From the American Experience introduction to a documentary on the Normandy Landings:
"It should never be forgotten that, of all events of our tumultuous 20th century, perhaps the most important was the defeat of the Nazi empire; and for a long and very dark time, for nearly five years, that outcome was by no means certain. D-Day was the turning point. It was day one of the final drive to complete Allied victory."
Everything I once knew about D-Day came from grainy black-and-white images I saw as a kid on television documentaries. Utah Beach. Juno Beach. Sword Beach. Gold Beach. And "Bloody Omaha", where all the shells from the battleships off shore overshot their targets of German bunkers and machine gun nests and the GI's poured out of landing craft to take the brunt of the horror on that horrific day.
Watching "The Longest Day" (1962) on television--the first time all chopped up to allow for all-important commercial breaks--gave me some idea of the scope of the "Great Crusade", although the landings as a maw of death and dismemberment didn't hit home until I read more about the European "Theater of War" in books like Cornelius Ryan's book that the film was based on and Stephen Ambrose's "Citizen Soldier".
The late Mr. Ambrose once explained to a radio interviewer that it would have been almost impossible to a American to have landed at Normandy and fight his way to Germany without being killed or wounded. His only hope of survival was a "million dollar wound"--a bullet to the body that was not lethal but would make it possible to return to England or home. The opening to the movie "Saving Private Ryan" showed us in graphic ways what the odds were of even surviving Omaha Beach if you were in the earliest waves of troops. Many who landed that day never left France as mortal men.
That the greater might of the Wehrmacht was concentrated in places like Stalingrad and other points along the Eastern Front is historically beyond refute. But the Normandy Landings were a real liberation of captive people--an end not only to fascism but a chance for France and its neighbors to renew their national identity.
D-Day came in the fifth year of the war in Europe. Today Americans are in the fifth year of a war very different in commitment and scope, but much the same for those who have to go out on patrols and face enemy fire.
What would the honored dead from those beaches and hedgerows of France say to the young American and British men who serve in Iraq today, or the broader transnational NATO forces in Afghanistan? I think they would find common bonds in terms of their shared fears at being placed so far from home, for fighting for people whose language and customs were so alien to them, at staring into death at often a very young age and seeing their friends lose their lives in ways seared into their minds to their own last day on earth.
Whatever we think of this current war, we should accord the men and women who are actually fighting it with the same honor and respect most all of our countrymen gave in 1945-6 to the men lucky enough to return home after D-Day.
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Total Allied casualties on D-Day estimated at 10,000 including 2,500 dead
British Casualties approximately 2700
Canadians 946
US, 6603
British Beaches – Gold- 1000, Sword 1000
British Airborne, 600 KIA or WIA and 600 missing
100 glider pilots became casualties
3rd Canadian Division – 340 KIA, 574 WIA, 47 POW
US casualties- 1465 – KIA, 3184 WIA, 1928 MIA, 26 Captured. These totals include Airborne casualties of 2400 including 238 KIA.
US lst and 29th Divisons suffered around 2000 on Omaha
UTAH- 297 including 60 Mia
German casualties on D-Day not known but estimated between 4,000 and 9,000 men
Casualty Listings From D-Day Museum, USA, Website
D-DAY links:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070606/pl_afp/usfrancemilitarydday_070606133851
photo: Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. From FDR Museum Website.
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