June 6, 1944: Against all odds

[thedrifter]

Issue Date: June 07, 2004

June 6, 1944: Against all odds
Years of planning, Ike’s leadership laid foundation for D-Day success

By Jim Tice
Times staff writer

When 150,000 American, British and Canadian forces assaulted beaches and drop zones on the Normandy coast of France on June 6, 1944, they were executing a strategy conceived four years earlier, well before the United States officially entered the war.
“The Europe First strategy actually emerged in the late-1930s, when a war with Germany became a possibility,” said military history professor Dr. Christopher Gabel, referring to the plan to strike at Germany and destroy its war machine.

The American and British chiefs of staff held secret meetings in early 1941 to plot strategy, “which was quite remarkable given our officially neutral stance at the time,” said Gabel of the Army’s Combat Studies Institute, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Because the United States had very little in the way of armed forces in 1939, “we could build the Army from the ground up to invade Germany,” he said. “I think it was very important that we knew where we wanted to go, and we stuck to that concept.

The ascendancy of Ike

the Americans and British agreed early on that a single officer, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, would command the invasion of Europe — a unique position that went to Eisenhower in December 1943.

“If the selection of a supreme commander had been made [earlier in] 1943, it probably would have gone to a British general, because the bulk of the invasion troops and equipment would have been British,” Gabel said.

Once in command, Eisenhower had unprecedented authority over operational and tactical decisions involving millions of American and Allied troops, according to Gabel and Lt. Col. John Suprin, an assistant professor of military history at the staff college.

“The invasion originally was scheduled for June 5, and two days before, Eisenhower gets a report that the weather will be bad on that date, so he postpones it,” Gabel said. “The following day, he got a report for June 6 that the weather would be marginal, and he made a decision to launch the assault.”

Choosing Normandy

By the time Eisenhower became supreme commander in late 1943, Allied leaders already had determined that the Normandy coast of France offered the most feasible avenue of attack into the heart of Germany.

The chief reason was the overriding need to secure a deepwater port that could be used in the buildup of forces and materiel for the drive into Germany. Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula, about 30 to 40 miles from the future U.S. invasion beaches, was a favorite of the planners.

The second consideration was the range of air power, particularly British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters.

“This invasion is going to hinge on tactical air support, and the British aircraft had a limited range, much shorter than American aircraft,” Gabel said.

The third reason Normandy was selected was that it was suitable for an amphibious assault because it had little in the way of mud flats, marshes and cliffs.

Omaha Beach, best option

The Allies chose to invade at Omaha Beach, a five-mile stretch of sand in front of Colleville-de-Mer, because of its proximity to Cherbourg.

“If you want to go to Cherbourg, you’ve got to land at Omaha,” Gabel said. “The characteristics of Omaha are bad, but they are not showstoppers. There are cliffs there, but there also are four draws, or gullies, that allow exits.

“Our bad luck at Omaha wasn’t so much that it was a bad beach selection, but that there was an entire German division, the 352nd Infantry, that we didn’t know about.”

The other U.S. beach was Utah, landing site of the 4th Infantry Division on the Cotentin and the right flank of the 1st Infantry Division.

Just hours before the amphibious assaults, U.S. forces conducted two major airborne operations. One, by the 101st Airborne Division, was designed to open exits from Utah Beach. The second, conducted by the 82nd Airborne Division, focused on the capture of Ste. Mere Eglise, a critical road juncture that linked Utah and Omaha.

Daylight on D-Day

As dawn broke on June 6, German defenders along “Hitler’s Atlantic Wall” gazed out on the largest armada in world history. Under Operation Neptune, the Allies had massed nearly 5,000 ships, including nine battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, 71 large landing craft and thousands of troop transports, minesweepers and cargo craft. At 5:30 a.m., a deafening barrage of naval gunfire opened on the beaches occupied by the Germans, detonating minefields and destroying many obstacles and defensive positions along the vaunted Atlantic Wall.

Allied close-air support was everywhere. Fighters and bombers flew 11,000 sorties against artillery positions, railroad junctions, troop concentrations, headquarters and other high-value targets.

On Utah Beach, the naval bombardment lasted one hour; by 6:30 a.m., troops of the 4th Infantry Division were surging ashore under heavy fire. Within three hours, the men had collapsed the German beach defense, and U.S. soldiers and supplies were moving inland. At day’s end, 23,000 soldiers had come ashore at Utah, at a cost of 197 casualties.

It was a much different scene at Omaha Beach. Rough seas swamped landing craft, not only making the soldiers seasick and wobbly, but dooming 57 of 96 amphibious tanks that were supposed to clear exits off the sprawling, sandy beach, which was a maze of obstacles and anti-personnel mines. Naval gunfire and bombing had been relatively ineffective in this area, so the attackers moved forward with great difficulty under the German gunfire raining down on them.

German defenders caught the 1st ID and 29th ID soldiers in the open with raking small-arms fire, mortars and artillery. By midday, the situation had deteriorated to the point that First Army commander Gen. Omar Bradley considered canceling the assault and moving troops not already ashore at Omaha to Utah.

In a display of Army small-unit leadership that stands as an enduring legacy of D-Day, commanders and NCOs rallied their men and moved them out of the killing zones and into the exit lanes.

By the end of the day, 34,000 troops were ashore at Omaha, although the price tag was heavy with 2,500 casualties, the most of any of the beach invasions. Together, the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne had another 2,500 casualties; the Canadians had 1,100; and the British had 3,000.

Col. George R. Taylor, commander of the 1st ID’s 16th Infantry Regiment, is quoted in the official history as proclaiming, “There are two kinds of people staying on this beach: the dead and those who are going to die. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.” “I think that is kind of a timely message for people to think about today.” he said.


http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2959211.php


Ellie

[thedrifter]

PROFT: 60th Anniversary of D-Day: Have We Lost WWII Generation’s “Deep Knowledge?”

Thursday, June 03, 2004

By Daniel K. Proft, President, Illinois Leader

OPINION - 20 years ago Sunday, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of D-Day, President Ronald Reagan concluded his speech at Omaha Beach saying, “We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.”


This Sunday it will be 60 years since the Allied Forces stormed the beaches and took the cliffs at Normandy in what was the defining moment of the 20th century in the battle against tyranny.


Each 10-year anniversary of that day grows more important as it becomes more distant. In fact, it grows more important because of its increasing distance in time.


According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, World War II veterans are dying at the rate of more than 1,000 each day. Some 16.5 million men and women served in the “Big One” but only slightly more than 4 million are still alive today.


Let me repeat for emphasis, today we lost another 1,000 World War II veterans.


I thought about this a little bit last year when my grandfather, a World War II Navy man, passed away. I thought about it again this weekend while watching the Memorial Day remembrances and, most particularly, the dedication of the long overdue World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.


My generation, “Generation X” as it has been so dubbed by the arbiters of pop culture, got a pass. There was not a credible concern about the possibility of conscription.


I was 17 when the Berlin Wall came down signaling the effective end of communism and the rebirth of freedom in Eastern Europe, or “new” Europe as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld aptly terms it today.


Since Vietnam and the end of the Cold War going forward to our present War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, our military force has been a voluntary one.


9/11 certainly brought home the fact that there is nothing inexorable about freedom, security or even America as we know it. There are people out there who are at war with our ideals and we ignore that reality at our own peril.


Nevertheless, I’m left wondering whether or not my generation and subsequent ones dismiss the axiom that “freedom isn’t free” as just old an platitude trotted out on national holidays to honor old people who fought in some wars over some things some time ago?


The answer is probably mixed. Certainly there are those in every generation that answer the call to give of themselves to provide for the freedom of another.


The more than 800 American soldiers that have perished (31 from Illinois) and the 4,600-plus that have been wounded fighting to successfully free 26 million people from the clutches of a murderous dictatorial regime in Iraq are testament to this fact.


But compare those numbers to the World War II figures: More than 405,000 soldiers died in World War II, another 671,846 were wounded in action.


Any wonder why they call them the “greatest generation?” Not just for the staggering sacrifice in terms of lives lost and lives forever changed but because that generation literally saved the world from tyranny and an entire race of people from extinction.


Would my generation be willing to make such a sacrifice if the stakes were similarly high today? And, quite frankly, aren’t they?


The tenor of the public discourse about President Bush’s handling of the War on Terrorism since 9/11 leaves me wondering.


No speculation is needed about our men and women in uniform. There is an amazing fortitude to their spirit. I watched the National Memorial Day Concert on PBS on Monday and one of the segments was a tribute to those who had been wounded, who had lost limbs, while serving our country in Iraq.


The moral clarity and the sense of purpose of the young men profiled at the concert was chilling and awe-inspiring. How else to describe a 20-year old who has to learn to walk with two prosthetic legs?


When I was 20, my biggest concern was getting into the classes I wanted in college. Some of these young men, whose lives have been changed forever by a mortar shell at the age of 20, as concert host Ossie Davis said, wonder if a woman will ever find them attractive, if they will ever have a families?


That same indomitable spirit that was on display in the Mall in Washington, D.C. on Monday night defeated Nazism and ushered in a period of prosperity, even during the Cold War period, for America unlike any the world has ever seen 60 years ago this Sunday.


Where does that spirit come from?


I turn again to the Great Communicator. From President Reagan’s memorable remarks at Point De Hoc in 1984,



“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.”


In reflecting on the upcoming 60th Anniversary of D-day, I wonder if we, the civilian population, have lost that “deep knowledge” of which President Reagan spoke and that commitment to a higher purpose embodied by our armed forces then and now?


© 2004 IllinoisLeader.com - all rights reserved


http://www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f15603/SZ200_d-day.jpg

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, World War II veterans are dying at the rate of more than 1,000 each day. Some 16.5 million men and women served in the “Big One” but only slightly more than 4 million are still alive today.


http://www.illinoisleader.com/content/img/f15603/SZ200_1984atNormandy.jpg

From President Reagan’s memorable remarks at Point De Hoc in 1984, "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."

http://www.illinoisleader.com/news/newsview.asp?c=15603


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Visitors leaving powerful mementos at WWII Memorial




By Jennifer C. Kerr
ASSOCIATED PRESS
8:02 a.m. June 4, 2004

WASHINGTON – Intimate remembrances are appearing amidst the World War II memorial's cool granite and bronze: An American flag that graced the coffin of a father gone to war. Black-and-white photos, in pewter frames, of young men in uniform. Silver dog tags, ribbons, even a Purple Heart or two.

