D Day

D Day was 6 June 1944, the day when the Allies invaded Europe, landing in Normandy on five beaches, Juno, Gold, Sword, Omaha and Utah. See The ruins of Normandy - Unpublished color photos taken in northern France in 1944 show the devastating impact of the Allied Force's battle to defeat the Nazis in World War 2 or look at D-Day veterans return to exact spots where they battled Nazis. The first to land arrived by glider from Tarrant Rushton. The pilot, Jim Wallwork tells us all about the Flight To Pegasus. It was written up by Mark Steyn at June 6th 1944 on the 75th anniversary; a worthy commentary.

But D Day Was Not About Democracy. So said Gwynne Dyer on 8 June 2014 [ D + 2 ]  He lectured at Sandhurst so he has informed views about war. Yes, the Russians did the heavy lifting. They were helped by the winter.

PS Some background is at:-
Pegasus Bridge
Gold Beach

D Day Then - D Day Now                 
These photos are seventy years on. One or two men jumped, men who were there first time. It pretty much has to be their last.

 

D Day ex Wiki
QUOTE
The Normandy landings were the landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, also known as Operation Neptune and Operation Overlord, during World War II. The landings commenced on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 (D-Day), beginning at 6:30 AM British Double Summer Time (UTC+2). In planning, D-Day was the term used for the day of actual landing, which was dependent on final approval.

The assault was conducted in two phases: an air assault landing of 24,000 British, American, Canadian and Free French airborne troops shortly after midnight, and an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armoured divisions on the coast of France commencing at 6:30 AM. There were also decoy operations mounted under the codenames Operation Glimmer and Operation Taxable to distract the German forces from the real landing areas.
UNQUOTE
Bill Millin was there. So was Ron, he jumped on to Pegasus Bridge to hold the eastern flank.

 

Field Marshal Montgomery     
Arrived on D+2 with Johnny Johnson, his signaller, his Roll-Royce(?) and others. He made his HQ at the Château de Creullet, notwithstanding Nigel Cawthorne's book, Fighting Them on the Beaches The D-Day Landings June 6, 1944; which opts for the Château de Creully. You have to accept that Monty's taste was good. He made it without using the Mulberry Harbour; it did not get operational until after the storm on D+13 = 19 June.

 

Field Marshal Montgomery ex Wiki
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG GCB, DSO, PC, DL ( 17 November 1887 – 24 March 1976), nicknamed "Monty" and "The Spartan General",[10] was a senior British Army officer who fought in both the First World War and the Second World War.

Montgomery first saw action in the First World War as a junior officer of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper, during the First Battle of Ypres On returning to the Western Front as a general staff officer, he took part in the Battle of Arras in April/May 1917. He also took part in the Battle of Passchendaele in late 1917 before finishing the war as chief of staff of the 47th (2nd London) Division.

In the inter-war years he commanded the 17th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers and, later, the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before becoming commander of 9th Infantry Brigade and then General officer commanding (GOC) 8th Infantry Division.

During the Western Desert campaign of the Second World War, Montgomery commanded the British Eighth Army from August 1942, through the Second Battle of El Alamein and on to the final Allied victory in Tunisia in May 1943. He subsequently commanded the British Eighth Army during the Allied invasion of Sicily and the Allied invasion of Italy and was in command of all Allied ground forces during the Battle of Normandy (Operation Overlord), from D-Day on 6 June 1944 until 1 September 1944. He then continued in command of the 21st Army Group for the rest of the North West Europe campaign, including the failed attempt to cross the Rhine during Operation Market Garden.

When German armoured forces broke through the American lines in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery was given command of the northern shoulder of the Bulge. This included temporary command of the US First Army and the US Ninth Army, which held up the German advance to the north of the Bulge while the US Third Army under Patton relieved Bastogne from the south.

Montgomery's 21st Army Group, including the US Ninth Army and the First Allied Airborne Army, crossed the Rhine in Operation Plunder in March 1945, two weeks after the US First Army had crossed the Rhine in the Battle of Remagen. By the end of the war, troops under Montgomery's command had taken part in the encirclement of the Ruhr Pocket, liberated the Netherlands, and captured much of north-west Germany. On 4 May 1945, Montgomery accepted the surrender of the German forces in North-western Europe at Lüneburg Heath, east of Hamburg, after the surrender of Berlin to the USSR on 2 May.

After the war he became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in Germany and then Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1946–1948). From 1948 to 1951, he served as Chairman of the Commanders-in-Chief Committee of the Western Union. He then served as NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe until his retirement in 1958.

 

Americans Were There As Well
QUOTE
Extremely rare and striking photos of the days leading up to and after the historic D-Day invasion have been put on display, nearly 70 years after World War II's dramatic turning point. The full-colour images, taken by photographer Frank Scherschel, display anxious American soldiers as they prepared for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy...........  Thousands of Allied soldiers, mostly from the United States, Britain and Canada, landed in Normandy to begin the drive to break the German occupation of Europe.
UNQUOTE
One American shows off his table manners. One hopes his mother did not see the picture.

