Quote:
Originally Posted by frogstamper
Today marks the 64th anniversary of the D-Day landings, on this day in 1944 the largest ever amphibious assault was underway, ships and landing craft carrying 130,000 men of the allied armies were about to penetrate Hitlers Atlantic Wall. Of the five invasion beaches the British assaulted code name Gold and Sword, between these two the Canadians took Juno and off to the west the Americans stormed Omaha and Utah. By the evening Allied forces had established a small beachhead, and from this point on men and supplies flooded in, the much anticipated second front had been opened. As we all know D-Day was a success and the beginning of the end of Hitlers third reich, but this opening offensive cost in the region of 10,000 casualties, young men, as the poem says, who really did give all their tomorrow's for our today's.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/3499352.stm
http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/ |
Yes I never cease to be moved by footage of the landings and men being cut down on the beaches. The same is true of the WWI footage of soldiers going 'over the top'. The fact that, as is the case now, so many of these men were so young only serves to make the whole thing even more moving.
Lest we forget!
Not wishing to digress but mental images of events related to me by my father have a similar effect. Based on a minesweeper in the Atlantic, he told me how they once came upon the aftermath of a torpedoed US warship. He was only in his late teens and at first he thought (quite possibly even deluded himself) the water was full of grotesque statues. His lifelong memory is dragging stiff bodies of young US servicemen from the icy water.....
Oh and co-incidentally it's this guy's birthday today!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7439117.stm