"This is personal. These are people that were there," said Frank LaMantia, 52, of Aurora, Colo., as he read notes with some of the pictures of young soldiers, sailors and fliers that visitors have left behind.

"It makes it more touching," said his girlfriend, Janice Schaffer.

One letter next to a photo of a young soldier in the 82nd Airborne read simply, "Dear Dad, Oh, how I wished you had lived! ... All my love, Jeanne."

The memorial was dedicated last weekend at a ceremony with President Bush, former Sen. Bob Dole and tens of thousands of aging World War II veterans. Since then, people have been placing remembrances of loved ones at the site.

The National Park Service has discouraged visitors from leaving the keepsakes.

"We would rather see these mementos stay locally, in the communities where the veterans came from, at a local museum, a local historical society," said David Barna, chief of public affairs for the Park Service. "We would never be in a place to display them all."

Rangers had initially told visitors that the memorabilia left at the memorial would not be saved, but Barna said the agency decided to change its policy this week. The items will be collected and stored at a facility in Landover, Md.

The Park Service was faced with the same sort of dilemma at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial when people, in droves, began leaving Purple Hearts, Bronze and Silver Stars, and other items normally handed down to future generations of families.

"They were leaving their medals. They were leaving their photographs. They were leaving very personal items, and they were leaving them not only mother to a son, but comrade to comrade," said Pam West, director of the Park Service's Museum Resource Center.

Over the past 20 years, the Park Service has collected some 80,000 items from the Vietnam wall. They are being stored at the Landover warehouse, and some have been on display at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History.

Many flowers, photos and military caps left by loved ones at the World War II memorial were placed near the names of battles etched into the monument's granite or near the "Freedom Wall" and its 4,000 sculpted gold stars, commemorating the more than 400,000 Americans killed in the war.

A photo of 1st Lt. Everett W. Kennedy of Quincy, Mass., was accompanied by a poem from his granddaughter, Kate, written on the 60th anniversary of his death.

The last few lines read: "In the eyes of a man, the smile of a woman, in the heart of my Gram, and now finally, in the memory of his country."





On the Net:

National World War II Memorial: www.wwiimemorial.com

National Park Service: www.nps.gov


http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040604-0802-worldwariimemorial.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Ike's Sense of Risk and Failure

By Richard Hart Sinnreich

Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page B07

Like many other world-changing events, the successful Allied assault on Nazi-occupied France that began 60 years ago today has assumed over the years a sense of near inevitability, as though no other outcome were imaginable. That wasn't a conviction shared by its authors, least of all Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower. The night before the invasion, he drafted a message reading in part: "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops . . . If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

The cold-blooded recognition of war's precariousness underlying Ike's readiness to confront the possibility of failure is a quality one doesn't always find in military commanders and finds even less often in their political masters. In part, that's because it isn't a quality we spend a lot of time inculcating. For many reasons, some sound and others less so, the processes that bring political and military leaders to the forefront tend too often to suppress acknowledgment of war's contingency and the self-doubt to which some fear it might contribute.

To some extent, reluctance to contemplate the possibility of failure reflects the national character. It has been argued that, as a people, we lack a sense of tragedy. Insulated for most of our brief history by two great oceans and blessed with material abundance, we tend to expect success in great endeavors as a matter of course.

In no respect is that more true than in respect to war. After all, we haven't been invaded since 1815. On this continent, the last major war ended in 1865. Abroad, apart from Vietnam, the effects of which still linger, we've enjoyed a virtually unbroken record of military success.

Of course, any soldier or statesman with a sense of history knows that war differs from other human enterprises above all in its unpredictability. That uncertainty reflects war's intrinsic friction as well as the malevolence, ingenuity and occasional perversity of the enemy. But recognizing it abstractly is one thing. Accepting its implications is another.

For military commanders, in whom the appearance of confidence can be even more important than its reality, acknowledging uncertainty is especially problematic. The handmaiden of uncertainty is hesitation, and in war hesitation rarely is desirable.

The only real antidote to uncertainty is action. In war, even more than in other great enterprises, that almost always requires taking risks. The difference between risk-taking and gambling, however, turns finally on the commander's willingness to confront frankly the possibility of failure.

Eisenhower understood that hard necessity perfectly. Operation Overlord was an enormously risky undertaking. Failure might have irrevocably altered the outcome of the war and certainly would have prolonged it. A less courageous commander might have been paralyzed by the risks. A less sensible one might simply have discounted them.

Eisenhower did neither. Instead, having made every effort that forethought, skill and attention to detail could to diminish the risks facing his troops, Ike made the decision to go. Then, recognizing that all those efforts still couldn't guarantee success, he set about preparing himself and if necessary his countrymen for failure. That he could look the latter possibility squarely in the face was the ultimate proof of his fitness for the job.

So, too, his readiness to accept personal responsibility for a failure that, in the end, Allied blood and courage prevented. It was a quality he shared with another great American soldier. Meeting George Pickett's shattered remnants as they withdrew from Cemetery Ridge on Gettysburg's last day, Robert E. Lee told them, "It was my fault. It was all my fault."

No soldier wants to go into battle on the orders of a hesitant commander, nor a nation on those of an irresolute leader. Self-confidence thus is an essential quality of soldiers and statesmen alike.

But in war above all, there's a fine line between self-confidence and hubris. Today, as we honor those who made Ike's premature acknowledgment of defeat unnecessary, that distinction is worth remembering.

Richard Hart Sinnreich writes on military affairs for the Lawton (Okla.) Sunday Constitution.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company



Ellie

[thedrifter]

Normandy 1944

http://search.eb.com/normandy/


Ellie

[HardJedi]

speaking of D-Day, did anyone else see that movie on A&E about Eisinhower with Tom Selleck? Thought it was pretty good, myself.

[thedrifter]

Back to Normandy: Two veterans will find a more peaceful welcome this time <br />
<br />
By: AGNES DIGGS - Staff Writer <br />
<br />
In the predawn hours of June 6, 1944, the largest armada in history crossed the...

[thedrifter]

As the invasion advanced, the squadron moved its base from England to Normandy. They moved twice in France, and spent the winter of '44 in Belgium. <br />
<br />
&quot;Every time the front would move, we would move...

[thedrifter]

Normandy mission
Spurred by the anniversary of D-day, a writer walks where history was made. Her goal is to better understand one officer: her father.

By Susan Spano, Times Staff Writer


Today, on the 60th anniversary of D-day, world leaders are gathering in Normandy on the north coast of France. Fireworks will light the sky over Arromanches-les-Bains, where the Allies constructed an artificial harbor to support troops infiltrating the countryside from the beachheads. And in little Falaise, a walking tour will be dedicated to the closure of a last pocket of German resistance, marking the end of the Battle of Normandy in late August 1944.

The commemorations will continue for 80 days all around the stretch of coast between Cherbourg and Le Havre where the Allies landed.

I went last month, before the fireworks, looking for a little quiet time to think about my father.

Lt. j.g. John J. Spano Jr. was on a ship that delivered men and equipment to Omaha Beach. Just before 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, he traded his Navy-issue sheepskin jacket for a Girard-Perregaux watch that belonged to a soldier headed for the landing zone. My father wore that handsome gold timepiece every day. "It is still ticking," he wrote after he retired. "I hope that young officer came through the war in one piece and is also still ticking."

Time has run out for many of the American soldiers who survived the war. About 1,100 U.S. World War II veterans die every day.

My own father died two years ago at the age of 82. At the end of his life, his war experiences figured large in his thoughts, especially his participation in D-day, the greatest amphibious attack ever mounted. As a privileged baby boomer, I never completely understood what my father's war experiences meant to him.

Figuring that out was part of my mission in Normandy, where I walked the beaches, stood at commemorative markers in apple orchards, got lost among hedgerow-bordered Norman lanes where American parachutists landed (and also got lost), and took my bearings from the spires of medieval churches manned by German gunners in 1944.

There are hundreds of World War II sites in the area, from the majestic Normandy American cemetery near Colleville-sur-Mer to endearing mom-and-pop museums with all manner of bric-a-brac from the war haphazardly displayed. In my three days here, I concentrated on sites devoted to America's big chunk of the D-day action — and those connected to my father.

A history of war

I took the train from Paris northwest to Caen, where I rented a car and quickly saw why the city will never forget the war. It was virtually razed by British bombers in a 65-day effort to drive the Germans out. By the entrance to the train station, there's a monument to railway workers killed during the war; the main street is Avenue June 6; and the buildings downtown are mostly postwar vintage, except for the castle built by William the Conqueror and the Gothic Church of St. Pierre, surmounted by a 234-foot spire that replaced the one destroyed in shelling during the summer of '44.

A good way to try to fathom it all is to make a first stop at the Caen Memorial, on the northwest side of town. It occupies a pair of modern buildings, one opened in 1988, the other unveiled in 2002, on a cliff with a garden and greensward below. The memorial's purview goes well beyond World War II. Peace is its point, realized by telling the horrible story of conflict in the 20th century, starting in 1919, at the end of the Great — but not the last — War.

From the main hall, displays (captioned in French, English and German) outline the chain of events that led to another, greater war. A section on "France in the Dark Years" (during the German occupation) follows, with displays on the Vichy government, Gen. Charles de Gaulle's BBC broadcasts from London that rallied the French and the invaluable espionage efforts of the Free French.

Then it's on to the war: models of U.S. subs, photos of bombed-out European cities and a 1939 letter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt about the possibility of setting off a "chain reaction in a large mass of uranium."

The story continues in the new building, where visitors are reminded that man's hostility survived the Second World War. Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War are covered in pictures, film footage and text. Then there's one last ugly note from the 21st century: a mangled mass of steel beams, donated to the memorial from the World Trade Center.

The last, light-bathed section of the memorial is devoted to peace, from the nonviolence of India's Gandhi to UNICEF's efforts to help refugee children. I left thinking that in 10 years a new building will be needed to take us through terrorism and the Iraq war, if we last that long.

Visit to Bayeux

To reach the American D-day landing zones, I took the N13/E46 highway northwest from the memorial. The Norman countryside was so verdant and peaceful, I had to force myself to remember that the very highway I was traveling on roughly marked the Allies' D-day objective. (They were optimistic, as it turned out; by the end of the day, they had barely advanced beyond the beaches in many sectors.)

