Because there are things that happened in the world before most of us were born, a belated remembrance of the longest day:
H/t for a reminder of the date to Paul Krugman, whose pun on this I cannot top.
Images: Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHOM) Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard, official U.S. Coast Guard photograph, 6 June 1944.
The build-up of Omaha Beach. Reinforcements of men and equipment moving inland. SC193082 {PD-USGov-Military}
Photograph by Taylor, American assault troops of the 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, injured while storming Omaha Beach, wait by the Chalk Cliffs for evacuation to a field hospital for further medical treatment. Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, 6 June 1944.
Tristan Nitot, The Omaha Beach Cemetery, aka World War II Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, near Colleville-sur-mer in Normandy, France
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
It still bugs me that one of Strom Thurmond’s claims to fame was his participation at Normandy. That odious old fuck has sullied the whole enterprise for me just by being there.
JPL
Tom, Thanks.
Scuffletuffle
Krugman rocks!
dsc
D-Day was my father’s 20th birthday–he had never been out of the state of TN when he enlisted. Trained in NY, took the Queen Mary to Ireland with thousands of other young soldiers, trained for the invasion, watched hundreds of the young men he had drilled with die all around him. stayed alive.
Twenty years old.
arguingwithsignposts
Krugman:
Well, he did write this before the media became too busy with someone else’s privates.
Maura Cavaleri
Thanks to my grandpa and all who served with him. Thank you to my cousins and neighbors who serve now. Always remember, never forget those who have died so that we may live the way we choose today. Semper Fi HooRAH!
stuckinred
Interesting tidbit about the D-Day in Europe. There is very little film of the landing because there was a decision made for all the film photographers to transfer their film to a single signal officer on the beach. He was climbing the cargo net from a landing craft to a ship and he dropped the duffel bag full of reels into the ocean.
trollhattan
Thanks for this (and Krugman’s pun). I’ve learned on various interweb forums that for Europeans, D-Day is still held in considerable reverence, even among younger generations. Don’t know why, but knowing this makes me feel better.
My father served in the Pacific (Navy) so was “deprived” of the opportunity to be a part of this campaign. He never once complained, that’s for sure. What a slog they had ahead.
Tom Levenson
@stuckinred: Didn’t know that. Redundant backups were just as important then as now, eh what?
Re relatives in service — my dad was in the Pacific for his whole war, and my father in law had left convoy runs in the north Atlantic for the command of an LST on the invasions of places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa by then. Grandpa and Uncle were in the European theater, though neither of them clambered ashore on D-Day itself.
Quicksand
Never mind the pun, the picture Krugman used is epic.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, unfortunately, this isn’t a “significant” D-Day anniversary, seeing as it’s the 67th anniversary. The media won’t care until the 75th anniversary. Perhaps the 70th, but it doesn’t have that ring to it.
Besides, Weiner is obviously the top story! Dirty laundry RULZ!
stuckinred
@Tom Levenson: My dad as well. The USS Crosby, APD 17. He wouldn’t go to the D-Day Museum in New Orleans until they dedicated the Pacific Wing in December 2001.
Here’s a link about the film at D-Day Europe
trollhattan
@Quicksand:
Made me look–holy crap, those are teh funny.
Cermet
Lets us not forget that except for the valor of the massed Russian soldiers, even after losing tens of millions of war dead, these brave soldiers and civilians almost single handedly broke the back of the Nazi war machine – as a result, all those brave Americans, Brits, Canadians, and other allies would have been slaughtered and thrown back into the sea on D-Day.
stuckinred
@Cermet: Most people have no clue what they sacrificed. On the other hand Stalin was just as bad as Hitler.
Tom Levenson
@stuckinred: Your father had him some war, did he not.
My dad had an interesting time — trained as a Japanese language officer at Monterey (and points east after the internments moved Japanese language expertise to within a lot of barbed wire), he worked in forward intelligence the rest of the time. He bounced around ships a lot, ending up at Leyte Gulf (with your dad) on Admiral Kincaid’s flagship.
Oddly, my wife’s dad was there too with his LST, and our best friend’s pop was flying a torpedo bomber off the jeep carriers that saved the landing fleet (your dad, I’m guessin, my dad, my wife’s dad) from the last desperate Japanese battleship sortie.
