D Day

Another June 6th.

June 6, 1944. The Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy.

A lot of young British, Americans and Canadians were dying right about now, 64 years ago. Perhaps you might take 10 seconds to remember them.

The French were mostly speaking German back then. I'll bet there are ceremonies all over France right now, bands playing, children waving British and American flags. Honoring those dead foreigners who gave them back their homeland. On this day in history, when the lights started coming back on in Europe. When France started to become French again.

Right.

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The exact time and date of the invasion was highly secret of course. But so much military equipment and so many soldiers obviously could not be effectively hidden. England was bursting at the seams with the materials of war, and with young men, both foreign and domestic, who were about to stop having birthdays. Then, in the darkness of the wee hours of the morning of June 6, 1944, the largest naval armada ever assembled in the history of the world began oozing into the English Channel, making it's way through the black choppy sea toward France. Toward Normandy. Toward cold, wet, beaches and sheer cliffs. Toward certain death.

Not until the invasion was already a historical fact several hours old, did the military give permission for a statement to be broadcast to the citizens of London. At 8:32 AM, the BBC was allowed to broadcast a simple terse statement, approved by the military command. Those 26 words were:

"Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong Allied air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France."

That's all. Nothing about teenagers being rolled around in open landing craft by the vicious Channel seas, puking with seasickness and abject terror as the last few minutes of their young lives ticked away. Nothing about jumping into the cold water and trying to make their way to the beach in the darkness, as the German guns flashed, and the machine gun bullets whined and twanged off metal, nothing about American teenagers wading through the floating bodies of their late friends, and then joining them in the water. Nothing about the unspeakable horror in their bellies as they crawled with no protection over the wet sand through the hail of the machine guns above them on the cliffs. Nothing about their hot blood running into the cool French sand until everything went black.

"Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong Allied air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France."


That's all.

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The French were mostly speaking German back then. I'll bet there are ceremonies all over France right now, bands playing, children waving British and American flags. Honoring those dead foreigners who gave them back their homeland. On this day in history, when the lights started coming back on in Europe. When France started to become French again.

Right.