About 20 miles from Caen, I stopped in Bayeux to see its famed, exquisitely preserved medieval tapestry. Its 276 feet depict, frame by frame in something akin to 11th century comic book fashion, the Norman conquest of England, complete with beguiling Viking ships, ducks, castles and knights in armor embroidered on the borders.

Lunch was a delicious seafood salad at Le Pommier restaurant near the cathedral, followed by a visit to the park where, on June 14, 1944, De Gaulle spoke to the French people for the first time since the German occupation on free French soil. The town's miraculously intact old stone buildings and winding lanes suggested the weakness of German resistance in the area.

I'd rented a small, utilitarian cottage in Grandcamp-Maisy, a typical Norman village, all gray stone, shuttered windows and lace curtains, scented by the port's fishy odor. At low tide the beach extends a third of a mile out to sea.

Grandcamp-Maisy has only a handful of hotels, an information office, a little museum devoted to U.S. Rangers who scaled the cliffs at nearby Pointe du Hoc and stone monuments seemingly around every corner.

My favorite was the one on the east side of town, to Tech Sgt. Frank Peregory of the 116th Infantry Division. He won the Medal of Honor for single-handedly capturing 35 enemy soldiers, armed only with grenades and a bayonet.

The village, about halfway between Omaha and Utah beaches, and thus a fine headquarters for my explorations, is near the oyster beds that line the Cotentin Peninsula to the west. So there were oysters and other seafood at the local restaurants. Seafood is good in its own right but the stuff of the gods when swimming in Norman cream sauce.

One night, over a bowl of small mussels, I remembered that my father, who loved seafood, developed an aggravating allergy to it late in life. I remembered a photo of him just graduated from a 90-day crash course at midshipman school; I recalled that when he first saw his beloved LST (Landing Ship Tank), he thought it ungainly and decrepit, with its keel-less bottom designed for putting men and material on enemy shores; and that, by chance, he met up with his older brother Joe, a motor machinist mate on another vessel, when the 310 docked in North Africa in 1943.

The waiters at restaurants in Grandcamp-Maisy must be used to D-day tourists tearing up over dinner.

Trying to imagine

Above all, I remembered that my father was a part of Operation Overlord, intended to wrest Europe from the Third Reich at a time when the Führer was fighting on three fronts, including Russia.

Even capitalizing on Germany's overextension, tactical information supplied by the Free French and the unprecedented buildup of men and material that followed America's entrance into the war, Overlord was a gamble. Imagine trying to send 175,000 fighting men, 50,000 vehicles, 5,333 ships and 11,000 airplanes across a 100-mile channel to massively fortified beaches, without alerting the enemy.

For the rest of my stay in Normandy, I tried to imagine it. I spent a day on bloody Omaha, stopping first at Pointe du Hoc, one of the most moving sites in the whole American landing area. There, U.S. Rangers tried to take some of the heat off Omaha's flanks by climbing 100-foot cliffs to capture big German guns. Lt. Col. James E. Rudder, who led the assault, later said, "Anybody would be a fool to try this. It was crazy then, and it's crazy now."

Pointe du Hoc was newly landscaped and bleacher seats had been erected for the anniversary celebrations. Beyond that, the cliffs are eroding now and the pock-marked verge, where more than half of the 225 Rangers who landed at Pointe du Hoc were killed or wounded, looks like an ill-maintained golf course. I stood there, envisioning the Allied armada as it would have appeared to German gunners but could see only sailboats on the horizon.

After that, I stopped at a fortified medieval farmstead in the hamlet of Englesqueville, surrounded by blossoming apple orchards. The proprietor let me taste his cider and Calvados, Normandy's apple brandy. I bought a bottle of slightly sweet, fizzy cider, the centerpiece of my picnic lunch nearby, atop a German bunker at the west end of Omaha Beach.

continued......

[thedrifter]

I was surprised at the beauty of Omaha Beach — long, wide, flat, a sun lover's dream. But as far as the Allies were concerned, Omaha was a miscalculation, where German forces far stronger than anticipated awaited American fighting men. "I can still see the beach at Omaha," my father wrote, "a solid wall of flame and fire, the warships shooting tons of shells at the beach and German fortifications. A terrible, fearsome sight."

There are three little museums in the Omaha Beach area to tell the story of June 6: one in Vierville-sur-Mer; another in St. Laurent-sur-Mer; and a third, opened this spring, near Colleville-sur-Mer, devoted to the 1st Infantry Division, a.k.a. the Big Red One, which bore the brunt on Omaha Beach. They're full of vintage Sherman tanks that look as though they never could have budged, mannequins in a full array of World War II uniform, war posters and tins of vintage Griffin ABC Wax Shoe Polish.

One of my last stops of the day was at the Normandy American cemetery, on a bluff above Omaha. I arrived just in time to hear taps and watch the U.S. flag being lowered. Beyond it stretched row upon row of white Latin crosses and the occasional Star of David, set against a velvety-green lawn. In this silent parade ground, 9,386 American servicemen and servicewomen rest, including 39 pairs of brothers, a father and son, and Tech Sgt. Frank Peregory. Someone had left flowers on the grave of Deane L. Quilici, second lieutenant, who was born in Nevada and died July 16, 1944.

The U.S. graveyard is complemented by the German Military Cemetery. It was on my way home, in La Cambe, near Grandcamp-Maisy, at the end of a long avenue of trees. Just after the war, both Americans and Germans were buried there, though the remains of U.S. soldiers were later moved to Colleville-sur-Mer. Its crosses are black, surrounding a mound that contains a mass burial of unidentified victims. Displays describe the difficulty of locating and interring the war dead. No one knows how many Germans still lie far from home in Libya or Russia; 240,000 German soldiers died or were wounded in June 1944, in Normandy alone.

The next day, there was Utah Beach to see, with its seaside Musée du Débarquement and monuments; the handsome church at St. Marie du Mont, whose steeple helped many U.S. paratroopers orient themselves after being dropped in the wrong places; and the town of Ste.-Mère-Eglise, which figured in the classic 1962 WWII film "The Longest Day." Red Buttons played John Steele, a paratrooper who landed on the church steeple, then hung from a flying buttress for several hours, playing dead, while the town fell to American forces. A billowing white parachute and John Steele's effigy still hang there.

There was also time for a short cruise aboard the Col. Rudder, a sightseeing ship out of Grandcamp-Maisy harbor. If I was going to find my dad in Normandy, I thought, it would be on a boat, seeing the beaches as he did — from the water.

It was cold, and the sea was rough so we headed for protected waters west of town in the estuary of the River Aure. I huddled in my seat on the top deck, a little disconsolate. I couldn't feel my father's presence on the boat or anyplace else in Normandy. Nor could I conceive that he might have died here. Even now I can't hold the thought in my mind that he is gone.

But after visiting Normandy, I can understand a little better why D-day was one of the critical moments in his life that made him who he was. He had an unerring moral compass and optimism, bred in part from having been part of something utterly great and good, the battle for freedom that started on D-day.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-france6jun06.story


Ellie


http://images.latimes.com/media/thumbnails/photo/2004-06/12878040.jpg

[thedrifter]

