re: D-Day Countdown

I was there in 1984, looking out from the cemetery onto Omaha Beach is extremely moving.

4 hours ago

There are 40,000 German soldiers in the landing areas. 150,000 Allied ground troops are fast approaching. Not one German is aware of this right now. By the time the Battle of Normandy is over, 300,000 Germans will be casualties. The Longest Day is less than an hour away

15 minutes ago


alex kershaw
@kershaw_alex

The first wave is closing on Omaha Beach. This is why, as a Brit, I tell my American son always to hold his head high. Most of the men in this photo will be killed or wounded in the next couple of hours. My freedom is not free.

5 minutes ago

The first wave is landing on Omaha Beach. Photo by the great Robert Capa

Wait...there were under 5000 allied casualties during the D-Day landing?


Why does it feel like I remember it being so much higher.

The Somme had nearly 60k British casualties in a single day.

Thankfully they were low compared to WW1. Every soldier lost is a cost too high

quote:

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Wait...there were under 5000 allied casualties during the D-Day landing?


Why does it feel like I remember it being so much higher.

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It was actually closer to 10,300 (of which about 4,400 were KIA). These casualties were actually much lighter than estimates the high command had come up with (north of 20,000) for the first day of Operation Overlord. The Battle of Normandy taken as a whole (from June 6-August 30, 1944) was a very bloody affair that was comparable to a typical battle on the Eastern Front. The Allies lost around 250,000 men killed or wounded from D-Day to the liberation of Paris.

Watching now. June 6th tradition.

7 hours ago

Omaha is now a death zone, as seen from above. Men pinned down along five and a half miles of hell.

alex kershaw
@kershaw_alex

The last living officer to fight on Omaha Beach, Major General John Raaen, 104.

In 1944, right now, he wades ashore. “We landed at 7:50 a.m. where there were breakwaters and we had plenty of cover.” Even so, Raaen came under a “tremendous amount” of small arms fire from the nearby bluffs and several German strongpoints. There was “constant noise,” a ceaseless “roar.” Bullets cracked in the air, “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, above you. The machine gun fire was absolutely continuous.”

When I met Raaen back in 2018, he told me he could still hear the sound of those bullets snapping over his head, the wall of noise that greeted him as he waded ashore. He crossed Omaha Beach, moved up steep bluffs, reached Vierville sur Mer around noon then set up the 5th Rangers’ first command post in Normandy. His first, critical mission was to organize the relief of fellow Rangers, surrounded and fighting for their lives five miles away at Pointe du Hoc, having scaled vertiginous cliffs under fire. These men from the 2nd Ranger Battalion had carried out one of the now legendary feats of D Day, described by Omar Bradley as the “most dangerous mission”.

6 hours ago

Lord Lovat, circled in red, now leads British commandos ashore on Sword Beach. His legendary piper, Billlin, is playing bagpipes.