Remembering

by
Today, June 6, is the 68th anniversary of the Normandy landings. See the Wikipedia article for an overview. 

Arthur Seltzer, who was there, describes his experiences.

Don Sensing points out that success was by no means assured: the pivot day of history.

Two earlier Photon Courier posts: before D-day, there was Dieppe and transmission ends.

Pictures from Sarah’s 1999 trip to Normandy.

Neptunus Lex: The liberation of France started when each, individual man on those landing craft as the ramp came down – each paratroop in his transport when the light turned green – made the individual decision to step off with the only life he had and face the fire.

Neptunus Lex also wrote about the Battle of Midway, which took place from June 4 through June 7, 1942. See also his post from 2010 about this battle.

10 thoughts on “Remembering”

  3. I took my daughter and niece to Normandy for a week several years ago. We spent a day at Omaha Beach and the cemetery above. A beautiful place. As you drive through the countryside near the beach, there are markers all along the roads indicating where US soldiers were killed. The name and unit are on the plaques. The museum at St Mere Eglise has gotten much larger and men from the two airborne divisions are leaving their medals and mementoes to the museum. It is a very large collection now. I was there many years ago and it was small. They have a C 47, gliders, tanks and lots of exhibits.

  5. Thanks you for posting those Michael – those cemeteries are very moving – hallowed ground.

  6. On Dieppe, I have read that a large share of the disaster was due to the decision to postpone the landing and the fact that Mountbatten insisted on going ahead in spite of probable security leaks. The fact that the Germans were not reenforced suggests that security was not the problem and I can’t find the reference but there was discussion. Not by Churchill, of course.

  7. Speaking of Dieppe…screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd was a member of Canada’s Royal Highland Regiment. He never forgot the stories told by older members who had participated in the Dieppe operation. Years later, he talked about Dieppe at a Malibu dinner party, and one network head who was there asked him to come in and pitch the story as a possible film.

    Here’s what happened.

  8. David, that is an interesting story but the same mentality can be seen in “Saving Private Ryan.” Somebody says, “The only good thing to come out of this whole war..” Defeating the Nazis wasn’t Speilberg’s focus. Saving one private was.

  9. David – thank you so much for introducing me to Lex. I am late to the party but better late than never.

Comments are closed.