("Before The *******ed Marines Get All The Credit")
~~~~~~~~~~

General Patton's Address to the Troops

Part I

The Background Research



Anyone who has ever viewed the motion picture PATTON will never forget the opening. George Campbell Scott, portraying Patton, standing in front of an immensely huge American flag, delivers his version of Patton's "Speech to the Third Army" on June 5th, 1944, the eve of the Allied invasion of France, code-named "Overlord".

Scott's rendition of the speech was highly sanitized so as not to offend too many fainthearted Americans. Luckily, the soldiers of the American Army who fought World War II were not so fainthearted.

After one of my lectures on the subject of General Patton, I spoke with a retired Major-General who was a close friend of Patton and who had been stationed with him in the 1930's in the Cavalry. He explained to me that the movie was a very good portrayal of Patton in that it was the way he wanted his men and the public to see him, as a rugged, colorful commander. There was one exception, however, according to the Major General. In reality, Patton was a much more profane speaker than the movie dared to exhibit.

Patton had a unique ability regarding profanity. During a normal conversation, he could liberally sprinkle four letter words into what he was saying and the listeners would hardly take notice of it. He spoke so easily and used those words in such a way that it just seemed natural for him to talk that way.

He could, when necessary, open up with both barrels and let forth such blue-flamed phrases that they seemed almost eloquent in their delivery. When asked by his nephew about his profanity, Patton remarked, "When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a ****-soaked paper bag."

"As for the types of comments I make", he continued with a wry smile, "Sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence."

When I appeared on a local San Diego television show to discuss my Patton Collection a viewer living in a suburb of San Diego, was very interested for personal reasons. Her husband had been a lieutenant assigned to General Patton's Third Army Headquarters, code named "Lucky Forward" and he had known General Patton quite well.

He had recently died and had left to his wife a box that he had brought home with him from the European Theater of Operations.

The lady invited me to her home to inspect the box to see if there was anything in it that might be useful to me in my search for "collectibles".

Opening the box, I immediately thanked her. Inside was one of only a couple hundred copies printed of the Official United States Third Army After-Action Reports. It is a huge two volume history of the Third Army throughout their 281 days of combat in Europe. She said that she had no use for it and that I could have it. I left with my new treasure.

When I arrived at my office and removed the foot-thick, oversized books from the box, I had an even greater surprise. Under the Reports lay a small stack of original Third Army memos, orders, AND a carbon copy of the original speech that had been typed by some unknown clerk at Lucky Forward and had been widely distributed throughout Third Army.

A few years earlier, I had discovered an almost illegible xerox of a carbon copy of a similar speech. This one came from the Army War College and was donated to their Historical Library Section in 1957.

I decided to do some research on the speech to obtain the best one possible and to make an attempt to locate the identity of the "unknown soldier" who had clandestinely typed and distributed the famous document. I began by looking in my collection of old magazines, newspapers, books that have been written about Patton since his death, and dozens of other books which had references to Patton and his speech.

I discovered some interesting facts. The most interesting probably being that George C. Scott was not the first actor to perform the speech.

In 1951, the New American Mercury Magazine had printed a version of the speech which was almost exactly the same version printed by John O'Donnell in his "Capitol Stuff" column for the New York Daily News on May 31, 1945. According to the editors of the New American Mercury, their copy was obtained from Congressman Joseph Clark Baldwin who had returned from a visit to Patton's Headquarters in Czechoslovakia.

After publication, the magazine received such a large reader response asking for reprints of the speech that the editors decided to go one step further.

They hired a "famous" actor to make an "unexpurgated" recording of the Patton speech. This recording was to be made available to veterans of Third Army and anyone else who would like to have one. The term "famous" was the only reference made by the editors about the actor who recorded the speech. In a later column they explained, "We hired an excellent actor whose voice, on records, is almost indistinguishable from Patton's, and with RCA's best equipment we made two recordings; one just as Patton delivered it, with all the pungent language of a cavalryman, and in the other we toned down a few of the more offensive words. Our plan was to offer our readers, at cost, either recording."

Unfortunately, a few years ago, their was a fire in the editorial offices of the magazine which destroyed almost all of their old records. The name of the actor was lost in that accident.

Only one master recording of the speech was made. The magazine Editors, not wanting to offend either Mrs. Patton or her family, asked for her sanction of the project. The Editors explained the situation thusly, "While we had only the master recordings, we submitted them to our friend, Mrs. Patton, and asked her to approve our plan. It was not a commercial venture and no profits were involved. We just wanted to preserve what to us seems a worthwhile bit of memorabilia of the Second World War. Our attorneys advised us that legally we did not need Mrs. Patton's approval, but we wanted it."

"Mrs. Patton considered the matter graciously and thoroughly, and gave us a disappointing decision. She took the position that this speeches was made by the General only to the men who were going to fight and die with him; it was, therefore, not a speech for the public or for posterity."

"We think Mrs. Patton is wrong; we think that what is great and worth preserving about General Patton was expressed in that invasion speech. The fact that he employed four letter words was proper; four letter words are the language of war; without them wars would be quite impossible."

When Mrs. Patton's approval was not forthcoming, the entire project was then scrapped, and the master recordings were destroyed.

Patton always knew exactly what he wanted to say to his soldiers and he never needed notes. He always spoke to his troops extemporaneously. As a general rule of thumb, it is safe to say that Patton usually told his men some of his basic thoughts and concepts regarding his ideas of war and tactics. Instead of the empty, generalized rhetoric of no substance often used by Eisenhower, Patton spoke to his men in simple, down to earth language that they understood. He told them truthful lessons he had learned that would keep them alive.

As he traveled throughout battle areas, he always took the time to speak to individual soldiers, squads, platoons, companies, regiments, divisions or whatever size group could be collected. About the only difference in the context of these talks was that the smaller the unit, the more "tactical" the talk would be. Often he would just give his men some sound, common sense advice that they could follow in order to keep from being killed or maimed.

The speech which follows is a third person narrative. From innumerable sources; magazine articles, newspaper clippings, motion picture biographies and newsreels, and books, I have put together the most complete version possible that encompasses all of the material that is available to date.

continued......

[thedrifter]

Part II <br />
<br />
The Speech <br />
<br />
Somewhere in England <br />
<br />
June 5th, 1944 <br />
<br />
The big camp buzzed with a tension. For hundreds of eager rookies, newly arrived from the states, it was a great day in their lives....

[thedrifter]

"My men don't surrender", Patton continued, "I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull **** either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!"

Patton stopped and the crowd waited. He continued more quietly, "All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, "Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands". But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, *******it, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. ****s'."

Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, "Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the *******ed cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, "Fixing the wire, Sir". I asked, "Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?" He answered, "Yes Sir, but the *******ed wire has to be fixed". I asked, "Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?" And he answered, "No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!" Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-*****ing roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable."

The General paused and stared challengingly over the silent ocean of men. One could have heard a pin drop anywhere on that vast hillside. The only sound was the stirring of the breeze in the leaves of the bordering trees and the busy chirping of the birds in the branches of the trees at the General's left.

"Don't forget," Patton barked, "you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the *******ed Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their ****-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the *******ed Third Army again and that son-of-a-****ing-***** Patton'."

"We want to get the hell over there", Patton continued, "The quicker we clean up this *******ed mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple ****ing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the *******ed Marines get all of the credit."

The men roared approval and cheered delightedly. This statement had real significance behind it. Much more than met the eye and the men instinctively sensed the fact. They knew that they themselves were going to play a very great part in the making of world history. They were being told as much right now. Deep sincerity and seriousness lay behind the General's colorful words. The men knew and understood it. They loved the way he put it, too, as only he could.

Patton continued quietly, "Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin", he yelled, "I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-***** Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"

"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-*****es, we're going to rip out their living *******ed guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun **********s by the bushel-****ing-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!"

"I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a *******ed thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living **** out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like **** through a tin horn!"

"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good ******* about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that."

The General paused. His eagle like eyes swept over the hillside. He said with pride, "There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled **** in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-*******ed-***** named Georgie Patton!"

Return to Headquarters



Ellie

[MillRatUSMC]

http://www.geocities.com/millrat_99/cmww2europe.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/millrat_99/cmem.html
The part of the World War II site of the Community Veterans Memorial Park in Munster, Indiana.

This soldier is behind a hedgehog and he is hit , that why his arm is in three parts.
Reminding us of the price paid for our Freedom.
They were given an order on 5th of June 1944;
"We'll go!"
The Airborne parachuted in on the early hours of 6th of June 1944.
H-hour was a few hours away.
We saluted those that died that day we now know as D-Day.
How soon some French forget the price we paid for their freedom...

Semper Fidelis/Semper Fi
Ricardo

PS I'll be leaving ASAP for the Community Veterans Memorial Park to render them my personal honors with a small American Flag.

[thedrifter]

The Most Exalting Day
What we talk about when we talk about D-Day.

Friday, June 4, 2004

Television will be full of reports this weekend of the festivities surrounding the 60th anniversary of D-Day. This has me thinking of why we still talk about the invasion, why television news producers are certain we are interested, and why the programmers of movie channels believe we will want to see "The Longest Day" again, and "Saving Private Ryan."

The Normandy invasion was a great moment in history (brave men joining together to do the right thing) and a definitive moment (the Nazi hold on Europe was loosed; in less than a year Berlin would fall). These are reasons enough.

But there is this, too: We are human and love stories that show humanity as brave and selfless. It exalts us. We need to be exalted. It is hard to get up in the morning and pull on your socks and enter the day. It is hard to be a bus driver. But it is easier when you can think better of your passengers.

When you think man isn't much, when you think human beings are pretty low as beings go, it leaches love from you. It leaches love from your soul when you think we're all nothing much, we're dust in the wind, it's dog eat dog. When you can see us as more than that, it helps you enter each day. It helps you live. We think about D-Day, and Harry the King at Agincourt, and George Meade at Gettysburg, to help us live.





