I first wrote this piece in 2009. I’ve updated it, bit by bit, on successive D-Day anniversaries. I’m reprising it today:
It was sixty-seven years ago today that the Allies started taking Western Europe back from the Nazis.
The first, inevitable step was to get past the Westwall – perhaps the most immense set of fortifications ever built, with the intention of making the beaches from Denmark to the Spanish border a bloodbath for any troops trying to cross the beaches.
In places, it worked:
In some places, the troops had to overcome the near-impossible:
And yet by the end of the day, nine allied divisions were ashore, a toehold for a bridgehead that would eventually expand, ten months later, across Western Europe.
There were troops from the US, of course, on the two western beaches…
…and farther east, beaches with Brits…
…and Scots…
And in the middle, linking the two and meeting the worst resistance other than Omaha, the Canadians:
…along with troops-in-exile from elsewhere in occupied Europe; French commandos – some of whom had spent four years in exile, and who spent the next year belying the notion that the French were cowards…:
…and Norwegians, who’d been without a homeland for four years…
![](http://www.dday-overlord.com/img/navires/hnoms_svenner.jpg)
HNoMS Svenner – sunk by German gunfire off Sword Beach.
…and Poles, who’d been in exile for five years and would, in some cases, remain there for forty-five more:
The world may see nothing like it again.
Here’s President Reagan’s address to the survivors of the US 2nd Ranger Battalion, thirty years ago today…:
…who at this time seventy years ago, French Time, were still a day away from being relieved by the troops coming in from Omaha Beach.
God, I miss Reagan at times like these. He and his speech writers crafted such eloquent, heart wrenching speeches. Reagan knew a day like this was not about your political campaign, your son Beau, the Russians and Ukraine or Gaza. No, it is about honoring the sacrifice of all the young men who, in the face of death, stormed a beach in the name of freedom.
My daughters always asked me, ” Why do I have to do this or that. I don’t want to.’ And I would tell them. ‘BECAUSE THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. This is for your Grandma or someone or something else.’ I wish Biden’s handlers had had that lesson.
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I have an annoying, entitled nephew with a far-left viewpoint. He lives in California. Simi Valley of all places. He commented on a Facebook post of mine from yesterday showing the view from an empty Higgins boat on the beach at Normandy with this snarky observation: “Antifa troops invade Europe.” Such is the depth to which many of his generation have fallen. I’m glad his grandfather, whose participation in the invasion of Japan was shelved by two very loud explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have plans to rebut the snark, though I fear its effect will be negligible. Stalinists lack humor and any sense of irony.
Omitted the phrase “I’m glad his grandfather didn’t live to read his disrespectful snark”