D-Day +75 Years: News Reports

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At the conclusion of the day on June 6, 1944, the fighting was far from over. But the beginning of the end of the way was underway. It would take nearly a year for Germany to fall, and even longer for the war to officially end, but the events of D-Day were vital to seeing a victorious end to that war.


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There aren’t many from World War II still living. When the last one is gone, the world will be a lesser place. I repeat what General Patton said about those who died, and extend it to all those that fought: “wW should thank God that such men lived.”

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    • Of the two American beaches, Utah — definitely.

      The Allied foreboding which had preceded the attack — the expectation of tremendous casualties and perhaps, like the Dieppe Raid, costly repulse — was not justified by the actual events. The airborne troops and the assault waves on Omaha Beach lost heavily, but the Utah casualties were light. The entire U.S. First Army, including all U.S. ground troops engaged (but excluding smaller naval and Army Air Force casualties), reported 6,603 casualties for June 6: 1,465 killed, 3,184 wounded, 1,928 missing, 26 captured. The Second British Army kept no such comparable figures, but Chester Wilmot in The Struggle for Europe estimates their total D-day casualties “can hardly have exceeded 4,000.” The German casualties for D-day — estimates only — ranged from 4,000 to 9,000.

      …

      The utilization of airborne troops — despite the inaccurate navigation of many of the troop carrier aircraft, the failure of the pathfinders to mark the proper drop zones, the tragedies of the gliders, the wide dispersion of the paratroopers — was a key factor in the relatively easy landings at Utah and on the British beaches. The airborne troops had heavy casualties; their divisional organization was virtually nonexistent in the first day after the drop (radios were lost, the men widely scattered), and by the end of D-day only 2,500 men of the 6,600 men of the 101st Division dropped that morning were “working together” in “mixed units of varying size.” Nevertheless, surprise and the very dispersion of the attack “had in fact achieved such complete tactical success” behind Utah Beach that “the sea-borne infantry had little to do but walk ashore.”

      [Exaggeration, there.]

      On Omaha a variety of factors contributed to carnage: the poor navigation of landing craft and control boats which landed units in confused masses at the wrong beaches; the sinking of overloaded “ducks” with supporting artillery in the rough sea; and the lack of a sufficient number of armored vehicles in the assault waves. [Quoting the book Cross Channel Attack by G. A. Harrison:] “the First Division had gone in against the one sector of the Normandy coast that had anything like the kind of cordon defense which Field Marshal Rommel counted on to hold and smash the Allies on the beaches.” The undetected presence of the German 352nd Division in the Omaha sector cost us dearly.

      — Hanson W. Baldwin, Battles Lost and Won, 1966

      There was even some soldierly humor on Utah Beach, as Baldwin reports:

      [June 6th:] Captain Robert C. Cresson, CO of Charlie Company, 8th Infantry (Colonel James C. Van Fleet commanding), 4th Division, is stumped. One of his men in great excitement runs to him near the beach and says, “I have two women over here!”

      “Where?”

      “In a ditch . . . ”

      “What the hell are you doing with two women in a ditch?”

      “I don’t want them to get shot.”

      A sergeant nearby chimes in, “How old are they?”

      Captain Cresson moves the women to safety, and the war goes on.

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