Once a sociologist had a wonderful idea. He asked soldiers just in from battles what their first thought was when they saw a nearby soldier shot. This is what they reported they thought: I didn't get shot. Not Poor Joe, or Where is the sniper? or If Joe bought it I better move, but I didn't get shot. The second and third thoughts were different, but the first was relief: I am alive.
When a doctor told me of this I thought: Yes, that is us. We're all like that. And it's not so bad. We are human and imperfect. We're damaged.

And we think of the imperfect and damaged humans of D-Day, people like us, made of the same clay. Only we're not clay, we're more than that. They held the line, took the hits, moved the line forward, bought that real estate, paid for it in blood, burrowed in, defeated their fear, pushed aside their egotism, took back a continent. And at least one old dazed French farmer, according to the book and movie of Cornelius Ryan's great popular history "The Longest Day," walked through the shooting and on to the beach carrying a bottle of Calvados to give to France's liberators. And that is part of the human story too.

The men of D-Day had their "I didn't get shot" moments and pushed forward anyway. They didn't run--"I'm pushing my luck!"--they stood their ground.

This is very moving. And it is a good thing for us to remember about ourselves.





There's a lot of talk again, windy and mindless talk by or professional talkers, that we are marking D-Day with such great attention because we are baby boomers, and by definition inadequate, not members of a greatest generation. We were handed an easy ride by history: we must tip our hats.
Well, of course we should tip our hats, but not to a generation. To individuals. To the wonderful men who took the beach, and other beaches, some of whom still hold those beach heads, in World War II. A lot of Boomers--not all by any means, for many of them have had terrible adversity, and are unknown heroes--got a relatively good ride for a relatively long time. But history isn't kind forever. Those young jogging gray-heads who are 50 now and running the networks and the schools and the Army: history has given them a job and will give them a job, and it will not be a job for sissies. Don't write them off until their work is done.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster),


http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005177


Ellie

[MillRatUSMC]

Mission accomplished, rendered my small Honors.
While I was viewing that soldier behind the hedgehog, I saw that I had made an error, it's two instead of three.

http://www.geocities.com/millrat_99/cmem.html
The part of the World War II site of the Community Veterans Memorial Park in Munster, Indiana.

The soldier is behind a hedgehog and he is hit , that why his arm is in two parts.
Reminding us of the price paid for our Freedom.
They were given an order on 5th of June 1944;
"We'll go!"
The Airborne parachuted in on the early hours of 6th of June 1944.
H-hour was a few hours away.
We saluted those that died that day we now know as D-Day.

I found this poem when I was viewing the signatures in the guest book;

http://www.iwojima.com/raising/flage.gif

FREEDOM
Freedom is not Free not by a long shot you see
Our freedom was fought for by soldiers diligently
A high price was paid for you and me
Don't ever take for granted that your freedom was free
The amount is one that cannot be said
Thousands of soldiers ended up dead
The cost you can't measure in any given way
The price you can't imagine that was paid each and everyday
In Harms way they all stood
Armed with old weapons they did the best they could
Hero's, they all are to me
The best in the world who set me free
They asked for nothing in return
Fought for thier country to live and learn
The things they saw, the tasks they performed
All within duty, as their brothers they mourned.
The great loss of life, umimagineable to me
just another day for our Hero's you see
To hell and back did we send our men
Praying for their safety again and again
We as civilians will never understand
what they gave up to save this great land.
So many are ungrateful for the freedom we reap
Their souls are for the devil to find and seek
You need be thankful, have respect and admiration
It's to our Veterans we owe this beautiful Nation
http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:VWH8oJzBwyUJ:www.troutman.org/ftp/pub/9-11-01/USA.flag.jpg
THANK YOU
Sally Johnson
Dedicated to Charles L. Fenolio
USMC A 1 10
1941-1946

Semper Fidelis/Semper Fi
Ricardo

[thedrifter]

Thank You MillRat........


Now Greybeard found something a little interesting......

http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14996

Now they are trying to tell me something different......:eek:
and they wonder why our youth are so mix up......


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Once an eagle, always an eagle: Murrieta veteran remembers D-Day

By: JOHN HUNNEMAN - Staff Writer

MURRIETA ---- Bill Galbraith paints eagles ---- "Screaming Eagles." Sixty years ago today, the largest invasion force the world has ever witnessed dropped into and came ashore in France as part of "Operation Overlord" ---- known better as D-Day ---- to try and punch through Hitler's "Atlantic Wall" and begin the liberation of Europe from German occupation.

Among about 175,000 men who crossed the English Channel under cover of darkness on June 6, 1944, was Galbraith, a Southern California high school dropout who'd joined the Army, he said, hoping to impress a girl.

In the darkness, Galbraith, a member of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division ---- the "Screaming Eagles" ---- jumped from a transport plane flying low over the French countryside into a boiling cauldron of anti-aircraft and machine gun fire from below.


"I don't think I ever asked God to spare me," he said last week in his Murrieta home. "I asked him not to let me let my family down or let them know how scared I was."

These days, one room of the ranch home he's owned since 1989 is filled with books, photographs and memories of that day so long ago, including Galbraith's own artistic depictions of the event.

"I've been painting for as long as I can remember," Galbraith said.

Many of those works include eagles, the symbol for the legendary airborne division that, along with the 82nd Airborne Division, jumped into France ahead of the amphibious assault.

Now 80 years old, Galbraith and his wife, Anna, plan to travel to a ship in Long Beach Harbor today and join other veterans of that invasion to watch the anniversary commemoration on television. But his thoughts will be with those overseas, he said, especially with his comrades who never made it back.

Training and more training

Born in Pasadena, Galbraith attended Wilson High School in Long Beach before dropping out in 1942 to join the Army. Patriotism, he admits, wasn't his primary motivation.

"I wasn't doing that great in high school, anyway," he said. "And I think I was trying to impress some girl."

Signing up specifically to be a paratrooper, Galbraith was sent first for training to Camp Tocca, Ga., near the Curahee Mountains. Part of that training included running up and down a mountain trail to build endurance.

"We ran that thing every morning," he said. "Sometimes we ran it twice a day if they got mad at us."

"Curahee" meant "stand alone" in the local Indian language and the troopers adopted the word as their motto knowing that if they were dropped behind enemy lines, that's the situation they'd find themselves in.

In November, Galbraith's "I" company was ordered to Fort Benning, Ga., for a parachute instruction. It was a trek of about 115 miles.

"We marched from Atlanta all the way to Fort Benning," said Galbraith. "We were always trying to outdo the other guys."

From there it was on to Camp MacKall, N.C., for more training, including nighttime jumps.

After additional drilling in Tennessee and at Fort Bragg, N.C., the 506th reported to Camp Shanks, N.Y. and was transported across the Atlantic on the S.S. Samaria, arriving in Liverpool, England in September 1943.

"We had no idea what our mission was going to be," Galbraith said. "But we knew it was pretty important."

June 6, 1944

For the eight months leading up to D-Day, "I" company was stationed in and around the town of Ramsbury, England. Finally in early June 1944, the paratroopers were taken to several airfields to prepare for Operation Overlord, the allied invasion of occupied France.

"By then, everyone knew what was coming next," Galbraith said.

About 1 a.m. June 6, a C-47 carrying the 18 men of "I" company took off headed across the English Channel.

Flying about 500 feet above the water to avoid enemy detection, Galbraith said he could see the allied armada of about 5,000 ships below headed for the same objective.

"It looked like it was solid ships below us," he said. "We knew we were really being backed up."

The invasion force was enormous. In one night and day, about 175,000 fighting men and their equipment ---- which included 50,000 vehicles, everything from motorcycles, tanks and armored bulldozers ---- were moved across 60 miles to 100 miles of open water, wrote historian Steven E. Ambrose in his book about the battle, "D-Day." The equipment and men were carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and almost 11,000 airplanes.

Each paratrooper carried up to 70 pounds of gear on his back.

"If you sat down, someone had to help you get up," said Galbraith whose gear included a machine gun.

As they approached the coast, the German anti-aircraft guns began firing. Galbraith said the men were anxious to get out of the aircraft and away from the shells exploding all around.

"We couldn't wait for that green light to go on," he said. "It was a very rough ride. It looked like you could walk down on the tracers. They were all different colors."

Fog and flak caused many of the plane's pilots to veer off course and away from the paratrooper's intended drop zones.

Unlike other groups, Galbraith's company landed near its intended target.

"We lit pretty close to where we were supposed to be," he said.

While that may seem like a good thing, the reality was the Germans had scouted areas where they believed it might be easier for the paratroopers to land and were dug in at those location.

"Other paratroopers came down miles from where they were supposed to," Galbraith said. "That confused them (the Germans) as much as it did us."

On the ground, Pvt. Galbraith came upon a sergeant who had broken his ankle.

"I stayed with him, because he couldn't keep up," Galbraith said.

Other paratroopers kept moving forward and had just cleared a hedgerow when an enemy flare went up illuminating the dark sky.

"The Germans opened up with a machine gun and cut down many of the men who had gone ahead," he said.

Galbraith was about five miles inland from the beaches of Normandy, where allied forces would begin their attack on the Atlantic Wall later that morning.

By the time the amphibious forces landed, members of the 506th were holding some of the high ground overlooking the beaches.

"I had one ambition: to live through the morning," he said. "In the dark, there was nothing but sheer confusion."

Galbraith spent about 30 days fighting in France before returning to England for rest and more training.

"After Normandy we all got leave, and quite a few of us went to Scotland," he said.

There he met Anna. Following the war, she came to the United States. The couple have been married for 55 years.

Wounded in action

The fighting was not over for Galbraith, not by a long shot. In September 1944, the 506th jumped into hostile territory again, this time in a daring daylight raid into Holland.

The airborne allied troops were to seize roads and bridges in the cities of Eindhoven, Arnhem and Nijmegen and clear the way for a British armored invasion.

As Galbraith made his way along a street in Eindhoven, a German sniper fired a machine gun, killing his captain.

"I stepped into a brick doorway to get out of the way and more shots were fired," he said.

Galbraith was hit in the left leg and shoulder.

"I was crawling down the street trying to get away and a Dutch man opened a door and pulled me inside," he said.

The war ended that day for Galbraith. A hospital ship brought him to South Carolina and during the next four years, he was transferred to a several military hospitals on the west coast while recovering from his wounds.

After the war

In the years following the war, Galbraith worked in the evacuation and demolition business in Southern California.

Bill and Anna raised 10 children and now have 20 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. The couple moved to a comfortable ranch house in Murrieta in 1989 and Bill retired six years ago.

In 1994, on the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, Galbraith, then 70, was one of 41 paratroopers who re-enacted the parachute jump into occupied France.

This year, several remaining members of that group hoped once again to parachute at Normandy as part of today's anniversary of D-Day.

Last month, Galbraith watched three of his comrades practice jumping in Lake Elsinore in an effort to convince organizers of today's observance to let them participate.

Galbraith had no plans to join them, though.

"I'm getting a bit old for this," he said.

The last word Galbraith heard from his buddies was that they'd be allowed to parachute into France ---- not as part of the official commemoration ---- but on the day after the events.

"I'd do it again..."

Propped against one of the bookcases in his home are three paintings of "screaming eagles" Galbraith recently completed

In September, he and Anna plan to return to Europe for a reunion with some of his Army buddies to mark the 60th anniversary of Operation Market Garden, the daring daytime jump into Holland.

