Seventy-seven years ago this day.....

    

    June 6th, 1944, Allied forces fought their way onto and across the beaches of Normandy, France. Said beaches were carefully prepared by their Nazi defenders and were, effective and broad killing zones.  When defenders have years to prepare, what happens is exactly what the Allies encountered:  there were pre-ranged artillery coordinates, so the big guns behind the coast would know exactly where to aim their deadly salvos.  On the bluffs overlooking the beaches, German pillboxes and trench positions had laid out fields of fire for their much vaunted and feared MG-34 and 42 machineguns.  Not ordinary mgs by the standards of the time, both of these guns, but particularly the MG42, had very high rates of fire, almost three times that of a typical Allied mg, the Browning M1919 or the British Bren gun.

  The German plan was to turn the beaches red with Allied blood and drive them back into the sea before they could get a foothold established.  There were layers of resources that were intended to be called in where the need was greatest.  This included some very capable SS Panzer forces that were supposed to remain flexible and were highly mobile.  In a miraculous stroke of good luck, it so happened that Hitler had retained the sole right to order reinforcements into the battle....and he was asleep when aides needed to tell him the invasion had started. Nobody had the guts to wake the dictator and so the panzers that could have possibly pushed the Allies off the beach, were not deployed until far too late.

  Well, the beaches did run red with the blood of Allied soldiers, but they weren't willing to be pushed back and they persisted.  In various parts of the five beaches small groups of Brits, Yanks and Canucks all pushed forward, often demonstrating a level of heroism and sacrifice that we should not only never forget, but that we should also make an effort to understand...from their perspective.

  There have actually been films made that are helpful in this respect.  In the early 60s, "The Longest Day" was a sincere attempt to show viewers what that nightmarish day was like for the men who were there.  It was pretty successful at avoiding the Hollywood pitfalls, but is also not really what one could refer to as a 'documentary'.  The most recent effort at this was Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan", and it is a gritty and very heart-wrenching film, although the Germans all looked like forty-something hardened criminals, when, in reality, they were just as likely to be baby-faced Hitler Jugend fanatics.  In point of fact, the SS division named for the HJ and largely populated by former HJ boys was present and fought fiercely.  When I have seen film of German troops headed for the front, or hunkered down as Allied fighter-bombers whine overhead, there is an array of ages and levels of hardness that is present.  They were human beings, just like we were.

  Once the Allies did establish a beach-head and knew it was solid, they poured astonishing quantities of resources ashore.  LST ships, with the yawning clamshell bows, puked tanks, trucks, artillery pieces and the first of what would soon become an avalanche of supplies came ashore, and the long march to Berlin and final victory in Europe had begun. 

  In our family, this day is more special than it might be in most American families, because my father-in-law, Donald Downs went ashore on D-1 as a platoon sergeant in Co. G, 175th Inf. Brigade, 29th Inf. Division, and fought his way into the hedgerows behind the beachhead. Known as the 'bocage', these hedgerows were a murderous maze of ten to fifteen foot high, at least ten foot thick walls of rocks, soil and plants.  The Germans had prepared these too for fighting a gradual withdrawal.  They did this by cutting firing slits in the front of a hedge and laying out fields of fire that Allied forces would have to penetrate at great cost in blood.

  Donald was awarded two Bronze Stars and one Silver Star in the next 30 days and then had his arm shot off by a German sniper.  He was sent home and remained a wounded and angry man until he died of cirrhosis in his fifties. My wife, Abigail, says he was treated atrociously by the VA.  My impression is that the VA has improved in present times....but, I believe we could do much better with how we treat our vets.....when an average of 22 of them commit suicide, EVERY DAY.

  

This is the cost of freedom.  Never forget it.