge of the stairs. He had gone as far as possible to escape the fury of war when the Americans fought into Nordhausen. He lay dust-covered, where he had nearly been crushed by falling walls - yet he displayed remarkable discipline and composure. With care, he was lifted upon a litter and taken to our waiting ambulances. I often wonder if he made it back to life, and if he had ever been able to tell his story.
We went downstairs into a filth indescribable, accompanied by a horrible dead-rot stench. There in beds of crude wood I saw men too weak to move dead comrades from their side. One hunched-down French boy was huddled up against a dead comrade, as if to keep warm, having no concept that the friend had been dead two or three days and unable to move his own limbs. There were others, in dark cellar rooms, lying in disease and filth, being eaten away by diarrhea and malnutrition. It was like stepping into the Dark Ages to walk into one of these cellar-cells and seek out the living; like walking into a world apart and returning to bring these shadow-men into the environment of a clean American ambulance. In one bomb crater lay about twenty bodies. We pulled three or four feebly struggling living ones from the bottom of the pile; they had been struggling for five or six days to get out but the weight of the other bodies piled on them had been too much for their starved, emaciated frames. We saw those on a bank who had been cut down by machine guns in trying to escape the fury of the guards. I saw one man feebly stagger to attention and salute us as tears slowly trickled down his cheeks. Too weak to walk, this man was genuinely moved to pay tribute to those who were helping him - showing him the first kind act in years. A few men were able to walk on their swollen, bulging feet; they had no shoes and they were unbelievably dirty. There were lash marks on many of their scantily covered backs - definite proof of beatings and floggings by their inhuman guards. One Parisian business told me he had been kicked and beaten repeatedly. He was comparatively healthy, as he had been in camp only three months. He told me that many of the 3,000 dead in the camp had been worked, beaten and forced at top speed until they could work on longer, after which they were starved off or killed outright."
-and a letter written by one of the few survivors of Nordhausen, many years later:
Born July 22,1926 (72 years old) at Villers-Vermont (Oise) France
Present Address:
Residence “Gilles de Lorris”, 30 rue des Tanneurs, 60400 Noyon France (100km North of Paris)
Oldest son of 10 children. Lived the first 10 years on farms at villers-Vermont until 8 years old then at St Samson La Poterie until 10 years old with his Grandmothers and parents.
Then his family moved to Noyon where he still resides. From 1936 to 1940 attended primary school in Noyon and then started working to help out the family. From 1940 to 1944 worked in a factory.
On June 6, 1944 (D-Day), He joins, in the forest near Noyon, The “Maquis des Usages” (resistance movement) to fight the Germans.
Recycled weapons, Grenades, guns. Reception of British parachutes. Also gave aid to British and American Aviators that were shot down.
On June 23, 1944 “Le Maquis” (The resistant team) is attacked by the Germans, 2 resistance fighters were killed and we killed 6 German soldiers. The fight is tough. With our machine guns (British machine guns called STEN ) we won over the forty German Soldiers, when we were only twelve. Two of us were only seventeen and an half years old. We were in a hunting chalet surrounded by the Germans that we had to repel to escape.
We took the opportunity, after they retreated in a truck, to escape and walk 15 km in the forest. The next day the Germans came back and bombed the chalet. The Gestapo organized a man-hunt so we took refuge in huge under ground caves.
On returning to Noyon to inform my family, the Gestapo arrests me on July 20th, 1944. They took me to the Prison of Compiegne where I’m questioned and tortured.
On August 16th, 1944 we were moved to the camp of Royallieu near Compiegne, where other resistance fighters were gathered from all over France. 55,000 resistance fighters left Compiegne during the war for concentration camps in Germany.
The next day August 17th, 1944, we are locked in animal wagons (80-90 person per wagon) in Compiegne forest. Our destination is the concentration camp of Buchenwald where we arrived 92 hours later, completely dehydrated. It was during August in a incredible heat, we received only a 1/4 liter of water during the trip. People were dying, others were losing there mind. Some of them were leeching the water condensation on the steel at night. For the toilette facility only a metallic bucket in the middle of the wagon with an unbearable odor, was available.