"I painted those for some of the guys," he said. "I think they'll appreciate them."

Looking back over the decades since the D-Day invasion, Galbraith offered his perspective.

"The real heroes are still over there," he said. "I was proud of the outfit I was in. I'd do it again in a minute."


Contact staff writer John Hunneman at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2603, or jhunneman@californian.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/06/06/military/18_46_196_5_04.txt



Ellie

[thedrifter]

D-DAY REMEMBERED
By David Eisenhower

Volume 5, Number 3
June 2004

This is the text of a speech delivered by David Eisenhower
on June 2, 2004, commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-
Day. The lecture was sponsored by the Foreign Policy
Research Institute and the West Point Society of
Philadelphia. David Eisenhower is a Senior Fellow of the
FPRI and co-chair of its History Institute for Teachers. He
is also director of the Institute for Public Service at the
University of Pennsylvania and Public Policy Fellow of
Penn's Annenberg School of Communication. His book,
Eisenhower at War, 1943-45, was a New York Times bestseller.

This lecture will be broadcast on the Pennsylvania Cable
Network during the weekend of June 5 & 6. To check for the
time or to view it online (if you're outside PCN's viewing
area), you can visit their website at www.pcntv.com.


D-DAY REMEMBERED

By David Eisenhower

It is a pleasure to be here to remember D-Day. Every year,
June 6 is a special day. What makes it special to my mind
is that on June 6, Americans grant themselves permission to
reflect positively on their history.

Americans do not do so routinely. We are accustomed to
going about our work and our lives in a state of earnest
concern about the manifold problems the experts insist are
all around us. Americans are constantly reminded they are
beset by social, political and cultural divides, that
America is a 50-50 nation, that American history is to be
redeemed, not celebrated, and that there are so many miles
to travel and so many promises to keep.

It is fair to ask how many Americans have NOT lived -- if
informed critics are to be believed -- under the most
corrupt government in their history? How many times have
American policies NOT brought us -- and the world -- to the
brink of shame, disaster, discredit, the apocalypse?

Even our recent history, beginning with D-Day and the Second
World War, can be chronicled as a long series of setbacks
and mistakes punctuated by stunning and complete victories
which seem to catch informed Americans by surprise. And yet
the truth is that Americans are fortunate and know it, they
are envied and undeterred by it; creative, restless,
hopeful, and optimistic, unwilling -- to paraphrase John F.
Kennedy -- to exchange places with any people in any era of
history. With exceptions, Americans suppress such thoughts
except when days like June 6 -- presidential inaugurals are
another exception -- roll around.

This paradoxical truth -- our real-time perceptions
juxtaposed with America's steady record of success -- will
interest historians as far into the future as we can
anticipate. Five hundred years from now, they will perhaps
look back on America in the 1940s and speculate about the
origins of international commerce and involvements, and new
patterns of government and business that will be taken for
granted. Whether Americans are looked back upon as
liberators or merely as seafaring conquerors and pirates,
the implications and lessons of American dynamism will be
explored.

In the context of World War II history, the facts of
American dynamism can be summed up by a single fateful
strategic and military fact. Looking back to 1943-44,
whereas a German invasion of England across the 25-mile-wide
channel was a fanciful concept; and -- to stretch the
imagination slightly -- whereas a Russian, German, Japanese,
Chinese or even British invasion in strength of any place in
North or South America would have been unthinkable,
Americans thought little of mobilizing 16 million men and
women, and of transporting them across the seas to hurl them
against the finest armies of Eurasia 4,000 and even 8,000
miles from home.

But as D-Day commemorations go, the 60th anniversary is
likely to be subdued. Today's news mostly features the
latest problems, the breakdown of wartime and postwar
partnerships, the malaise of NATO, our estrangement from the
UN, the problem of working out exit strategies to salvage
what a number of commentators have decided is the latest in
a long line of American failures there and elsewhere. These
concerns -- legitimate -- are what keep FPRI in business.
I'm delighted and proud to be a fellow at FPRI and it was my
privilege to edit ORBIS. Under the circumstances, voices of
wisdom, discernment, prudence, foresight and action are
needed, and FPRI is such a voice.

The tenor of 2004 (D-Day plus 60) may fit a pattern. The
60th commemoration of America's Civil War in the 1920s
struck a similar tentative note. The new birth of freedom
Lincoln had talked about at Gettysburg -- America's
nineteenth-century Normandy -- had degenerated into Jim
Crow, disenfranchisement, and economic malaise throughout
the conquered American South, which remained determinedly
outside of the American future that Lincoln had so boldly
forecast. One of life's unanticipated lessons is how long
it takes the verdicts of history to take hold. It stands to
reason that when a decisive event happens, that people will
draw the logical conclusions and adjust accordingly, and yet
the stubborn facts suggest otherwise. Not until July 1963,
100 years after Gettysburg, did Alabama contribute a
monument to Alabamians who fought at Gettysburg,
figuratively bringing that battle to a close. On hand in
Gettysburg to officiate was Gov. George Corley Wallace of
Alabama, who continued to wage bitter-end resistance to the
lessons of the conflict for another twenty years before
finally and sincerely seeing the light.

To tour Normandy, America's twentieth-century Gettysburg,
one sees the residue of the war everywhere but also a
conspicuous absence of monuments. After the Normandy
battle, the Normans quickly moved in to reclaim their farms
and to resume their disrupted way of life determined to
forget the battles which have been waged over and around
them. Especially in recent years, there have been almost
willful efforts to forget World War II evident in rising
anti-Semitism, and the professed moral neutrality of various
governments which cloak their current malaise -- or perhaps
a hopeful preoccupation with the EU experiment -- in the
language of international morality and conventions. Again,
it takes decades for history's verdicts to play out and take
hold.

But there can be no question that D-Day was a turning point
for the individuals involved and for millions of others.
One of my favorite stories illustrating the point was told
to me by my great Uncle Milton. In 1954, when Milton was
president of Penn State, his brother, President Eisenhower
was set to deliver the commencement. Penn State is huge and
just as the hour approached, the rains came and the massive
event was going to have to be pushed indoors, a massive
logistical undertaking. A slightly panic-stricken Milton
apologized to Ike for the pandemonium and the makeshift
arrangements, whereupon Ike smiled. "Milton, since June 6,
1944, I've never worried about the rain."

Sometime later, as I was growing up as his neighbor -- and
employee -- on the edge of the farm in Gettysburg, my
grandfather seemed reticent about the war, indeed reluctant
to talk about any aspect of it. Yet he did not discourage
me as a boy from watching and rewatching a lengthy TV
documentary based on his memoir Crusade in Europe. He knew
that the war was the defining period of his life, as it was
for everyone who went through it, and he knew that future
generations would look back carefully on a time when the
lives and hopes of millions -- and civilization itself --
hung precariously in the balance. And he also knew that
even his greatest decisions as the Allied commander often
involved serious costs and sacrifice that would always
invite scrutiny of the historical record.

Dwight Eisenhower was a central figure of the twentieth
century, the first half of which was dominated by a
devastating depression and two world wars. The culminating
event -- World War II -- claimed well over 50 million lives,
imparting an unprecedented legacy of destruction and
pessimism in much of the world. Yet victory over the Axis
marked the first of many more promising chapters to come.

D-Day, June 6, 1944 was the decisive moment of the decisive
campaign to gain victory over Nazi Germany. Early on the
6th, Allied forces backed by airborne elements seized five
Normandy beachheads and opened the vital second front,
spelling ultimate defeat for the Nazis. But in hindsight,
the intangible significance of D-Day is even greater. On
June 6, 1944, after decades of doubt and hesitations,
democracy, freedom, and the humane values championed by the
Western allies resumed the offensive. June 6, 1944 can be
seen as the beginning of a long march to victory that, with
many twists and turns, ending finally with the unification
of Germany in 1990, the centennial of Granddad's birth.

It was a long march indeed. Eisenhower's memoir Crusade in
Europe does not end with the German surrender.
Significantly, the last three chapters of the book --
"Victory's Aftermath," "Operation Study" and "Russia" -- are
devoted to the postwar years. In them, D.D.E. recounts the
celebrations, describes the postwar conferences, and the
development of occupation planning and policy. He described
his several warm reunions with Air Marshall Tedder, Field
Marshall Montgomery, General Bradley, General Ismay, Air
Chief Marshall Portal General Patton and his other
illustrious wartime colleagues, remarking that "even then we
seemed to sense that the future problems of peace would
overshadow even the great difficulties we had to surmount
during hostilities."

continued...........

[thedrifter]

Turning points, even successes of the magnitude of World War
II or the end of the Cold War, always and forever beget new
challenges, as we would see.

As for the wider meanings of D-Day and the Second World War,
based on my study and writing on the subject, two themes
stand out. First, the war demonstrated the possibility of
international cooperation. Second, the war demonstrated the
inherent toughness of free peoples when called to arms.
World War II -- particularly the war in Europe -- was a
victory for the principle of alliances, and it was a victory
of the citizen soldier.

As for international cooperation, as one who knew Dwight
Eisenhower as a grandfather for exactly 21 years, I can't
help reflecting on the unlikelihood, or better put, the
circumstantial aspects, of his career. In 1911, when he
left his home town of Abilene for good, embarking for West
Point and a career which would send him to 30 duty stations
around the world, the last thing on his mind was a lifetime
of achievement that would symbolize international
understanding. He first wanted a free education and second,
a military education, having escaped the tedium of his
hometown by reading about the fabled military captains of
history. Last summer, Julie and I and our youngest
daughter, Melanie, drove through Abilene again, to be
reminded that there are few places in America more remote
from the cosmopolitan centers of the seaboards and the
cities overseas where Dwight Eisenhower achieved fame and
performed his greatest works.

Yet in the final analysis, as he insisted, people in Abilene
are the same as people everywhere. Like all of us, most of
the time, Abileners go about their daily lives, they strive,
they pursue their personal goals and interests, they raise
families, make friends, and make their fortunes albeit with
precious time out to think of the wider world beyond. Young
Dwight Eisenhower fit this mold. He was a Kansan, a very
typical Kansan.

In fact there was no "Dwight David Eisenhower" raised in
Abilene in the 1890s. Granddad was born and christened
"David Dwight Eisenhower." When he entered West Point in
June 1911, he switched his first and second names because he
liked the sound of "Dwight D" better. That was a typical
thing to do in those days.

As he registered at West Point, he listed "Tyler, Texas" as
his birthplace instead of "Denison," evidently because it's
better to be from Tyler. That too was a typical thing to
do.

Registering at West Point, he omitted the fact that he had
played pro ball in the KOM league in the summers of 1909 and
1910, figuring West Point would be none the wiser and he
would thereby be eligible for football. Others hailing from
nowhere did the same. (Parenthetically, for the sake of
consistency, Granddad held to the fiction of amateur
athletic status all his life. In 1947 at a Dodgers-Giants
game at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn, the Dodger publicist, Red
Patterson, who accompanied him to the park asked General
Eisenhower about the long-standing rumors that D.D.E. had
once played pro ball in the KOM league under the alias of
"Wilson." It had been 1909-10, according to the rumors, but
Patterson told Ike that league records indicated there were
two Wilsons in the league. Which one was he? "The one who
could hit," Ike replied.)

Ike, like so many Americans, needed an edge and so he
changed his name and birthplace, and when no one was the
wiser, he did not fully disclose all of his activities.
America was -- and is -- a place where it doesn't matter who
you are. It matters what you become. And he never forgot
it, or Abilene where he had grown up, and was always proud
of it. Mamie told me once that to the end of his life, Ike
thought Abilene was the best place there was; first in
everything.

The best restaurant anywhere? Kelly's Green Acres in
Abilene was "up there with best," according to Ike. The best