Strange days.
There’s another story of Leo Marx, then just out of college, yet to become a great historian of technology, (The Machine in the Garden) clambering across a couple of decks of destroyers rafted up in some South Pacific harbor to find my father crammed into a Lt.’s cabin (closet) on his destroyer, in a room almost filled with a complete edition of Toynbee’s history. Dad was a reader (and a writer and a thinker) and no mere war was going to keep him from his task. ;)
Villago Delenda Est
@Cermet:
Actually, thank Hitler for being a dumbass and underestimating the Russians based on his own ideological bigotries.
stuckinred
@Tom Levenson: Wonderful story! My step-mothers dad was on a destroyer in the Pacific with a former German Prof at UGA. He was in Berlin before the war and his German was so good people thought he was a native. He came back to the states and they made him the Captain of a Destroyer in the PACIFIC! Way to use his expertise. After the war he was instrumental in developing the translation system used a Nuremberg and later the UN.
JPL
D-Day is not only a reminder of our past wars but also reminds us of our heritage. That’s why I appreciate recognition of D-Day. My father was on the Nevada at Pearl Harbor and my mom didn’t know he was alive until Christmas Eve when the mail man delivered a post card saying he was fine.
gogol's wife
Thanks for the reminder.
Chris
Watching the movie right now with my roommate. Thanks for remembering, Tom.
(Granpa didn’t get out of West Point until right after the war, and he spent Korea away from the fighting as well. Made up for it with three Green Berets tours to Southeast Asia, though).
Tsulagi
@dsc:
My grandfather had never been beyond about 100mi radius from where he was born in CO when he enlisted. At age 17 a week after Pearl Harbor.
His Ranger company trained in Scotland for D-Day. Grandpa discovered Scotch and one of the finer things in life there: ladies. Good times. For a short while.
Then came D-Day. 50 years later he would still tear up thinking about the men in his company lost that day.
maye
Thanks for this! I will be in Normandie in a few weeks combing over medieval minutiae, but I intend to take one day to tour the D-day beaches and the cemeteries.
stuckinred
“Oddly, my wife’s dad was there too with his LST, and our best friend’s pop was flying a torpedo bomber off the jeep carriers that saved the landing fleet (your dad, I’m guessin, my dad, my wife’s dad) from the last desperate Japanese battleship sortie.”
The Battle of Samar. When we went to New Orleans I asked him what TAFFY 3 was and he didn’t really know. After reading the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Thunder on the Sea it seems that the Navy purposely de-emphasized the “greatest Naval Victory in US History” to cover Halsey after taking the fake. There is no story of the war that makes my hair stand up on my neck as the one where the survivors of the Johnston wait to be machine-gunned by the Japanese only to be saluted by the crew for their gallantry. damn. Of course what is really interesting about Taffy 3 is that they were the second string, not the big glory boys.
Linda Featheringill
@stuckinred:
Hitler had a lot in common.
It was an aim of the invading Nazi high command to wipe out the Russians/Slavs/Orientals altogether. The Russian people apparently understood this and fought like cornered wolverines. And they did break the back of the German army. If D-Day had happened before the Russkies had taken their toll, probably the whole war would have turned out differently.
Still, the war was hard fought in every theater.
Cromagnon
@Cermet
True to some extent. But if it hadn’t been the massive lend-lease going to Russia, especially in terms of logistics and hundreds of thousands of American-made trucks (which allowed to Russians to concentrate their industrial efforts on building tanks and other weapons, and allowed the Russians to become as or more mobile than the Germans)… as well as the threat of a second front in Western Europe and other operations which kept significant German forces pinned down elsewhere, the Russians would have suffered the same fate as everyone else up to that point.
stuckinred
@Linda Featheringill: Absolutely. Bless em all.
kd bart
Wasn’t that the day that Dwight Eisenhower began to restore Second Amendment rights to Continental Europe?
stuckinred
@Cromagnon: My dad’s ship was one of the WWI Fourstackers we didn’t lend-lease to the brits.
kd bart
My Dad landed at Normandy. Six weeks later. As he stated, “It was a little easier and calmer.”
Linda Featheringill
@Villago Delenda Est:
He did underestimate them by serious margins.
