D Day

[Seahawks]

58 years ago 4k died in one day. Thanks to them we have our freedom.

 

Thanks,

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/the_boys_of_pointe_du_hoc.html

 

How would you like to climb under these conditions?

 

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

Edited June 6, 2007 by Seahawks

[ivan]

well, actually it's owed to a lot more than just them - it took a whole nation...actually a lot more than just our nation - we wouldn't have left the beaches if the russian's weren't busy destroying the lion share of the wehrmacht.

 

for the d-day vets though - won't be long 'fore their battle is as ancient as antietam

[tvashtarkatena]

And more accurately, thanks to them (along with other allies, but primarily the Russians, who bore and inflicted 80% of the casualties of that war), Western Europe regained its freedom.

 

Our freedom was never seriously threatened.

[kevbone]

 

Our freedom was never seriously threatened.

 

As long as the bush crime family is in charge our freedom is walking out the door.

 

[Seahawks]

 

Our freedom was never seriously threatened.

 

As long as the bush crime family is in charge our freedom is walking out the door.

 

Did you read the speach??? You might have learned something.

[kevbone]

That would be your freedom as well bro.

[Mal_Con]

A significant fact was left out of the speech. There were no guns there as the Germans had moved them out leaving logs painted to look like guns as a diversion. The entire story is in most military histories and at Ponte Du Hoc. Their sacrifice was real but the military effect was negligible. Of course that would have spoiled the speech or at least exposed the absurdity of war

[kevbone]

A significant fact was left out of the speech. There were no guns there as the Germans had moved them out leaving logs painted to look like guns as a diversion. The entire story is in most military histories and at Ponte Du Hoc. Their sacrifice was real but the military effect was negligible. Of course that would have spoiled the speech or at least exposed the absurdity of war

 

Are you calling war absurd? How dare you! Hee hee

[ivan]

i seem to recall from the brief time that i claimed there that the "face of a 1000 pitons" at seneca rocks, wv, was so named by the same rangers who were planning such tomfoolery

[Dechristo]

It's about time to watch Saving Private Ryan...again

[Serenity]

Lessons of D Day

Good read and ties in nicely with what is going on today.

 

June 07, 2007

The Lessons from D-Day

By Victor Davis Hanson

 

Sixty-three years ago this week, we landed on the Normandy beaches. As on each anniversary of June 6, 1944, much has been written to commemorate the bravery and competence of the victorious Anglo-American forces.

 

All true. But as we ponder this achievement of the Greatest Generation that helped lead to the surrender of Nazi Germany less than a year later, we should remember that the entire campaign was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a near-run thing.

 

Our forefathers made several mistakes. They attacked nonexistent artillery emplacements. Planes dropped paratroopers far from intended targets. Critical landing assignments on Omaha Beach were missed.

 

Once they left shore, it got worse. Indeed, D-Day was soon forgotten in the nightmare of GIs being blown apart in the Normandy hedgerows by well-concealed, entrenched German panzers.

 

Apparently, no American planners - from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall down to the staff of Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower - had anticipated either the difficulty of penetrating miles of these dense thickets or the deadliness of new German model tanks and anti-tank weapons.

 

So we landed in Europe with the weaponry we had - and it was in large part vastly inferior to that of the Wehrmacht.

 

The most brilliant armored commander in U.S. history, George S. Patton, had been sacked from theater command for slapping an ill soldier the prior year in Sicily. Gens. Omar N. Bradley and Bernard L. Montgomery lacked his genius and audacity - and tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were to pay for Patton's absence at Normandy.

 

We finally broke out of the mess, after using heavy bombers to blast holes in the German lines. But again, these operations were fraught with foul-ups.

 

On two successive occasions we bombed our own troops, altogether killing or wounding over 1,000 Americans, including the highest-ranking officer to die in the European Theater, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair. The nature of his death was hidden from the press - as were many mistakes and casualties both leading up to and after Normandy.