hotel anywhere? Mamie remembers that Ike was partial to the
Sunflower on Third Street and Buckeye in downtown Abilene,
near the movie theater. According to Ike, Abilene had the
prettiest girls and the best stores anywhere, and the best
jewelry store anywhere -- where he had bought Mamie's
engagement ring.

In other words, Dwight Eisenhower was as Kansan and American
as they came, and remained so as he advanced through West
Point and his military career, striving to exhibit "Duty
Honor Country," West Point's motto. Eisenhower rose in the
service of Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall, architects
of the twentieth-century American military, becoming a
military commander of the first order. Their main
challenge, of course, was leadership in the Second World
War, which marked the advent of revolutionary factors in
warfare and international affairs. Among the key strategic
realities faced by the American leadership was the fact that
U.S. strategic objectives could not be achieved by American
power alone. Coalition warfare was new for the U.S., but
essential in those times and in a conflict waged on that
scale.

During the war, thinking in terms of allies, harmonizing
political and military aims within a diverse coalition,
requiring consensus and understanding beyond the letter of
agreements, were the overriding tasks befalling Eisenhower's
command. And history records that in the searing event of
World War II, the most destructive war in history, American,
British, French and Polish forces fought as a single army
and did so in company with the Russian armies in the east.
No one emerged knowing better than he the critical
importance of cooperation, or more profoundly aware of the
possibility of cooperation -- cooperation based ultimately
on loyalties transcending each nation involved.

Eisenhower learned this lesson in large ways and in small
ways. One of his favorite memories involved the King and
Queen of England. On the 26th of May, during the final days
of planning and preparations in London, he took time out to
pay a call on King George and Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham
Palace, a memorable moment to say the least. Few grasped
Eisenhower's reverence for the English royal family, which
had honored him with friendship and hospitality. Yet he was
apprehensive. The King, afflicted by ill health since
youth, was notoriously quiet and shy and hampered by a
speech impediment. Staff members remembered how the King
and Eisenhower in Tunisia had once ridden together in a Jeep
for several hours in complete silence. But in late May,
1944, just days before the invasion, King George was
gregarious.

Over lunch, served buffet-style in an upstairs apartment,
the three reminisced. The Queen told Eisenhower for the
first time about something that had happened on a tour of
Windsor Castle that had been arranged for him two years
before. It turned out that the guide, Colonel Sterling, had
forgotten that the King and Queen were on the grounds. The
couple was sipping tea in a garden when they suddenly heard
Sterling, Eisenhower and General Mark Wayne Clark
approaching. Not wanting to intrude, they had knelt on
hands and knees behind the hedge until the Americans and
Sterling passed by. Eisenhower was delighted by the story
and the three shared a good laugh.

Back at HQ, Eisenhower described the luncheon to his closest
aide. During the dessert course, he did not notice that his
napkin had fallen to the floor. Yet he felt no self-
consciousness or embarrassment when the King had mentioned
it to him. "It could have been like visiting a friend in
Abilene," Ike remarked.

"Kinship among nations is not determined in such
measurements as proximity size and age," Dwight Eisenhower
said in June 1945, while accepting the Freedom of London in
a speech before Parliament. "Rather we should turn to those
inner things_ those intangibles that are the real treasures
that free men possess [and] if we keep our eyes on this
guidepost, then no difficulties along our path of mutual
cooperation can ever be insurmountable_"

Cooperation among nations was the practical lesson he
learned and mastered during the war -- which did not mean
adopting a new consciousness or a brand-new view of human
nature. Dwight Eisenhower was not a different person after
the war, though he was wiser and more experienced. Conflict
is inherent in human affairs, he knew. Every generation
must find its way and rediscover truth as those coming
before have learned it. Personal identity must exist before
identity can merge, and identity is affirmed in striving, in
duty and honor and in fidelity towards family, community and
country. Yet at a deeper level, real diversity based on a
strong sense of personal identity can be the basis of
genuine harmony. Of religious differences, perhaps the most
fundamental differences of all, the theologian Paul Tillich
wrote -- in describing Christianity's twentieth-century
encounter with other faiths:

continued.........

[thedrifter]

"Does our analysis demand either a mixture of
religions or the victory of religions or the end
of the religious age altogether?
"The way_ is not to relinquish one's_ traditions
for the sake of a universal concept which would be
nothing more than a concept. The way is to
penetrate into the depth of one's own religion, in
devotion, thought and action. [For] in the depth
of every living religion there is a point at which
the religion itself loses its importance, and that
to which it points, breaks through its
particularity, elevating it to spiritual freedom
and with it to a vision of spiritual presence in
other expressions of_ ultimate meanings_"

We profess uniqueness, we are all unique, in other words,
and yet the deeper one delves, "particularity" fades and
what we find is described by the word "kinship."

In 1982, my wife and I toured the region and visited the
places described in this book. Along the Normandy coast, we
hiked through the remnants of the Atlantic Wall in the Omaha
Beach area and visited the cemeteries. We strolled through
Ste-Mere-Eglise and along Utah Beach and the British and
Canadian beaches that stretch eastward to Caen. These sites
stand as monuments to the ingenuity, bravery and the highest
ideals of citizenship which the soldiers of D-Day
exemplified. "Right is more precious than peace," said
President Wilson at the outset of World War I expressing a
faith to which the soldiers of D-Day were once again called
upon to bear witness.

On the same trip, we continued on to southern England, which
had been one large military encampment in late May and early
June 1944. We visited the 101st Airborne bivouac area where
Granddad had dropped in on the troops to wish them Godspeed
hours before the attack. We saw Southwick House, still an
active Royal Navy station, where Eisenhower and his deputies
met continuously in the final days before D-Day.

The hills surrounding Portsmouth are peaceful, yet the
mind's eye can easily see the caravans of vehicles streaming
south towards the docks, winding past quaint country homes
with "tea for sale" signs posted, through the narrow streets
of the towns where villagers stepped out to wave goodbye and
good luck. For six fateful weeks, as Eisenhower put it in
the D-Day proclamation, the eyes of the world were on the
soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary
Force as they assembled in those places, and the hopes and
prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere marched with
them.

The human perspectives come through in the accounts of
constant meetings, trips, training missions and final
preparations for the event all knew would come in the years
1944. A vivid vignette involves British Admiral Bertram
Ramsay, commander of the Dunkirk evacuation who by the
spring of 1944 served as commander of the Allied Naval
forces on D-Day. One week before the attack, Ramsay and his
driver pulled over to the side of a road on a promontory
overlooking Portsmouth where they could see the convoys
passing and the ships loading in the distance. Ramsay
looked on pensively for what seemed an eternity. Had
everything been done? Were the years of retreat and
humiliation finally over? What would the next few days
bring? Could the Allied forces -- the soldiers of democracy
-- meet the test of battle against the Nazis? "It is a
tragic situation that this is a scene of a stage set for
terrible human sacrifice," he remarked, "but if out of it
comes peace and happiness, who would have it otherwise?"

At a serious price in lives, the morrow did bring victory,
and in the goodness of time, peace and happiness did come.
And would anyone afterwards have had it otherwise?

I believe in the power of speech as both a guide to history
and a tool of citizenship. Each semester at Penn, I review
perhaps the greatest of all speeches, the oration by
Pericles in honor of the fallen Athenians. His famed
"Funeral Oration" is a classic description of citizenship,
and it is addressed to perhaps the first "polis" in history
to resemble our own, to an assembly of free citizens during
the first winter of the Peloponnesian war. It contains
memorable descriptions of the paradox that surrounds
citizenship in a country like ours.

First, it may seem strange, but it is true that the sheer
dynamism of a free society can result inexorably in such
expansion of power and reach of interest that challenge and
reaction become inevitable. In Pericles' day, Sparta was
the challenger in the 30-year Peloponnesian conflict. And
in responding to those challenges, free citizens of Athens
had much to lose. How could a citizen enjoying the fruits
of success in so favored a country risk all for something as
ephemeral as honor? Was there a choice? "Make up your
minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom
depends on courage," Pericles declared. "Let there be no
relaxation in the face of the perils of war_"

What was it about Athens that made it so different? Or
perhaps in faint outline something like us?

"Let me say that our system of government does not
copy the institutions of our neighbors," the
oration continues. "It is more of a case of our
being a model to others_ our constitution is
called a democracy because power is in the hands
not of a minority, but of the whole people. When
it is a question of settling private disputes,
everyone is equal before the law; when it is a
question of putting one person before another in
positions of public responsibility, what counts is
not membership of a particular class, but ability_

"_here each one of our citizens in all the
manifold aspects of life is able to show himself
the rightful lord of his own person, and do this,
moreover with exceptional grace and exceptional
versatility_

"_here each individual is interested not only in
his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as
well_ this is a peculiarity of ours_ we do not say
that a man who takes no interest in politics is a
man who minds his own business; we say he has no
business here at all.."

Thus Pericles spoke in 431 BCE, at the beginnings of the
Peloponnesian war, which is but a short interlude in ancient
history, and yet is probably more widely recalled by us in
thought word and deed as often as all the other incidents of
ancient Greece put together. Athens inspires, and it warns.
As the ultimate defeat of Athens shows, eras come and go.
The permanency of any country or any institutionalized way
of life is an illusion -- or perhaps more accurately an
"aspiration." How long the United States can retain and
build on her considerable stature today is a question we ask
and it remains to be seen. But Americans can derive
confidence that in recent times, unlike isolated Athens, the
principles espoused and defended by the United States have a
much larger and powerful following.

D-Day was and is a major reason for this state of affairs.

Again, consider the sheer impressiveness of the feat, which
was not possible for any other belligerent in the Second
World War. Indeed, for twentieth-century America, D-Day is
the key moment; the decisive moment of renewal, and
affirmation on which everything else we call positive about
this country has been based; our expanding postwar
prosperity based, in the final analysis on confidence in our
way of life; our startling advances in civil rights and
human rights which distinguish our land from the places
where these things are talked about; our technological
achievements ranging from landings on the moon to the
inventiveness of the American private sector on which the
hopes and dreams of peoples around the world still depend.

And again, D-Day demonstrated kinship and the resilience and
toughness of free peoples everywhere that free principles
are established and enjoyed. To paraphrase Eisenhower's
address at Guildhall, he was not expressing a hope that
Abilene, Kansas and London, England -- separated by
distance, size and history -- were linked by a common
dedication to freedom of worship, equality before the law,
the liberty to act and speak as one saw fit subject only to
provisions that one trespass not on the similar rights of
others -- or a hope that a Londoner would fight for these
principles as would a citizen of Abilene. He was stating
these things as proven facts, facts proven on D-Day, in
Normandy and in the dozens of other battlefields in dozens
of theaters from Burma to the Po River Valley, places where
it was shown that mutual respect and liberty are the true
basis of our common humanity and existence.

So on June 6th, we permit ourselves to reflect on the
positives of our country and of our recent history.

What does D-Day show?

D-Day shows that given a choice, people will choose to live
by the principles of a free society. In the forties, the
Americans, with the clearest choice of all, made it and
defended it.

D-Day shows that in submitting to a test of arms, the armies
of free nations have superior resources and motivation of
