Seventy-two years ago Monday, nearly 160,000 Allied troops made the treacherous amphibious landing on the beaches of Normandy in France, under the command of American general Dwight D. Eisenhower. Their successful operation to take the 50 miles of beach from Nazi forces began in the early hours of June 6, 1944, and on that first day more than 4,000 Allied troops died. The invasion of Normandy by the Allies was the first into Nazi-occupied Western Europe and led to the eventual defeat of Hitler’s Germany and the Axis powers.
There is plenty worth reading, seeing, and watching about the bravery and courage of those American soldiers and their Allied brothers who made the landing. Twitter user Dave in Texas recently published a series of photographs from D-Day, and his Twitter feed is worth scrolling through. Here’s a taste:
Unbelievable heroism in the face of an entrenched and battle hardened enemy
God bless them all. Night y’all pic.twitter.com/LvEbEFhaeo
— DaveinTexas (@DaveinTexas) June 6, 2016
You can read Eisenhower’s brief order to the “Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expedtionary Force” on their task here. Then there’s the gripping account of a young Army officer, S.L.A. Marshall, that ran in the Atlantic in 1960, titled “First Wave at Omaha Beach.”
You can also listen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nationally broadcast prayer here, and watch President Ronald Reagan’s tribute to the “boys of Pointe du Hoc” 40 years later below:
