D+59 - Excellent piece in

D+59 - Excellent piece in the WashTimes on D-Day, which was 59 years ago today.

America's view of war has undergone wild gyrations in the last 70 years; from unthinkable, to a national duty, to unthinkable again, to an evil to be avoided at all costs, to today, where it's something we dominate like no other nation in history and can do faster and relatively cheaper (in human lives) than anyone in history.

But it wasn't always this way:

In this era when we Americans have come to expect almost instant millitary victory with comparatively little of our own blood shed, it is hard to convey to those who did not live through World War II what it was like then.
Today, the 59th anniversary of D-Day when the Allies stormed the Normandy shore, is as good a time as any to make the effort.
Triumph — the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan — I think seems inevitable to folks who know of the war as only a matter of history. For those of us who experienced it, that was far from the case.
In the opening months, we had suffered through a long string of defeats starting with the bloody surprise of Pearl Harbor. Guadalcanal had been a long and bruising campaign in what seemed to most of us the middle of nowhere.
We and our Allies — eventually including the Free French — had successfully invaded Africa and then Sicily. But that campaign seemed to have turned into a bloody stalemate halfway up the Italian boot...
...So when the D-Day landings took place, the war's outcome was still very much in doubt, and it was far from a sure thing that we were going to secure an area large enough to serve as a springboard for a sustained offensive and a drive to eventual victory.
For hours, we listened to cryptic bulletins on the radio.
It was not until my father came home from work on the evening of June 7, about 48 hours after the initial landings, that he told the family he thought the Allies had carved out a big enough beachhead for the invading force to feel somewhat secure. And then he went back to his job with Bureau of Economic Warfare.

It's illustrative to look at how very different war was back then. In Iraq, we lost 11 tanks, with one tank crewman dead. In 1944 and 1945, the US Third Armored Division - just one of 40-odd divisions in France and Germany - suffered 10,000 casualties (2,000 dead) and lost 600 tanks to enemy action.

So remember D-Day.

Posted by Mitch at June 6, 2003 03:45 PM