75th Anniversary of D-Day

[dangerboy]

In honour of D-Day, here is a quick brief on the assault.

The soldiers that participated in Operation Overloard were divided into two elements, an airborne element and an amphibious assault element. For the purposes of this brief I will concentrate on Canadian troops, if you want info on other nations actions I can lend you some good books.

The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was part of British 3rd Brigade, 6th Airborne Division and was commanded by LCol G.F.P. Bradbrooke. On 6 Jun 1944 around 0020 hours C Coy, 1 Can Para was the first Canadian Soldiers into Battle. C Coy’s mission was to secure Drop Zone “V” then secure the town of Varaville (destroying all coms, HQ and defensive positions in the town”. A Coy’s task was to protect the British 9th Parachute Battalion in their attack on the Merville Battery as well as clear Gonneville sur Merville. B Coy’s task was to escort and protect engineer elements tasked to blow the bridges in Robehomme and then occupy key road and track junctions. The airborne forces were successfully able to complete their missions and meet their commanders end state, however it came at a price of 116 men either wounded, killed or taken prisoner out of 541 men that jumped that night.

The amphibious troops were comprised of two brigades from the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade and the 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade supported by tanks of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade (of which the Fort Gary Horse were part of as WO Menzies will tell you). The landing spot named “Juno” was defended by two battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division with elements of the 21st Panzer Division held in reserve near Caen.

The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division’s mission was to secure the beach them capture Carpiquet Airfield and reach the Caen-Bayeux railway line by nightfall.
The 7th brigade was scheduled to land at 0735 hrs however the first troops from the Royal Winnipeg Rifles did not land until 0749 due to rough sea conditions. The 8th Brigade was in the same situation; they were scheduled to land at 0745 but were also delayed. The Queens Own Rifles eventually landed at 0812 hrs at Bernieres, unfortunately outside the town was an 88mm gun emplacement with multiple machine gun nests.

By noon Juno beach was secured and MGen Keller (a Patricia) was able to establish his div HQ and start planning the advance inland. The Division advanced inland until 2100 hrs when the order to dig in for the night was given. At this time they were on Objective line Elm which was short of the objectives, they did advance farther inland than any other Allied unit. Thou like most operation it came at a cost; the 3rd Division suffered casualties of 340 killed, 547 wounded and 47 taken prisoner — remembering our fallen soldiers.

Mark Adkins

 

[observor 69]

Woke up this morning and turned on the TV to see the most astounding Canadian memorial service I have ever seen. I was so impressed with the true emotion and Canadian spirit at work. Congratulations to all participants and organizers of such a magnificent remembrance of the action that took place there 75 years ago.

 

[Stoker]

Woke up this morning and turned on the TV to see the most astounding Canadian memorial service I have ever seen. I was so impressed with the true emotion and Canadian spirit at work. Congratulations to all participants and organizers of such a magnificent remembrance of the action that took place there 75 years ago.

It was good, very dignified.  Significantly better than the 100th anniversary of the ending of WW1 with its interpreted dancers.

 

[mariomike]

Most of Canada's Bomber Command effort prior to Normandy had been weakening the general capacity of Germany to resist an invasion in Europe. But, prior to D-Day, their attention had been focused on France - without killing too many friendly civilians.

Focus was on railway targets, with a view of isolating German forces in Normandy. There were also raids on military camps, ammunition depots and explosives and armaments factories, and just before the invasion, on radio and radar stations and coastal gun batteries. Also oil dumps, German troop positions, and the bombing of French ports where E-boats and other attack vessels were gathering to threaten Allied supply ships.

The attacks on German cities continued. As well as attacks on their synthetic oil industry.

Also, attacks on their V-I launching sites.

 

[daftandbarmy]

June the Sixth

The following leader was published on the cover of The Economist on June 10th 1944, following the D-Day landings of June 6th.

FOUR years ago almost to a day the last man was taken off the beaches at Dunkirk. Then, under a pitiless and unopposed German bombardment from the air, the shattered remnants of an Allied army, without stores, without food, without equipment, were rescued from Europe in tugs and trawlers and yachts and rowing boats, in any odd scratch vessel that could make the Channel crossing. This is the picture of defeat and disarray which today can be set against the massive pageant of invasion—the armadas of 4,000 and 6,000 ships, the great armies equipped to the last detail of mechanised armament, the Allied air forces in thousands of sorties raking the French skies empty of all German opposition. It is a tremendous and exhilarating contrast, and in the first hour of relief and jubilation it is only right that the British people should offer their thanks to the one man who, before all, is responsible for the greatest reversal of fortune in this island’s history. Mr Churchill is the supreme architect of this achievement. It was his leadership and inspiration that made possible Britain’s resolve in 1940 “to ride out the storm of war and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.” It was his vision on the very morrow of Dunkirk that saw the forging of a future alliance, the new world stepping forth “with all its power and might ” to the liberation of the old, the rallying of the world against tyranny, the long struggle and the final success. This, in June, 1940, was not an easy or an obvious vision. When Mr Churchill said

we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air . . . . whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. . . .

he spoke in terms only of defence and of no surrender. But his words had a prophetic ring, and now indeed Britain and its Allies fight on the landing grounds and on the beaches, not on British soil, but on the liberated soil of Europe. If there is any one man of whom it can be said that he won this war, that man is Mr. Churchill.