 

When the disaster in the bocage near the Normandy beaches ended over two months after D-Day, the victorious Americans, British and Canadians had been bled white. Altogether, the winners of the Normandy campaign suffered a quarter-million dead, wounded or missing, including almost 30,000 American fatalities - losing nearly 10 times the number of combat dead in four years of fighting in Iraq.

 

News from the other fronts during the slaughter in Normandy was no better. Due to blunders by American generals in Italy, the retreating German army had escaped the planned Allied encirclement - and would kill thousands more Allied soldiers in Italy during the next year.

 

Disturbing reports spread about the simultaneous advance and brutality of Stalin's Red Army on the Eastern Front. Some in the American government began to worry that a war started over freedom for Eastern Europe might end up guaranteeing its enslavement - Stalin's storm troopers merely replacing Hitler's.

 

While we were ground up in the hedgerows, in the Pacific theater thousands of American amphibious troops were lost during the Marianas campaign. True, we kept winning gruesome amphibious assaults, but we didn't seem to learn much from them.

 

Instead, far worse carnage lay in store at places named Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. All these bloodbaths near the end of the war were characterized by the sheer heroism of the American soldier - who suffered terribly from intelligence failures and poor leadership of his superiors.

 

What can we learn, then, on this anniversary of the Normandy campaign?

 

By any historical measure, our forefathers committed as many strategic and tactical blunders as we have in Afghanistan and Iraq - but lost tens of thousands more Americans as a result of such errors. We worry about emboldening Iran by going into Iraq; the Normandy generation fretted about empowering a colossal Soviet Union.

 

Of course, World War II was an all-out fight for our very existence in a way many believe the war against terror that began on 9/11 is not. Even more would doubt that al-Qaida jihadists in Iraq pose the same threat to civilization as the Wehrmacht did in Europe.

 

Nevertheless, the Normandy campaign reminds us that war is by nature horrific, fraught with foolish error - and only won by the side that commits the least number of mistakes. Our grandfathers knew that. So they pressed on as best they could, convinced that they needn't be perfect, only good enough, to win.

 

The American lesson of D-Day and its aftermath was how to overcome occasional abject stupidity while never giving up in the face of an utterly savage enemy. We need to remember that now more than ever.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

[Seahawks]

A significant fact was left out of the speech. There were no guns there as the Germans had moved them out leaving logs painted to look like guns as a diversion. The entire story is in most military histories and at Ponte Du Hoc. Their sacrifice was real but the military effect was negligible. Of course that would have spoiled the speech or at least exposed the absurdity of war

 

let the 4k that died that day on the beach know the guns were fake.

[Seahawks]

Lessons of D Day

Good read and ties in nicely with what is going on today.

 

June 07, 2007

The Lessons from D-Day

By Victor Davis Hanson

 

Sixty-three years ago this week, we landed on the Normandy beaches. As on each anniversary of June 6, 1944, much has been written to commemorate the bravery and competence of the victorious Anglo-American forces.

 

All true. But as we ponder this achievement of the Greatest Generation that helped lead to the surrender of Nazi Germany less than a year later, we should remember that the entire campaign was, as Wellington said of Waterloo, a near-run thing.

 

Our forefathers made several mistakes. They attacked nonexistent artillery emplacements. Planes dropped paratroopers far from intended targets. Critical landing assignments on Omaha Beach were missed.

 

Once they left shore, it got worse. Indeed, D-Day was soon forgotten in the nightmare of GIs being blown apart in the Normandy hedgerows by well-concealed, entrenched German panzers.

 

Apparently, no American planners - from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall down to the staff of Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower - had anticipated either the difficulty of penetrating miles of these dense thickets or the deadliness of new German model tanks and anti-tank weapons.

 

So we landed in Europe with the weaponry we had - and it was in large part vastly inferior to that of the Wehrmacht.

