D-Day Remembered

President Franklin D. Roosevelt speech on the eve of invasion of Normandy, June 06, 1944. Prevelant today.
On June 6, 1944, a date known ever since as D-Day, a mighty armada crossed a narrow strip of sea from England to Normandy, France, and cracked the Nazi grip on western Europe.

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U.S. troops and equipment lined up “somewhere in England” prior to embarking on the Normandy Invasion,

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Medium bombers of the Ninth Air Force striking Pointe du Hoc on June 4, 1944, the beginning of two days of intense bombardment and naval shelling leading up to the assault on D-Day.

P-47 Thunderbolt, U.S. fighter-bomber

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Eisenhower speaks with U.S. paratroopers of the 502d Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on the evening of June 5, 1944.



Smoke streams from a landing craft hit by machine-gun fire as it approaches Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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U.S. infantrymen wade from their landing craft toward Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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A soldier of the 16th Infantry Regiment kicks through the water in the first assault wave at Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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Soldiers climb a sea wall at Utah Beach June 6, 1944

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The cliffs of Pointe du Hoc rising above the English Channel, as photographed from a reconnaissance airplane prior to the Normandy Invasion, 1944.
Note how they are straight up, extremely difficult. ~ Wild Thing

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Pointe du Hoc as photographed on D-Day plus 1, June 7, 1944. Fierce bombardment leading up to the assault brought a mass of clay and rock down to the base of the cliff, allowing rangers to scramble halfway up before they had to scale the sheer heights.

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Troops of the 2nd Infantry Division file up the bluff from Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach, on D-Day plus 1, June 7, 1944.

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NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France is located on the site of the temporary American St. Laurent Cemetery, established by the U.S. First Army on June 8, 1944 and the first American cemetery on European soil in World War II. The cemetery site, at the north end of its ½ mile access road, covers 172.5 acres and contains the graves of 9,387 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. On the Walls of the Missing in a semicircular garden on the east side of the memorial are inscribed 1,557 names. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified.

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The “Filthy Thirteen” by Joel Iskowitz is slated to be unveiled during the upcoming Mid-Atlantic Museum’s 19th Annual World War II weekend, which takes place between June 5 -7, at the Reading Regional Airport in Pennsylvania. Photo credit Courtesy Image
By Colleen Machado, Fort Campbell Courier
A picture can say a thousand words, or bring back a thousand memories if you are Jake “McNasty” McNiece, Jack “Hawkeye” Womer, Jack Agnew or Robert “Ragsman” Cone.
This elite unit was given the name “The Filthy Thirteen,” and they are being honored with a new painting by renowned artist Joel Iskowitz. The painting is being unveiled at the Mid-Atlantic Museum’s 19th Annual World War II weekend, June 5 – 7, at the Reading Regional Airport in Pennsylvania.
All four surviving members will be present at the WWII weekend.
“The painting is all about ‘The Filthy Thirteen.’ We’re honoring the four living members,” said Bob Willis, co-owner of the Victory Art Gallery.
The painting depicts the Soldiers preparing for their jump by assembling gear and applying war paint next to their C-47 aircraft. The men were tasked with demolishing enemy targets behind the lines.
“There is a famous film clip of these guys getting ready on D-Day,” Willis said. “We recreated this scene in a painting. This is a historical event that we have brought to color and life through a painting.”
The painting will be on display at the WWII Weekend along with a C-47 aircraft and re-enactors.

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Military Leaders and Generals ( AMERICAN)
Henry Harley (Hap) Arnold, chief of Army Air Corps
Omar N. Bradley, commander, U.S. First Army
Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander, Allied Expeditionary Force
James Gavin, commander, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment
Courtney Hicks Hodges, deputy commander, U.S. First Army
Ernest Joseph King, chief of naval operations
William D. Leahy, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
John Clifford Hodges Lee, commander, Services of Supply, European Theater of Operations
George C. Marshall, chief of staff, U.S. Army
George S. Patton, commander, U.S. Third Army
Matthew B. Ridgway, commander, 82nd Airborne Division
Franklin D. Roosevelt, president and commander in chief of armed forces
Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff, Allied Expeditionary Force
Carl Spaatz, commander, Strategic Air Forces
Maxwell Taylor, commander, 101st Airborne Division

George S. Patton speech…………………….. Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944
“Be seated.”
Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.
You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn’t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That’s why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.
All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call “chicken shit drilling.” That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who’s not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn’t be here. You are ready for what’s to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you’re not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.
An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we’re going up against. By God, I do.
My men don’t surrender, and I don’t want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That’s not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!
All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don’t ever let up. Don’t ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn’t like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, ‘Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.’ But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don’t think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn’t a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the ‘G.I. Shits.’
Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don’t want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, ‘Fixing the wire, Sir.’ I asked, ‘Isn’t that a little unhealthy right about now?’ He answered, ‘Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.’ I asked, ‘Don’t those planes strafing the road bother you?’ And he answered, ‘No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!’ Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.
And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts.
Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren’t combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.
Don’t forget, you men don’t know that I’m here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I’m not supposed to be commanding this Army. I’m not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.’ We want to get the hell over there.” The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.
Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I’d shoot a snake!
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don’t dig foxholes. I don’t want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don’t give the enemy time to dig one either. We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
War is a bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!
I don’t want to get any messages saying, ‘I am holding my position.’ We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.
There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON’T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, ‘Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.’ No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a- Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!’
“That is all.”

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There is a quote by Gen. Omar Bradley that is my all time favorite. I have it at my website, also in the sidebar here at Theodore’s World blog and I have it on my little cards I hand out for my blog. Most of you that are Team Theodore have been sent one of those cards I hand out. ~ Wild Thing
Here is his quote, it says so much and truly says volumes about our Veterans, our troops and our Freedom.
“Freedom! No Word Was Ever Spoken That Held Out Greater Hope, Demanded Greater Sacrifice, Needed More To Be Nurtured, Blessed More The Giver, Cursed More Its Destroyer, Or Came Closer To Being God’s Will On Earth.And I Think Thats Worth Fighting For.” ~ General Omar Nelson Bradley