As your resident expert on Nazi Germany [that’s how I got my MA], I would say that Hitler’s biggest mistake was the Fuhrer Principal. You never question those in command. It was a complete waste of German brain power. No one person or small group of people know everything.
England on the other hand, along with other countries, invited everyone to apply their intelligence to the problems at hand and to speak up with suggestions and criticisms. They tried to use a large portion of their available brain power. And the Allies [including USSR] won the war.
[Okay, I don’t know everything about the Nazis. I just know more than I would like to.]
SiubhanDuinne
@stuckinred:
Have you ever seen “The Americanization of Emily”?
Villago Delenda Est
@Cromagnon:
Important point. Stalin himself acknowledge the importance of the Studebaker truck in keeping the Red Army in the game, and allowing it to go on the offensive. The famous “Stalin Organ” rocket launchers were mounted on Studebakers.
WWII was very much, all the way around, a team effort by the Allies. An honest assessment will show that that US industrial capacity made the difference for everyone, specifically in the case of the Soviets letting them concentrate on tanks, artillery, and ammunition, as you indicate, and was one of the many things that Hitler failed to take into consideration. Yamamoto, on the other hand, knew exactly what Japan was getting into, but the idiots of the Japanese Army overruled him and the result was waking up the dragon.
SiubhanDuinne
@stuckinred:
Will no one rid me of this troublesome Godwin?
Omnes Omnibus
My grandfather has the battle star for Normandy on his European campaign medal (along with three other ones); I believe he landed on D-Day +6. From the stories he shared with me, it always sounded like he was one of the ones who has a good war. His unit did field maintenance and repairs; they were generally far enough behind the front lines that they weren’t shot at often, but they were far enough for that they were not considered considered REMFs. Hard needle to thread. Neither of his sons served in the military, so he saved all his stories for me.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Can’t disagree with anything, Linda.
Hitler displayed all the attitudes about the Russians that our neocons displayed about Iraq. The entire “cakewalk” thing. Hitler said as much, using different words, of course.
How many superior German generals got canned because they questioned the judgement of the Fuhrer, and furthermore, were proven correct in that questioning in the final analysis?
MikeJ
@Tom Levenson:
How ironic. Today is also the day mentioned in CW McCall’s Convoy. It was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June…
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Cermet: One of the best things to come out of the end of the Cold War is the books on the Eastern Front. 1 million casualties in the siege of Moscow alone. The mind reels.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Tom Levenson: My father-in-law slept through the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He was on a PT boat tender, and it was one of their boats that first spotted the Japanese fleet.
He was sacked out on the deck (the only place cool enough to sleep) and his buddies kept trying to wake him up saying “There’s lots of gunfire and flashes over there, something big must be going on.” They couldn’t budge him.
Fred
I watched Saving Private Ryan again last night. Does that mean I am exonerated?
/snark off.
But seriously, it is quite sad that Weiners weiner and stupid political food fights trump such an important day.
Not that I am saying I like KThug any more for making this astute observation. I’m sure he will be back to getting all excited about bad economic news tomorrow. KThug never saw bad economic data he didn’t fall in love with. That way he can talk about his fantasy of the US being able to unilaterally doing things like China, in an environment were politics are magically taken out of the equation by democracy fairys.
Chris
@trollhattan:
I’m half French, lived in Paris for three years as a kid just when I started nerding out on history. The Normandy beaches were just a few hours away, and we made the pilgrimage there (I’m barely exaggerating) many times. As a French-American family, it was doubly significant. Haven’t been back in over a decade, but if nothing else, I’ll be there for the 2044 hundred-year anniversary. That’s been set in stone for years.
As for “why” – it was the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe (if you don’t count Italy, which many people don’t because, hey, they were on the other side). HUGE deal, especially since World War Two is the last war that Western Europe’s civilian populations had to go through. Virtually everyone has a grandparent who lived under the occupation.
meander
A minor quibble with the local public TV station that follows Krugman’s complaint: instead of running the superb American Experience about D-Day — something they should probably do every single year on June 6 — KQED is showing some stupid pledge-period concert, some guitar player I’ve never heard of in Spain.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, hell yeah. Biggest Allied asset in the war: Hitler’s brains. Or lack thereof.