We arrived at Buchenwald exhausted on August 21st, 1944. Strong people became in 92 hours very old. We slept for 3 weeks outside on the garbage heap of the" big Camp". We were shaved from head to toe and given a striped uniform.
August 23rd, 1944 the camp of Buchenwald is bombed by the allies. The factory near the camp and 58 barracks (Headquarters) are destroyed. Not too much damage in the camp but three hundred prisoners (deportees) are killed.
Towards September 10th, 1944 I’m sent via “Transport Train” towards the Dutch border We cross Cologne (koln), go down the Rhine towards Koblenz. The allies are progressing so fast that we never leave the wagons and the train is forced to return to Buchenwald. The Germans only took food for the way in so on the way back we stayed three days without anything to eat.
Two days later I got really depressed when I learned that I’m leaving For the Camp of Dora (Nordhausen) to work in the underground Factory of the 'Mittelbau where we built the VI and V2 rockets. Only dead comes back from Dora in Wagons and trucks to be burned in the crematorium of Buchenwald.
From September 15th 1944 to the beginning of April 1945 I was in the most cruel Hell. Twelve hours per day or night (eighteen hours when we rotate team) we must carry on our back extremely heavy equipment in and out of the tunnel With almost nothing in our stomach, under the rain, snow, mud, in extremely cold weather, clothed in a poor outfit, wood clogs with fabric on top which get hooked in everything and under the beatings of the “55” and “Kapos” (Often ex criminals just out of jail).
I touch the bottom of misery and mental distress. Although, I had a strong constitution from a very athletic life, my health declined rapidly. I was admitted at the “Revier” (nursery) toward March 15th 1945 for complication to a wound received in the temple by a Polish “Kapos”. From then on, my health became worse with numerous diseases one after the other: Pleuresie, Lymphangite, dysentrie, etc… (I don’t know the English translation of those diseases).
April 3rd and 6th evacuation of the Camp of Dora. People in Charge of the “Revier” wanted to evacuate us right away, they said that everything will be destroyed with flame throwers. With my extreme weakness I tried to go down on the Appel Plaza. But when I see the poor people in front of me being beat with tool handles, I hide behind a barracks and go back in the block where the nurse immediately sent me back out. So, I went around the Block and pushed a window who thank God opened. I’m in a empty room and my Heart is beating really fast. I collapse and lose consciousness.
When I finally regained consciousness I saw the town of Nordhausen Burning about 7 km away. It was only when I came back to France that I learned that the "SS"put thousand of prisoners (Deportees) incapable of working in their barracks. The allies thought they were bombing a military installation. Around 1500 prisoners (Deportees) were killed.
On the 7th or 8th of April, the “SS” abandon Dora except for a few dying prisoners (Deportees) like me. The camp is evacuated. We stayed a few days in the “no man’s land”.
On April 11th, 1945 The American Army investigate the tunnel and the Camp Of Dora. Shocked they discovered about a hundred men dying in the Revier (nursery). The First military man that I saw was a Canadian Captain who spoke French. They distribute some food. It was so good, since we were dying of hunger for the last nine months. Only skin were left on our bones.
April 19th, 1945, we had gained a little more strength so they walk us to the airfield of Nordhausen. There Dakotas (Airplanes) Bring supplies to the front. American Military set tents, there is on tables some beautiful white bread, but nobody to care for us. Maybe to avoid diseases? But also because of the war they didn’t have time for us. They let us sleep outside, fortunately, it doesn’t rain. I lay down on the workshop of a demolished building.
On April 2Oth, 1945 a Dakota took us from Nordhausen to “Le Bourget” Airport near Paris, where Parisian people discover what deportation is.
On April 2lth, 1945 I returned to my house in Noyon by train. I am very tired. It will take me several months to recover For more than 15 years I’ll have nightmares every night.
I will get married on December 19’h, 1946. We will have four children, two died. We have today Jean-Marc born on July 11th, 1948 and Sophie born on July 26th, 1965 married to Sylvester Samuels a U.S. Marine who lives in Oceanside, California.
Today, I’m 72 years old I’m retired after working 50 years. 37 and a half years in Civil Service (Travaux Publics de l’Etat).
From the 10 to 19 April, 1945 in the Dora Camp when I was resting in the sun in front of a block some American Soldiers photographed me. I remember in particular a black soldier I’d like to find those photographs because the one I have were taken more than a month after my return, and after numerous care.
Thank you for the courageous and brave American Soldiers who came to rescue us. Without them I would not be able, 54 years later, to write these lines. Honors to those who gave their life to make this possible.
Michel Depierre.
Thank you for posting that.
Never forget.
Thank you to those that will always remember this day.
June 6
I’m a little late with this reply…but thanks Rodred- classy post. No other words necessary.
Thank you to those that will always remember this day.
June 6
Erik Erikson makes a good point about the actual heroism, which is what those folks back then demonstrated routinely, that was on display on D-Day and heroism in what he calls “an age of ordinariness”:
Yesterday was the anniversary of D-Day. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and sailors were willing to risk everything, including their lives, to take Europe back from tyranny. They were real heroes, but also ordinary men. In this day, too often we treat people as heroes because they took a vote in Congress or spoke truth to power, whatever that means, or did something run-of-the-mill that plays to our own personal sense and sensibility without really being extraordinary. We search for heroes in an age of ordinariness.
Those men on the beaches on June 6, 1944 were HEROES. They may not have even wanted to go down those ramps to face what they knew was coming, but they did it and many never saw the setting of the sun later that day as a consequences. Sure, there are real heroes today – and I mean actually heroic, and among folks outside of the military – but we seem so much more “ordinary” nowadays, and blase about everything. It’s almost like that fellow Erikson says: Somebody casts a vote in the Congress that might not be too popular and he’s all-of-a-sudden hailed in the press for his “heroic actions.” Eh? I’m not too sure that that definition of “hero” is quite what was originally intended.
Another June 6th.
Eisenhowers message on D-Day
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one.
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*Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! *
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*I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! *
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*Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. *
The* 506th PIR took off for their first combat jump at 0100hrs, 6 June 1944. In the predawn hours of D-Day a combination of low clouds, and enemy anti-aircraft fire caused the break-up of the troop carrier formations. The scattering of the air armada was such that only nine of the eighty-one planes scheduled to drop their men on the Drop Zone (DZ) found their mark. Consequently, the sporadic jump patterns caused most of the troopers to land far afield of their designated DZ. Some of the sticks landed as far away as 20 miles from the designated area. Only the 3rd Battalion landed in close proximity to their designated DZ. However, the area had long been recognized by the Germans as a likely spot for a parachute assault. The Germans set a strategic trap and in less than 10 minutes managed to kill the battalion commander, Lt Col Wolverton, his executive officer Maj George Grant and a large portion of the battalion. The only part of the battalion that survived were those who were dropped in the wrong DZ. These two planeloads of troopers under the leadership of Capt Charles Shettle managed to accomplish the battalion’s objective of capturing the two bridges over the Douve River. The men of the remaining battalions fought valiantly in small groups, and as others joined them, they moved towards their objectives. Just prior to the landing of seaborne forces, the high ground overlooking the beaches was seized and held by the men of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.*
One of the more memorable days on my 1.5 year bike trip was a visit to Normandy (see the post above from 2010). There was something eery and unsettling but thoroughly humbling to spend a very rainy day inside a museum reading about the American and Canadian soldiers facing that landing on June 6th.
I’ll never forget that day or what they did for all of us.
Monument unveiled in Normandy today bearing the likeness of Maj. Dick Winters of Band of Brothers fame, dedicated to all the junior officers who served that day.