honey77 wrote:
Time is claiming what the Nazis could not 65 years ago today, on D-Day.
“We’re losing about 1,800 World War II veterans nationally, every week. We are losing out on getting their histories of what they did for their country and the world,” said Donald Tyne, director of Linn County Veterans Affairs.
Some 150,000 to 156,000 Allied troops — 73,000 of them from the United States — began one of the bloodiest chapters of the war on June 6, 1944, with the landing on the Normandy beaches in German-occupied France. The invasion was called Operation Overlord, but the day itself has long been called “The Longest Day.”
New historical research indicates 4,414 Allied soldiers would die that day on the beaches, 2,499 of them from the United States.
Bert Katz, 87, of Cedar Rapids, was an Army lieutenant and among the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach under heavy fire from the entrenched Germans.
Katz was among the soldiers trying to make it alive onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He couldn’t find the 23 men from his unit and soon learned they had all died when their LST craft was hit by an artillery shell.
“The noise was unbelievable,” Katz recalled. “We were scared to death. You saw soldiers lying on the beach — and half soldiers. The blood in the water (turned) it red. It was just horrible.
Katz made it through D-Day without injury but suffered a shoulder and left hand wound on July 10, 1944. It won him a Purple Heart but not a trip home. He was soon back in the thick of things, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, from Dec. 16 to Dec. 23, 1944, the Germans’ last gasp effort to stop the Allied advance.
The D-Day invasion took 15 months to plan and was the greatest amphibious attack in history. It marked the first time since 1688 that an invading army dared to cross the unpredictable English Channel. Weather nearly scuttled the plan, postponing it for a day. But the elements cleared enough early on June 6, that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. the commander of Allied forces, gave Operation Overlord the green light.
First, about 13,000 bombs were dropped by 300 planes, followed by 13,000 paratroopers landing on French soil from 800 planes.
Then came the hard part. About 150,000 men jumped out of landing craft and tried splashing toward shore along five beaches at Normandy. Many never made if more than a few steps as the Nazis filled the air with potential death from machine guns, rifles, mortars, artillery and hand grenades.
Omaha Beach, the straw the Americans drew, was especially gruesome. It seemed that the pre-attack naval and air bombardment had little effect on German fortifications.
D-Day cost the Allies 10,000 casualties, 4,900 the first day with half of those on Omaha Beach. That was about half the amount British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had feared would be killed or wounded.
To succeed, D-Day had to be a surprise because the Allies were sending nine divisions and no armor against an entrenched German army of 55 divisions and the feared Panzer tanks.
Katz said he and his men knew beforehand where they were going but not when.
Asked if he thought the Germans were surprised by the Allies invasion site, Katz replied, “I think somewhat. I think they thought it was somewhat of a fake landing and that our big push would be at Calais (France).”
The German high command indeed knew some sort of invasion was in the works but thought it would come at some major French port like Calais.
According to historic accounts, Eisenhower deliberately picked a non-major port, Normandy, to launch a surprise attack. Though a surprise and successful, it was still bloody. Of the five beaches. the British took two, the Americans two and the Canadians one.
What does the “D” in D-Day denote? Accounts indicate no one may really know for sure.
The PBS television station said that during the war the military used codes such as “H-hour” or “D-Day” to refer to the time and date for starting operations. It surmised that the “D” in D-Day may just refer to the “day” of the invasion.
Katz said he’d read recently that “we saved the world that day.”
“I think that’s true,” he said. However, he added, D-Day was the prelude, but the Battle of the Bulgeand the that opened to door to march toward Germany with an eye on ending the war. The Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, the Germans last big push to regain the advantage, was the finale Katz said.
“We came close to losing that finale,’’ Katz recalled.
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