You can also thank him for scaring Jewish scientists out of his country and into the United States, where they built the A-bomb for us instead of them. And for taking on all of Europe single-handed with Italy as his only wingman. And for taking a sleeping pill on D-Day.
Fred
@Chris: His biggest mistake was opening up a second front against the advice of his commanders. Stalin would have left him alone otherwise and may have even helped him in some ways. After all they were both of similar mindsets.
Without a second front he probably could have easily held off the D Day invasion
Chris
@Linda Featheringill:
It was also the ultimate evidence that the fascist creed, that dictatorships were inherently efficient and democracies inherently inefficient, was a steaming, reeking, festering pile of bullshit.
Fred
@Chris: Tell that to China. Their infrastructure is so far ahead of the US right now it would take decades to catch up. Even if the US was able pull it’s head out of it’s own ass in order to do it
Mike G
That’s certainly the case in Normandy when I was there. Highly recommend a tour of the D-Day areas if you’re visiting Europe.
It pisses me off no end when idiots call the French “surrender monkeys” and such. They suffered 1.4m killed in World War One; proportional to population that would be like the US taking 13 million dead. An experience like that would tend to cut down on war-glorifying chickenhawk assholery.
stuckinred
@Fred: My old man always contended that if he’s concentrated on the jet fighter instead of the V-12 they’d have won.
gogol's wife
@kd bart:
Yes, he rang those bells to warn the Germans, we’re here and we’re armed.
Chris
@Fred:
Yep. Just one more way in which lunatic, hyper-nationalist chest-thumping twisted Hitler’s brain. (Unfortunately, it’s a familiar problem).
@Fred:
Well, the key word was “inherently.” China vs U.S. is more about good vs bad policies. As we’ve seen in the past, democracies can work perfectly well when they decide to (contrary to the opinion of fascist thinkers).
stuckinred
@Mike G: Hence their brilliant effort in Indochine and Algeria. In fact if you have not seen Indigenes it’s worth a look. Algerian grunts fighting and dying for France and, when Algeria won their independence, the French took away their pensions.
youtube.com/watch?v=gJ1s8WDQgWs&feature=related
SBJules
I was born a month before d-day. In our family album for that time, there’s a picture of FDR on one of the end papers and Eisenhower on the other.
Chris
@Mike G:
Like I said, everyone and their dog in France either lived through the war, has parents who did, or has grandparents who did.
Much as I dislike generalizations about entire countries… one of the biggest differences between Western Europe and the United States is the way they both remember World War Two. Few Americans have any idea what it’s like being a civilian living through a war, much less being a civilian watching their homes and all the people they grew up with being put at risk, harmed or destroyed/killed.
I mean no disrespect to the troops, but our (America’s)experience of war for almost a century and a half has been “over there.” And it’s kind of a pet peeve of mine to hear so much overwhelming praise, concern, etc for “the troops” from all quarters when there’s virtually no attention paid to the civilians.
Ash Can
May I just say that this is one of the finest threads I’ve ever read on this site? And may I also say that if any right-wing/chickenhawk site has a thread anywhere near this great tonight, I will happily eat my Panama Jack summertime fedora? (I suspect that both my fedora and my digestive system are safe tonight.)
stuckinred
@Chris: My experiences with civilians in Vietnam led me to believe that they wanted to farm their rice in peace. period
Cromagnon
@stuckinred:
I would disagree. Instead, if Hitler would have concentrated more on submarines, he would have won. The Allies ‘center of gravity’ so to speak was the lifeline between the US and Europe
OzarkHillbilly (used to be tom p)
To my Uncle Walt, who came in on D-day plus 3, and fought his way to Germany. To my Uncle Frank, who was in the first wave at Tarawa. To my Uncle Joe who flew the hump, survived the war, and died in ’46 trying to land a C-10 in Alaska. To my Uncle Tony and Aunt Betty who survived a fire at the Joliet Armory Plant (43? 44?). To my Uncle Alex, who was actually a true war hero. Was a SEAL before there were SEALS. And got wrote up in a book. (OK OK, it was a 1960’s book for teenager’s, still, he was in a book.)(beat THAT MF’ers)
And most of all, to my father, who flew I don’t know how many combat missions over Japan, almost getting shot down several times (“DUMP IT IN TOKYO BAY???? F*CK YOU!”)