the forces opposing them, and will probably win in the end.

D-Day and its aftermath show that free societies, because of
their dynamism, will always incur challenges, but that the
"proud confederation of equals" Americans strive for both at
home and abroad -- an ideal that passed within our reach 60
years ago -- remains within our reach.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

A day to remember <br />
<br />
President salutes 'liberators who fought . . . in the noblest of causes' <br />
By Finlay Lewis <br />
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE <br />
June 7, 2004 <br />
<br />
<br />
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France – Six decades after...

[thedrifter]

Surviving D-Day on a wing and a prayer

Oceanside man piloted 'flying coffin' for invasion
By Michael Burge
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 6, 2004

It was shortly after midnight 60 years ago today when James Wallace lifted off a runway in southern England en route to his rendezvous with destiny.

Army Flight Officer Wallace's aircraft was not the storied C-47 that dropped paratroopers behind enemy lines in the early hours of the D-Day invasion of France, the largest amphibious landing in history.

His ride was the little-remembered and much-maligned CG 4A glider that was towed aloft by a C-47, then released over the battlefields to descend silently earthward and land among Normandy's hedgerows.

The gliders were aerial trucks intended to deliver troops along with jeeps, howitzers and supplies to the paratroopers on the ground.

The engineless aircraft – 48 feet long, with 83-foot wingspans – were dubbed "flying coffins" by the men who flew them, and for good reason. They were flimsy contraptions made of aluminum, canvas and wood.

About the size of a semitrailer and only slightly less boxy, they could carry about 15 men or a 4,000-pound load.

Behind Wallace and his co-pilot in the hold of his airplane rested 2 tons of nitroglycerin, TNT and dynamite. Because the cargo was so volatile, they took off last.

Wallace, 84, of Oceanside, said flying conditions were terrible in the pre-dawn hours. The C-47s flew with their lights off to avoid detection.

"You couldn't see the horizon," he recalled. "It was just black, and you feel totally alone."

His glider was towed until it was about 1,000 feet over the target, then released.

Many of the gliders broke up on landing, spilling their men and equipment.

Casualties were heavy. Brig. Gen. Don Pratt, assistant commander of the 101st Airborne Division, was killed in a glider landing.

"When we landed, everything was rather still, except there was a lot of shooting down on the ground," Wallace said. "But we came in very quietly and as slow as possible."

Before taking off, they were told they would encounter hedgerows 6 to 8 feet tall. But they weren't told about the 60-to 80-foot-tall poplars that would clip the gliders or snag the paratroopers' chutes.

"As we landed, the first thing we knew was that our right wing hit something and the glider started to go that direction. Then we hit something on our left and we started to roll," Wallace said.

"When we stopped, all we had to do was undo our seat belts and crawl out. There was nothing left" of the plane, he said.

They stepped into chaos.

"There were bodies all over," Wallace said. "There was machine-gun fire over the tops of us, and the bombings. The field was littered with gliders."

Wallace and his co-pilot joined others in pulling the wounded and injured out of the line of fire.

He said his load of explosives miraculously survived the crash, and the troops were able to salvage all of it.

Many soldiers suffered broken legs when their gliders crashed into stone walls. Paratroopers also were injured after their chutes snagged in trees, then dropped the men 40 or 50 feet.

"Men . . . were badly cut up. I had a close friend (who) had his eye shot out," Wallace said.

He wasn't supposed to administer morphine in such a case, but he did.

"I thought if I didn't, he'd just be in pain," he said. Then he added, "He lived."

Wallace and his comrades dug in the night of June 6, isolated and uncertain.

"The next day, I guess about 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning, the beach troops met us, so we were relieved. We were supposed to be expecting them, but we couldn't believe that they would be able to . . . " he said, weeping at the memory.

The arrival of soldiers from Utah Beach, about five miles from where Wallace landed, meant the Allies had begun to loosen the Nazis' stranglehold on France. They had taken the first tentative steps toward Berlin.

Wallace said he was one of a handful of pilots from his group, the 87th Squadron of the 438th Troop Carrier Group, who made four glider landings during World War II and lived to tell about it.

After the war he became an art teacher in San Diego, married and had two daughters.

He said sometimes it bothers him that movies glorify the paratroopers and ignore the glider pilots.

"The people you hear about are the paratroopers, who were terrific," Wallace said. "But they did have support on the ground. . . . We were there."



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Michael Burge: (760) 476-8230; michael.burge@uniontrib.com


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040606/images/2004-06-06metro_glider.jpg

CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune
James Wallace of Oceanside flew a glider full of explosives into occupied France during the D-Day invasion.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20040606-9999-1mi6glider.html


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Operation Forager: 60 years ago, Allied victory in Pacific came within sight

By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer

"Iron Mike" Mervosh witnessed the "worst atrocity" he had ever seen in his 35-year Marine career. Joe Kratcoski remembers an enemy soldier trying to chop off his head with a sword. George Clapper left on a stretcher and was hospitalized and blind for two years.

The nation honored the 60th World War II anniversary of the Normandy invasion last week, but these three North County men remember another D-Day that also happened 60 years ago this month: Operation Forager, which began with the Battle of Saipan on June 15, 1944.

The Marianas Islands were strategically important to the Allies during the war because an air base there would put the new American B-29 Superfortress bomber within striking distance of Japan, about 1,200 miles away. The chain of 15 volcanic islands includes Saipan, Tinian and Guam.


About 25,000 Japanese troops were on Saipan, which also had a large civilian population. The Japanese had told the natives that the invading Americans were barbaric, and many would choose to kill themselves rather than be captured.

By June 15, Saipan and Tinian had been shelled for two days by 15 battleships, 11 destroyers, six heavy cruisers and five light cruisers. In all, 535 ships carried 127,570 U.S. military personnel, and two-thirds of those were Marines.

Eight thousand Marines landed on the beach of Saipan in the invasion's first 20 minutes, and 20,000 American troops were ashore by nightfall.

Hitting the beach

Mike Mervosh of Oceanside had just turned 21 when he came ashore on an LCVP boat with about 30 other Marines.

"It was really intense when we first came in," he said. "That's when the stuff hits the fan. That's when we were bothered by heavy artillery and mortar fire."

Joe Kratcoski of Vista was a 20-year-old Marine sergeant when he landed on the beach the third day of the invasion.

"I was behind a log, and a sniper kept sniping at me for about two hours," he recalled. "I leaned over and lit up a cigarette, and where my head was, a bullet went through and tore the heel off my shoe."

The same bullet hit another soldier's arm and struck a third Marine in the chest.

On June 19, an air battle off the coast of Saipan destroyed 402 Japanese planes and three carriers, while the Navy lost only 17 planes. Japanese pilots in the battle were poorly trained and outnumbered, and the fight became known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot because of the number of downed enemy planes. It is remembered as one of the greatest carrier battles of the war.

Disturbing sight

During his 25 days on Saipan, Mervosh said he saw the most disturbing thing of his long career: Civilians jumping to their deaths from the Marpi Point cliffs, about 100 feet above a coral reef, where they had been cornered by approaching American troops.

"It was the worst I'd ever seen, and it stayed in my mind a long time," he said. "They (the Japanese) had the civilians brainwashed. We pleaded with civilians over loudspeakers. We had Marines who spoke Japanese and pleaded with them that we weren't going to harm them, but they were told we'd rape them and kill them."

Kratcoski also remembers seeing civilians jumping from cliffs.

"There were quite a few," he said. "In the hundreds. The Japanese, they passed the word that to be a Marine, you had to first kill your mother."

Mervosh said, "They threw their babies, children and then themselves. That blue sea turned into a red sea. I'd never seen anything like that."

Japanese soldiers in the end also took their own lives, either by their own hand or in suicidal banzai attacks.

"We enjoyed that," Mervosh said matter-of-factly. "I'd rather have them do that than going in and digging them out."

Mervosh said the charging Japanese troops had "complete disregard for their lives," running at Marines who were armed with machine guns.

"There's no way of telling," he said about the number he killed. "We had interlocking fire. You've got your set points to fire. You transverse that gun from left to right, and man, if they're in that zone, they're going down."

'I went in to get him'

While Mervosh doesn't know how many he killed, Kratcoski vividly remembers the first Japanese soldier he shot.

"He was in the woods, shooting at us," he said. "A sniper. I went in to get him."

Kratcoski said he saw the man on the ground, but realized he was just playing dead when he was about two feet away and saw him twitch. Kratcoski shot him.

Another time, Kratcoski remembers advancing up a hill when he encountered a Japanese soldier heading down. He pulled the trigger, but his rifle didn't fire. He madly pumped it until finally he got a bullet off.

Many Japanese soldiers hid in "spider holes" and caves throughout the island. Kratcoski remembers a woman emerging from a hole holding a baby, which she suddenly thrust at him. As Kratcoski instinctively reached for the infant, a Japanese soldier suddenly jumped out behind her, swinging a sword. Another soldier shot him.

"That was pretty scary," Kratcoski admitted.

The island was declared secured on July 9. By then, 3,426 American troops were dead, almost 24,000 Japanese troops had been killed and another 1,780 had been captured. Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo resigned nine days later.

Taking Guam, Tinian

American troops invaded Guam on July 21, and that island was secured Aug. 10.

Japan had invaded Guam, an American possession, less than 24 hours after attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941. The island was the only populated U.S. soil occupied by Japanese during the war. The people of Guam were herded into concentration camps and endured Japanese rule, and sometimes brutality, for 2 1/2 years before their liberation.

American troops invaded Tinian on July 24 and secured the island by Aug. 10.

George Clapper of Vista was in the Navy, working as a hard-hat diver stationed aboard a rescue ship during the Saipan and Tinian invasions.

With a plan to use Tinian as an airfield, Navy Seabees (construction battalions) had to build a pier on the shore to unload ships. Before they could begin, however, divers like Clapper had to see what was underwater.

They found dead Americans, he said, and they decided to leave them there.

"We didn't raise bodies," Clapper said. "We took dogtags from Allied personnel. They'd been there long enough they didn't need to be raised. There wasn't much left of them. Mostly skeletons."

Clapper was on top of a ladder when his ship lurched while offshore Tinian. He lost his balance and fell, plummeting through an open hatch, landing 32 feet down. He broke his neck, back, left arm and left leg.

He ended up hospitalized for two years, and endured temporary blindness during that time, too. He still remembers the morning he heard some men in his room, and he asked them if there was a window at the foot of his bed. After two years of lost vision, he was beginning to make out a faint light, and by the end of that day he could see again.

Except for the time in the hospital, Clapper has been an artist his entire life. At 81, he still puts an easel on his patio and paints, and some of his pictures are on display at Ginger Grayham Fine Arts on Grand Avenue in Carlsbad.

"I went back to a reunion six years ago," Clapper said about his old rescue ship off Tinian. "They said, 'By God, George, we didn't think you made it!'"

Operation Forager had a significant role in helping end the war: After the resignation of Tojo and his war cabinet, the Japanese military began to lose power in the government, and the party opposing the war grew more powerful.

On Aug. 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay took off from Tinian and dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Another was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 9, and Japan surrendered on Aug. 15.

Three and a half months later, the final 47 Japanese soldiers hiding on Saipan finally emerged and surrendered.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at gwarth@nctimes.com or (760) 740-5410.




http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/06/13/military/19_30_286_12_04.txt


Ellie