{"id":2665,"date":"2008-06-06T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2665"},"modified":"2008-06-06T11:13:31","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T16:13:31","slug":"this-great-and-noble-undertaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2665","title":{"rendered":"“…this great and noble undertaking”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was sixty-four years ago today that the Allies started taking Western Europe back from the Nazis.
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The first, inevitable step was to get past the Westwall<\/em> – perhaps the most immense set of fortifications ever built, with the intention of making the beaches from Denmark to the Spanish border a bloodbath for any troops trying to cross the beaches.<\/p>\n

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In places, it worked:<\/p>\n

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In some places, the troops had to overcome the near-impossible:<\/p>\n

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And yet by the end of the day, nine allied divisions were ashore, a toehold for a bridgehead that would eventually expand, ten months later, across Western Europe.<\/p>\n

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There were troops from the US, of course, on the two western beaches…<\/p>\n

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…and farther east, beaches with Brits…<\/p>\n

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…and Scots…<\/p>\n

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And in the middle, linking the two and meeting the worst resistance other than Omaha, the Canadians:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

…along with troops-in-exile from elsewhere in occupied Europe; French commandos – some of whom had spent four years in exile, and who spent the next year belying the notion that the French were cowards…:<\/p>\n

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…and Norwegians, who’d been without a homeland for four years…<\/p>\n

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…and Poles, who’d been in exile for five years and would, in some cases, remain there for forty-five more:<\/p>\n

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The world may see nothing like it again.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anyway – thank a D-Day veteran.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was sixty-four years ago today that the Allies started taking Western Europe back from the Nazis. The first, inevitable step was to get past the Westwall – perhaps the most immense set of fortifications ever built, with the intention of making the beaches from Denmark to the Spanish border a bloodbath for any troops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}