Then went to Korea and did it all over again… This time with a wife AND a new born baby left behind.
When my father got called up for Korea, he said, “Honey, maybe we should wait?” To which my mother said, “FUCK YOU!!!! It is now or NEVER.”(My mother, very much the southern belle, also told her very Southern Baptist mother, “I am marrying this Polack from the south side of Chicago whether you like it or not!” (Grandma caved)
Truth: When my mothers father died, my mother was unable to come to his funeral. Why? Because she was 8 1/2 months pregnant for the 8th time with his 12th grand child… and my grandmother (RIP) had not told ANYBODY her daughter was pregnant….
AGAIN!!!!
I still remember the looks of people who were observing my father with his 5 children and no wife.
I miss my Mother. Sometimes I miss my Father more. Flip a coin.
Jager
My ND farmboy Dad flew a glider in that morning with a Jeep and a trailer full of banglore torpedos in the back. He said the GI driving the Jeep was so excited he started the Jeep while the old man was circling looking for a decent place to land. Dad told the guy to “shut that son of bitch off and leave it off until I tell you to start it!”
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I’ve been to Colleville-sur-Mer a few times, including on the 60th anniversary of D-Day when I met a number of American, British, and Canadian vets arriving for the ceremonies. The cemetery was guarded by young Marines and the respect – even reverence – with which they treated the old vets was touching.
It’s also pretty damned striking to watch the groups of French schoolkids coming in on field trips, laughing and poking each other as kids do, and how sobered and quiet they are as they leave. A field full of 10,000 crosses of non-French “morts pour la France” still makes an impression despite all the stupid knee-jerk anti-Americanism that otherwise characterizes French public discourse (and education).
Not that we have much scope for stone-throwing in that regard.
Bill H.
My Dad was on an LST at Omaha beach. Medical officer tending wounded returning.
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
My daughter turned one today! (and got the cast off her leg – a whole other story…)
Ruckus
Dad was a machinery repairman on a sub tender in the pacific. We never talked about the war so I don’t have any more details. I do know he enlisted in 42 and have seen pics of him in uniform. He still wouldn’t talk about it when I joined the navy during Vietnam. I’ve often wondered what did or didn’t happen that made him never talk about it.
I spent time in northern europe and went to a number of war museums wherever I could find them. The reverence for the resistance and america was palpable.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Jager: My uncle Roger may have towed your dad’s glider. He was a C-47 pilot, and I knew he towed gliders over Normandy but that’s all he ever told his family.
gbear
So has Palin made a statement about how the coalition of the willing landed in France in order to make gun ownership safe for all of our good friends in Europe? (Bonus points for a mention of how we were fighting for freedom against the Commie Russians).
dww44
@stuckinred: My brother-in-law, who served 2 tours in Viet Nam, the first as an American advisor in the field to the South Viet Nam army, can confirm that the Vietnamese only wanted peace. He has made no less than 15 trips to Viet Nam since retiring from the army in the mid 90’s, all as a volunteer with other volunteers doing “peaceful” work like teaching English to young school kids.
James E. Powell
Like many of you, my father served in World War II. He was on a sub-chaser in the Pacific, was part of the landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok. He was 20 years old when he went in, 25 when the war ended. I think of myself at that age. I can’t imagine what he went through, what it took from him.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
My paternal grandmother’s little brother, Ownie Orton of Gladstone, MI din’t go in to Normandy until D+10, but he was part of the Torch landings in ’42. He was captured by the Afrika Korps, but he and his fellow POWs were being guarded by Italians and escaped. He fought through ETO from D+10 until the end of the war as a grunt. It’s as hard to imagine him soldiering through as it is to imagine I’ll ever meet someone with a more gentle soul.
No relatives on mom’s side- that I know of- served in WWII, but my grandmother’s youngest sister, my great-aunt Therese, dated Joe Beyrle– the only American to serve in both the US and Soviet armies during the war- in high school.
Jager
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: My Dad flew the Operation Varsity mission across the Rhine in the early spring of 45. After the fiascos of Normandy and in Holland, they had the Glider pilots form up as Infantry companies and function as grunts. One of the guys in my Dad’s outfit won a Silver Star. My dad came out of it with 2 Air Medals, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Even after I got back from Viet nam he didn’t talk much about the war (nor do I) he sure had great stories about London and Paris though! My dad flew transport and cargo missions in between glider operations…he did say flying a plane load of jerry cans filled with gasoline was exciting as hell.