The vision was his, but it could not have been fulfilled without the forging of the Grand Alliance and the enormous efforts and sacrifices of Britain’s friends. If British armies can enter the Continent in such strength and so well equipped, it is because the Americans are at their side and the flood of American war production has helped lavishly to swell their armament. And if they face a German army and a German air force reduced to a shadow of their former strength, it is because the Russians have whittled away Germany’s military strength by their own stupendous sacrifices. The Russian cry for a Second Front was always a cry of bitterest need, and now that the Second Front has come, it is only fitting that the Allies in the West should recognise the scale of their obligation to Russia’s efforts on the Eastern front. But gratitude is the last thing the Russians want. They want heavy blows, hard fighting and rapid victory. The British and Americans are now in a position to repay their debt to Russia in the best and most acceptable coin.

Even if the Great Powers have been the chief engineers of Germany’s deepening defeat, in the next weeks, the nations of Western Europe will bear the full brunt of the fighting. The hour for their active participation has not yet come, and all the Allied leaders have warned their peoples against premature uprisings which would lead to a loss of life and effort before the crisis is reached. But even during the passive phase, the peoples of Western Europe will be one of the factors in Allied victory. Their bearing under bombardment, their discipline in the midst and in the rear of the advancing armies have military importance, just as, in the past, their refusal to accept the New Order and their four years’ underground struggle have been military factors of the highest significance. To them, too, the Allies owe a tremendous debt and one which they will pay only in part by the act of liberation. Inevitably the Allies’ tanks and artillery and transport will add to the destruction which Allied bombing has begun. As passive or active agents in their own liberation, the peoples of Western Europe are paying a heavy price. It is not enough to free them. Behind the guns must come the food lorries and the mobile canteens. The physical basis of reconstruction barely exists in some areas. Invasion threatens to overlap the narrow margin of subsistence. The Allies will need to act vigorously if their friends are not to be liberated only to starve. Much, too, will depend upon the behaviour of the invading armies. The lessons taught by the Italian campaign on the dangers of overspending by the troops have presumably been learnt, and while it is too much to hope that men worn out from battle will always be the surest ambassadors of good will, each unit could at least go out with some instruction on the degree to which good behaviour, good discipline, good humour and kindliness can oil the wheels of occupation and lay the foundations of lasting friendship. Britain and America are, with whatever tact and reserve they may be compelled to act, in some sense the trustees of the future political freedom of the peoples they are liberating. Darlanism and expediency belong to the phase of military weakness and insufficiency. The Allies’ overwhelming strength enables them to choose where they will. If their choice is faulty or compromised, they may play a decisive part in undermining the peoples’ freedom and the nations’ friendship.

Yet when all the thanks are made and all the contributions measured, there still remain the final artificers of victory, the men who, in the King’s words “man the ships, storm the beaches and fill the skies.” Although the first advances have been secured with surprisingly little loss of life, the hardest fighting lies ahead. In the weeks to come, thousands of men will lay down their lives or suffer disablement, will endure pain and hardship and strain, will throw everything they have into the balance of victory without particularly asking why or counting the cost. For them at the moment there is not very much that the people who stay behind can do. They can keep vigil, as the King has asked. They can face anxiety steadfastly. They can accept the losses when they come; but the real effort of gratitude will only be needed later on, when the men come home. They will not have been given victory, they will have toiled and sweated for it, all the way from Alamein to Bizerta, from Sicily to Rome, in the jungles of Burma, on the landing beaches in France. They have been the active agents of every military success. It is their courage and initiative and adaptability and common sense that have completed the historic reversal of the last four years. It will not be enough for their elders to give them “food, work and homes”—the essentials of a decent post-war society. They must be allowed their place in that society, they must be given scope and opportunity and responsibility to run it themselves.

The men who ruled the country in 1913 were still ruling it in 1923, and in all too many dismal cases were still doing so in 1939. After this war, let the debt of gratitude be more adequately paid. The men who are air-marshals and generals in their thirties must not wait until the sixties for honour and responsibility in civilian life. The change cannot be brought about overnight, least of all while the war continues, but now is the time, when the men are fighting and dying and everyone with a heart and conscience is deeply aware of a tremendous debt, to register the firm resolve that, after this war, youth and enthusiasm will not be actual disqualifications for responsibility and that the new world will not only be built for the war generation but round them and by them as well.

 

[Blackadder1916]

June the Sixth

The following leader was published on the cover of The Economist on June 10th 1944, following the D-Day landings of June 6th.

. . .

So, nary a mention of Canada . . . or even a hint at other Commonwealth Empire nations.