Today is the 73rd anniversary of D-Day.<\/p>\n
We focus – appropriately, in the great scheme of things – on the triumph that eventually followed the invasion of France; the liberation of Western Europe, the destruction of Naziism, the freeing of the surviving slaves in the labor, concentration and death camps.<\/p>\n
We focus on the triumphs of American courage, labor and ingenuity; from victories of pure bravery, like Bastogne to exhibitions of American industry, like the building of enough tanks, ships and planes to equip not only our military but most of those of the Allies, to examples of American leadership, like Patton and Ridgeway and Gavin.<\/p>\n
We see less of the sacrifice so many Americans made to buy us, and Europe, and the Western World, the opportunity we have today; the 50,000 Americans killed in the bombing campaign over Europe; the 50,000 more casualties in the largely fruitless campaign in Italy; the thousands who died just getting the US Army overseas against the Germans’ U-Boat offensive.<\/p>\n
And, today, on the anniversary of D-Day, the sacrifice of so very many American (alongside British, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Czech, Danish and other) men, whose mission was – I’ll pause for emphasis – to sail in wooden boats through concentrated German artillery fire to the edge of a couple hundred yards of beach, run across the beach under constant machine-gun and mortar fire, and advance up a hill that, depending on where you landed, was either a steep, ravine-gouged bluff or a sheer cliff lined with concrete pillboxes full of Germans with machine guns.<\/p>\n
The great historian SLA Marshall goes through the story – a few hours in the lives and mostly deaths – of two companies of the 116h Infantry Regiment; 14 boatloads carrying about 400 American soldiers (and 30-odd British sailors). \u00a0 At the end of the day, scarcely twenty\u00a0stood at the top of the cliff still fighting. \u00a0That’s 95% casualties – many of whom were never found again, washed out on the tide.<\/p>\n