 

The most brilliant armored commander in U.S. history, George S. Patton, had been sacked from theater command for slapping an ill soldier the prior year in Sicily. Gens. Omar N. Bradley and Bernard L. Montgomery lacked his genius and audacity - and tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were to pay for Patton's absence at Normandy.

 

We finally broke out of the mess, after using heavy bombers to blast holes in the German lines. But again, these operations were fraught with foul-ups.

 

On two successive occasions we bombed our own troops, altogether killing or wounding over 1,000 Americans, including the highest-ranking officer to die in the European Theater, Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair. The nature of his death was hidden from the press - as were many mistakes and casualties both leading up to and after Normandy.

 

When the disaster in the bocage near the Normandy beaches ended over two months after D-Day, the victorious Americans, British and Canadians had been bled white. Altogether, the winners of the Normandy campaign suffered a quarter-million dead, wounded or missing, including almost 30,000 American fatalities - losing nearly 10 times the number of combat dead in four years of fighting in Iraq.

 

News from the other fronts during the slaughter in Normandy was no better. Due to blunders by American generals in Italy, the retreating German army had escaped the planned Allied encirclement - and would kill thousands more Allied soldiers in Italy during the next year.

 

Disturbing reports spread about the simultaneous advance and brutality of Stalin's Red Army on the Eastern Front. Some in the American government began to worry that a war started over freedom for Eastern Europe might end up guaranteeing its enslavement - Stalin's storm troopers merely replacing Hitler's.

 

While we were ground up in the hedgerows, in the Pacific theater thousands of American amphibious troops were lost during the Marianas campaign. True, we kept winning gruesome amphibious assaults, but we didn't seem to learn much from them.

 

Instead, far worse carnage lay in store at places named Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. All these bloodbaths near the end of the war were characterized by the sheer heroism of the American soldier - who suffered terribly from intelligence failures and poor leadership of his superiors.

 

What can we learn, then, on this anniversary of the Normandy campaign?

 

By any historical measure, our forefathers committed as many strategic and tactical blunders as we have in Afghanistan and Iraq - but lost tens of thousands more Americans as a result of such errors. We worry about emboldening Iran by going into Iraq; the Normandy generation fretted about empowering a colossal Soviet Union.

 

Of course, World War II was an all-out fight for our very existence in a way many believe the war against terror that began on 9/11 is not. Even more would doubt that al-Qaida jihadists in Iraq pose the same threat to civilization as the Wehrmacht did in Europe.

 

Nevertheless, the Normandy campaign reminds us that war is by nature horrific, fraught with foolish error - and only won by the side that commits the least number of mistakes. Our grandfathers knew that. So they pressed on as best they could, convinced that they needn't be perfect, only good enough, to win.

 

The American lesson of D-Day and its aftermath was how to overcome occasional abject stupidity while never giving up in the face of an utterly savage enemy. We need to remember that now more than ever.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

 

At least we had blood and guts Patton.

[ivan]

It's about time to watch Saving Private Ryan...again

i watched "day of days" - band of brothers episode 2, instead

 

seahawks, how we gon' tell the 4k anything dude? they're a bit hard of hearing at the moment...

[Seahawks]

It's about time to watch Saving Private Ryan...again

i watched "day of days" - band of brothers episode 2, instead

 

seahawks, how we gon' tell the 4k anything dude? they're a bit hard of hearing at the moment...

 

sick but funny,

[ZimZam]

It's about time to watch Saving Private Ryan...again

 

from what I've seen, the best anti-war movie yet.

[ivan]

It's about time to watch Saving Private Ryan...again

 

from what I've seen, the best anti-war movie yet.

really? i'd say it's damn lukewarm at that - too documentary in style to have much of an opinion on war at all - just an attempt to show it as it is (which, of course, makes it mostly anti-war, since war is really stupid n' all)

 

all quiet on the western front - born on the 4th of july - the thin red line - das boot - all much better at pushing the fuck war message, imho