 

The Italian(?) is much better.

 

D Day Build Up
QUOTE
While in Santa Ana, “the order came through that we were preparing a full-scale invasion of Europe and that anyone with ground force training had to report,” Frank recalls. “They needed medics to support the invasion, so they gave me a seven-day furlough and then shipped me out to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, where we got our shots and then headed for England.”

“We went over in April of ’44 in a convoy of ships as far as the eye could see. We ended up in a tent city at Bournemouth, England, somewhere in southern England, in big tents. All the roads, all the lanes, were loaded with half-tracks and tanks and equipment. You’d think the whole island of England was going to sink.”

“I was a replacement among thousands that had gathered for the invasion. I was assigned to the 175th Regiment of the 29th Division as a medic” The 29th had been rehearsing beach landings in England since fall of 1944. Before long, his new comrades were calling him ‘Doc’.
 
Troops preparing to board ships on D-Day in Weymouth, England.
[ D - 1 in fact - Editor ]

“On June 5, 1944, we boarded a troop ship at Weymouth, England. There were a couple thousand men on the ship. It took us across the channel until we were maybe 150 yards from the shore, then it lowered the nets. We scrambled down the nets into an LCI-Landing Craft Infantry—and then the landing craft circled until each unit was all on the water. All this time, we were being shot at.”
UNQUOTE
Weymouth was an invasion port, whether it was going to be Germans going one way or Allies going the other. Fortunately it was a jumping off point for D Day rather than part of Operation Sea Lion.

 

Normandy Took A Beating

It has been rebuilt since. Parts of Germany were even worse.

 


The blokes are taking it in their stride.

 

American Soldiers Raped France [ 14 June 2013 ]
QUOTE
The handsome American soldier was Elisabeth’s tenth client that evening. Working her trade on the top floor of a dingy apartment block in Paris, she felt that she had seen them all. For the past four years, the men had been Germans, and now, since the city had been liberated in August, 1944, they were Americans. It made little difference........... It is, of course, a horrific fact of war that soldiers rape the women of the lands they conquer. Many troops — but certainly not all — see female flesh as a justified spoil, something they deserve after fighting with the husbands, fathers and sons of the women they abuse.

Rape is also a way by which one nation signifies that it now has dominance over another. [ Written by a Feminist on the make - Editor ].....

Many thousands of German women and girls, for example, were raped by Russian troops in the battle for Berlin at the end of World War II........ In total, it is estimated that some 14,000 women were raped by American GIs in Western Europe from 1942 to 1945. In France, 152 American soldiers were tried for rape, of whom 29 were hanged........

However, some justice was needed to be seen to be done, but even that process was deeply flawed. Of the mere 152 men who were tried for rape, 139 of the defendants were ‘coloured’. It appears that the American Army was keen to treat black soldiers as scapegoats, and labelled them as being ‘hypersexual’ and therefore more likely to be rapists......

French victims were asked to identify their assailants from entire battalions of black soldiers, although often the rapes had been carried out in rooms that were barely lit, if at all. In addition, another unpalatable truth is that many French women were as racist as the American officers.

Fears that some sort of ‘black terror’ was being unleashed on women in Normandy were carried far and wide, and it was all too easy to pin a crime on to a black soldier rather than a white one.
UNQUOTE
A 'Feminist' on the make explains the horrors of rape by licentious soldiery. Is she a 'Lesbian' marketing her foul desires? She proves that she is another 'Cultural Marxist' by her claims that blacks were not the foremost rapists. Every excuse and any. Nine out of ten accused were black. It sounds convincing to me but that is Politically Incorrect. The Mail is marketing her propaganda. Buy it? Not me.
PS There is no mention of the fact that the Americans murdered well over a million German prisoners of war by starvation and exposure. See Eisenhower's Death Camps on the point. But that was part of the Morgenthau Plan in action. Morgenthau was a Jew who hated Germans which is why he had them killed.

 

Normandy After D Day
QUOTE
The devastation wreaked on the beaches of Normandy in northwest France as the Allies unleashed their history-changing assault against the Germans has been well-documented. But in color photos taken by LIFE.com’s Frank Scherschel, but not published at the time, countless other scenes 'of the beginning of the end of the war' were captured. From the reception troops enjoyed on their way to Paris to the jubilant liberation of the capital from Nazi control, these recently-released photos bring into the focus the spirit of the historic invasion on the 69th anniversary of the landings.
American Army trucks parade down the Champs-Elysées the day after the liberation of Paris by French and Allied troops, August 1944

American Army trucks parade down the Champs-Elysées the day after the liberation of Paris by French and Allied troops, August 1944
Life after the French capital was liberated in August 1944

Life after the French capital was liberated in August 1944
 Troops and civilians pass the time on Henley Bridge, Henley-on-Thames, in 1944

Troops and civilians pass the time on Henley Bridge, Henley-on-Thames, in 1944

Photographer Scherschel (1907-1981) was an award-winning staff shooter for LIFE well into the 1950s.

