This Day of Days

Today marks the day in 1944 when the fortunes of the world took a great turn for the better. This was D-Day (the D stood for nothing but "Day," signifying how much was riding on this military operation), the invasion of France by beach landings in Normandy to defeat German troops occupying France. Planning for it began in 1943, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander of the entire operation, which all might have been scuttled in that very year except for one man's nearsightedness.

An early version of the plan blew out a window that summer in London's Norfolk House, but a man who picked the papers off the street couldn't read them without his glasses and could only see the large type, indicating that they had some military import, so he dropped his find off at a military post.

And the plans called for the invasion, which brought 156,000 troops or paratroopers ashore (73,000 from the U.S., 83,000 from Great Britain and Canada) to take place on June 5, but bad weather forced a 24-hour postponement.  When June 6, 1944, dawned clear, Eisenhower told troops: “You are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

1,900 Allied bombers attacked German lines, dropping seven million pounds of bombs that day.

10,521 combat aircraft flew a total of 15,000 flights, with 113 lost.

The naval bombardment was delivered by seven battleships, 18 cruisers, and 43 destroyers.

By the evening of June 6, 20,000 vehicles and 150,000 soldiers were in place on French soil to begin pushing German forces all the way back to Germany, leading to the merciful end of the war in 1945.

50,000 German troops were in place to counteract the invasion, but several things hampered them.

For one, the Germans were deceived by a fake army of dummy camps, planes and tanks built further up the English coast at  Kent and Essex, leading the Germans to figure on an invasion at Calais.

For a second, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. the man in charge of defending German holdings in northern France from any invasion, was not around. His staff told him that the English Channel was far too rough for a landing, so he was in Germany, celebrating his wife’s 50th birthday.

And for a third, Adolf Hitler, Chancellor and Fuhrer of Germany, was also back home, sound asleep, and his aides so feared waking him that they let him sleep in, which severely delayed getting additional troops sent in. 

Nice work, dummkopfs. Thanks!

And speaking of using dummies...Eisenhower and his men were truly geniuses, thinking of everything as they planned. On the morning of the 6th, as the invasion began, they had planes flying over other locations, dropping DUMMY paratroopers to convince the Germans that the invasion was taking place elsewhere.

Oh for the days when brilliance and fortitude saved the world!

If you have a spare minute today, think a minute today about what it felt like for all involved, from the newest private to Eisenhower, to know that failure would have cost the world its freedom, and think of the men invading that beach, and be glad they did, and mourn those lost.