R-Jud
@dsc:
My great uncle Gino had just turned 20, as well. After he came home, he went back to finish high school. Can you imagine, sitting through Algebra class after that? He was such a sweet, quiet guy.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Jager: @Jager: Funny about the jerrycans. My father-in-law, who served on the PT tender in the Pacific, said that issuing life jackets was a mistake — they should have been issued parachutes. Considering their tender was loaded to the gunwales with avgas, torpedoes, depth charges, and ammo, if they got hit, every SOB was going up, not down.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Jager: Have you seen any histories of gliders in WWII by any chance? I think this is the one I saw: Silent Wings at War. At any rate, the one I read had an intro by Walter Cronkite, who covered D-Day as a glider trooper.
His take was something like this: “If you’re going into combat, march, hit the beach, ride a tank, fly, parachute, but under no circumstances, ever go in a glider!”
BruceK
If you know what life in Nazi-occupied Europe was like, you can understand why D-Day is important here, and why some people might view a trip to Normandy almost like a pilgrimage.
People like my mom, who grew up in Greece while the Nazis were rampaging, grabbing random people off the street to shoot dead in reprisals for partisan attacks (she almost lost her father that way), entire villages wiped out, widespread starvation.
D-Day was the beginning of the end for that.
My mom went with my dad, my brother, and me to Sword Beach, maybe twenty years ago. The cemeteries, the old Atlantic Wall fortifications, the beach itself … testimony to the horrors of war.
And to the fact that sometimes, there are worse things even than war, that there can be reasons to go to war – not pride, not indignation, not greed, not the glory of a rich man’s son – but to stop something worse than war itself.
Sword Beach, Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah – they’re hallowed ground to the people who survived, who would probably have fallen to the Nazis.
People like my mom.
In a sense, I owe my very existence to the Tommies and GI’s and Canadians who went ashore that day.
stuckinred
@R-Jud: I came home from Vietnam 2 months before my 20th birthday after serving there and for 13 months on the dmz in Korea. I got my GED in Korea and entered the University of Illinois 10 days after I came home.
All these recollections are wonderful, thanks all!
bob h
Had they any suspicion that they were hitting the beaches to ensure future government by Frank Luntz, Grover Norquist, and Mitch McConnell, I think they would want to reverse the props.
Tuttle
My grandad is probably in that second picture somewhere.
On the morning of June 6, 1944 he was the 8th, and junior-most, officer aboard LST 536. On the evening of June 6, 1944 he, the only remaining officer, commanded LST 536 as it pulled off the beach to head back to England.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@OzarkHillbilly (used to be tom p): What a fabulous post, and what a family! You should be – and I’m sure are – very proud of all of them for their service to our great country.
Just curious how your family ended up with a father and five children? Did your mother and other siblings die? (Well, obviously your mother did, as you mentioned.) Did your father raise you on his own?
Kilkee
My father landed at Utah Beach on D+4 with the 26th Field Artillery, 9th Infantry Division. They’d previously stormed across North Africa and Sicily, so they were grizzled veterans compared to the first waves, most of whom had never seen combat. Story is that was intentonal: the brass figured the opening losses would be so horrendous that they might as well send in the rookies first. Besides, the rookies were more likely to storm ahead whatever the odds. (One of the Ninth’s nicknames, incidentally, was “the varsity.”)
The Ninth proceeded to help liberate the Coterin peninsula, then work its way across France, Belgium, and Germany, including such spots as the Ruhr pocket, Remagen, the Hurtegan Forest, Battle of the Bulge, Dachau. I think they had more combat days than any other division, or maybe one other.
Dad never spoke of any of this. I think he literally couldn’t, for the fifty-odd years he lived after the war, without choking up.
I’ve been to the American cemetary in Normandy, the one in the opening scene in Private Ryan. I’ve seen crosses marking Ninth Infantry guys. It’s incredibly moving, inspiring, and wrenching all at once. And yes, the locals still understand.
Jager
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The “G” in the center of the Glider Pilot’s wings stood for “Guts”
Jager
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: I finished my tour in the Army at Fort Bragg. Since then they have built an Airborne Museum on the post. All the history of the 82nd, the planes, the equipment and in the middle of the museum is a Waco glider like my Dad flew, plywood, screws, wire and fabric. My Dad was 24 on D-Day, my Mom at home was 19.
stuckinred
@Kilkee: I worked in their AO in the Mekong Delta and always knew them as the “Old Reliables”.
stuckinred
@Jager: I guess they were aware that they were going to be infantry after the assault? We’re glider pilots officers?
Tom
Grampa Bill was a Lt in the 29th South Alberta Regiment, 4th Canadian Armoured division. Landed in October as a replacement officer because the SAR was losing officers fast as it fought the battle of the Schelt to clear the approaches to Antwerp. Fought through Belgium & Holland, basically held the line with just his tank at the Battle of Hochwald Gap.
He’s featured in the documentary series “Greatest Tank Battles” which can be seen below (May only work if you’re in Canada)
history.ca/video/default.aspx
-select Greatest Tank Battles
-Ep 5 ‘Battle of Hochwald Gap’
Grampa Toivo was a Lt in the Finnish Army, and fought the Soviets twice, in the Winter war and then in the Continuation war alongside the Nazis. Last week I got my copy of his recently published memoirs.
Kilkee
@stuck: Yes, that was their primary nickname. Less well known, especially in WW2, were “the varsity” (from Ernie Pyle, I believe) and “Hitler’s nemesis.”
BTW, Dad knew Westmoreland from his WW2 days, when he was a Colonel with the Ninth. In about 1966, Dad was attending a Ninth reunion at Immaculate Conception Church in Worcester, MA, where we lived. He’d taken us kids to the event, and he introduced my 12-year old self to General Westmoreland. I knew who he was. It gave me an interesting perspective on my Dad that he seemed to be buddies with this Famous Guy.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’ve been there. At the Pointe du Hoc, US soldiers scaled a cliff while taking heavy fire to take the German positions. The French government gave that land to us as a memorial, and we have kept it as is. The land is still pockmarked from the bombs. The German bunkers are still there.
Kilkee
Here’s a young European who is running a website that is a tribute to the Ninth Infantry Division, fueled by his gratitude for their service:
9thinfantrydivision.net/about.me.htm
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Fred:
Have you been to China? The water isn’t potable and the plumbing is so bad you can’t even flush toilet paper, and this is in the cities.
stuckinred
@Kilkee: Nice, Westy wasn’t my favorite but it’s cool that your dad knew him from when we knew what we were doing.
celticdragonchick
@Linda Featheringill:
Something I found amazing was the attempt to send language and cultural specialists (and midwives!) to the Ukraine while the fighting was still going on in order to properly Germanize the ethnic Germans they had “liberated”. Considerable resources were spent rying to identify and relocate ethnic Germans in the middle of a frakking war. Unbelievable.
Jager
@stuckinred: The original planning was to walk away after they landed. (or keep their heads down) They retrained as Infantry in the fall of ’44. My Dad carried a carbine and a 45. They landed in Germany formed up and held a crossroads for a day and half until they were relieved. They disabled a Tiger tank at an intersection and they wouldn’t let the Germans tow it away. they effectively blocked a panzer advance as the rest of the troops came across the Rhine. They were all officers either commissioned or Flight Officers, the same as the Warrant Officers of today. Dad took a piece of flak in the thigh, the medics fixed him up and he was good to go, he also had the heel of his combat boot shot off during the fight at the crossroads. I found that out at my dad’s funeral from his co-pilot, he never mentioned it.
stuckinred
@Jager: Great story, they were a quiet bunch. My old man opened up after I came home.
Kilkee
@stuck: The only time I ever heard my dad speak about the war was on one occasion, overheard, to my brother-in-law, the only one from our generation to have seen combat (others among us in service, but Stateside). I’m guessing he felt that Walter having been in Nam meant he’d understand in ways we could not. Must have been something similar with you.
stuckinred
@Kilkee: Yea, he felt pretty bad about my deal. The judge gave me a choice between the joint and the Army so he had to sign and take me to the train to the induction center on my 17th birthday. He breathed a sigh of relief when I got sent to Korea. I showed him, came home for 3 months and volunteered for the Nam.