On June 6, 1944, about 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normandy region.

By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans.

The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe.

Veterans of the 1944 Normandy landings gathered earlier this month on June 6 at the site of history's largest amphibious invasion for a day of ceremonies marking D-Day's 69th anniversary.
Captured German troops: From D-Day until Christmas 1944, German prisoners of war were shipped off to American detention facilities at a rate of 30,000 per month

Captured German troops: From D-Day until Christmas 1944, German prisoners of war were shipped off to American detention facilities at a rate of 30,000 per month
Allied troops uniting with locals in liberated French towns after D-Day

Allied troops uniting with locals in liberated French towns after D-Day
 An American tank crew takes a breather on the way through the town of Avranches, Normandy, in the summer of 1944

An American tank crew takes a breather on the way through the town of Avranches, Normandy, in the summer of 1944
 Operation Overlord Normandy: Four Allied soldiers are looking at a map with two French police officers in the center of a town in Normandy, June 1944

Operation Overlord Normandy: Four Allied soldiers are looking at a map with two French police officers in the center of a town in Normandy, June 1944
 In England, American soldiers, having loaded their equipment and supplies onto a landing craft tank, await the signal to begin the D-Day invasion, June 1944
In England, American soldiers, having loaded their equipment and supplies onto a landing craft tank, await the signal to begin the D-Day invasion, June 1944
 Two American members of the Women's Army Corps are looking at a map presented by a uniformed Frenchman in July 1944, after Cherbourg, France, was liberated by the U.S. Army

Two American members of the Women's Army Corps are looking at a map presented by a uniformed Frenchman in July 1944, after Cherbourg, France, was liberated by the U.S. Army
 In the wake of World War II's D-Day invasion, French townspeople wave at arriving Allied forces, Normandy, France, 1944

In the wake of World War II's D-Day invasion, French townspeople wave at arriving Allied forces, Normandy, France, 1944
 Three girls are playing in the sand next to a war-damaged vehicle in Cherbourg, July 1944

Three girls are playing in the sand next to a war-damaged vehicle in Cherbourg, July 1944
 French couple sharing cognac with American tank crew after Allied forces liberated the area
French couple sharing cognac with American tank crew after Allied forces liberated the area
The men of the Wehrmacht look like good soldiers. They fought well in during their withdrawal.

 

Last Survivor Of D Day Raid Dies [ 7 August 2017 ]
Fred Milward, a sergeant of the 9th (Eastern and Home Counties) Parachute Battalion [ 9 PARA ] was one of 75 men to survive the D Day attack on the Merville Gun Battery. There are not many left. They risked all for England, then were betrayed by the political class.

 

Meet The Real Unsung Heroes Of D-Day     [ 22 September 2018 ]
They mention Bill Millin & Lord Lovat but not Ron Perry. Such is life.

 

Queen Elizabeth Pays Tribute To The Men Who Were There On D Day   [ 6 June 2019 ]
QUOTE
The Queen delivered a poignant speech, paying tribute to the resilience of "the wartime generation - my generation" as part of the D-Day commemorations in Portsmouth. An emotionally-charged performance was watched by world leaders, royalty and hundreds of veterans in Portsmouth to mark the 75th anniversary of the landings..........

Some 60,000 members of the public are expected to attend the Portsmouth Naval Memorial on Southsea Common for the event over the course of the day, which marks the 75th anniversary of the biggest amphibious invasion in military history. Considered a turning point in the Second World War, Operation Overlord saw thousands killed and injured after it launched on June 6 1944.

As part of the commemorations, a selected few will re-enact the parachute jump in Normandy............................

Representatives from every country that fought alongside the UK will attend commemorations as well as The Prince of Wales, members of the armed forces and veterans, all of whom are over 90 years old.
UNQUOTE
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II said the right things in the right way. Donald Trump was there too.

 

 

D Day Now

France still looks like France. It is quieter now.

Things happened at Pegasus Bridge. It was the eastern flank, held by 7 PARA.

IN PICTURES: Normandy now and then

Reuters photographer Chris Holmgren returned to the beaches of Normandy, 70 years after the invasion.

From http://www.haaretz.com/news/world/1.597268

A tourist on Juno.

 

Tourists walking in Trévières, August 2013.

 

Canadians patrolling in St-Pierre Street, France in June 1944,  with Lee-Enfields and a .303 Bren gun

 

Today it is quieter.

 

 

Women crossing a street in Carentan

Visitors near Gold Beach

 

An American aircraft on Juno Beach, after Canadian forces landed, June 1944.

 

Americans moving toward the harbour in Weymouth on D - 1

 

The Front at Weymouth now. That girl looks suspicious.

 

German POWs on Juno

 

American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division driving a commandeered German vehicle in Carentan, June 1944.

 

Men with tanks on the move at Gold Beach

Dead German in Trévières, June 1944.