A small notice from a post D-Day YANK announced the capture of a German woman sniper named, Myra.
Click here if you would like to read about women combatants during W.W. I.
An account relaying a bloody slice of life lived by the officers and men of the U.S. Second Armored Division. The story takes place on the tenth day following the D-Day landings as one armored battalion struggled to free themselves of the hedgerows, placate their slogan-loving general and ultimately make that dinner date in far-off Paris. Yank correspondent Walter Peters weaves an interesting narrative and the reader will get a sense of the business-like mood that predominated among front line soldiers and learn what vehicles were involved during an armored assault
"As increasing aerial bombardment of Nazi-occupied Europe mounted in Fury day after day, every American civilian was talking last week about when and how the actual land invasion of the continent would begin."
"Newspaper editors were already dragging out their largest headline type, and when more than 40 top Washington correspondents were called to the White House for what turned out to be a routine announcement, telephone lines from a dozen National Press building offices were being kept open in case this was 'it'"
"Invasion, however, will not begin until the Nazis have been virtually knocked out of the sky. The target of the moment, therefore, is the German air force. ...From 500 airdromes scattered throughout Britain, Allied planes fly night and day - frequently every hour of the 24 - some in fleets of a thousand or more to battle the Luftwaffe...Air war as such is almost over in Europe; the Allied infantryman is preparing now to march across a continent, battling along a 'road' already cut wide and long by bombers and fighters four miles upward."
A three page article about the unique experiences of four American glider pilots on D-Day; how they fared after bringing their infantry-heavy gliders down behind German lines, what they saw and how they got back to the beach.
In the July 22,1944 issue of YANK the editors saw fit to release the numbers of American casualties that were racked-up during the first eleven days of the allied Normandy Invasion. In the fullness of time, the numbers were adjusted to be considerably lower than the 1944 accounting; Pentagon records now indicate 1,465 were killed, 3,184 were wounded, 1,928 were registered as missing, 26 were taken prisoner.
It is interesting to note that YANK did not sugar coat the report.
Of the total US figure, 2499 casualties were from the US airborne troops (238 of them being deaths). The casualties at Utah Beach were relatively light: 197, including 60 missing. However, the US 1st and 29th Divisions together suffered around 2,000 casualties at Omaha Beach.
FDR's D-Day prayer can be read here
Additional facts and figures about the U.S. Army casualties in June of '44 can be read in this article.
YANK correspondent Dewitt Gilpin visited the Omaha and Utah beaches exactly one year after the 1944 Normandy Invasion. The journalist interviewed some American D-Day veterans as well as members of the local French population who recalled that bloody day -while others simply tried to forget.
"Landing to the left of the Rangers on Omaha was the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division. Their 1st Battalion came in over a beach that had more dead men on it than live ones."
Read what the army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.
The battle of the hedgerows as experienced by the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division:
"They all had been fighting since D-Day. Compared with the obstacles at the beginning of their drive, the hill they had just taken was only a minor deal, but it was no push-over. "At some places," one paratrooper told me, "the fighting was so close the Krauts didn't even bother to throw their grenades, they just handed them over to us."
An eye-witness account of the U.S. Army Ninth Air Force A-20 bombers as they made their runs on D-Day:
"There was no time to lose on this mission. Hitler's armies might well be driving over those crossroads toward the beachheads at this minute. This was not just an ordinary mission. It was the beginning of a mission that some day might end all combat missions."
"'There's London.' Rafalow announced, over the intercom."
"I glanced down. The acres of buildings looked quiet and peaceful."
"You'd almost think there wasn't a war on.'"
"A few minutes later his voice came over the intercom again, but this time it was high-pitched with excitement. We were over the English Channel where it was quite obvious there was a war on."
"'By God, look at the ships!' he yelled."
D-Day for the lads of the U.S. Army Air Corps' Eighth Air Force was a time of great excitement and anticipation. Despite the exhaustion that comes with a fifteen hour day, all concerned recognized well that they were participating in an historic event that would be discussed long after they had left this world, but of greater importance was their understanding that the tides of war were shifting in the Allies' favor.
In his book Wartime, Paul Fussel noted that the Allies had placed as many as 11,000 planes in the skies above France that day.
Click here to read about the 8th Air Force and their bombing efforts in the skies above Germany.
This one page article from YANK MAGAZINE by Irwin Swerdlow will give you a sense of the Herculean task that was involved in the transporting of so many men and supplies across the English Channel to breach Rommel's Atlantic Wall:
"The biggest job of coordination that the world has ever known was under way. Thousands of things had to happen at a certain time, things which, if they did not happen, would delay the entire movement. "
Click here to read about unloading supplies on Iwo Jima.
"From the deck of the destroyer
U.S.S. Doyle, this
Yank correspondent watched for nearly three nights as the grim drama of D-Day unfolded on the American beachhead."
"From the Doyle's decks I could see the shells strike with the naked eye. First there would be a flash and then a puff of smoke which billowed into the sky. Several tanks and landing crafts were burning at the water's edge. Through the glasses I watched troops jump from their boats and start running up the beach."
Statistical data concerning the U.S. Army casualties in June and July of 1944 can be read in this article.
A day by day account by Private George Groh, a member of the 101st Airborne, who joined the 1944 Normandy Invasion as a glider-infantryman.
Written by Andy Rooney, this three column article concerned the seldom remembered efforts of a French airborne battalion that jumped into Brittany on D-Day in order to disrupt German communications.
Click here to read more about W.W. II parachute infantry...
Click here to read about the first American Paratrooper.
Translated from German, labeled "CONFIDENTIAL" and printed in a booklet for a class at the U.S. Army Military Academy in 1945 was the attached German Army assessment of the D-Day invasion. Distributed on June 20, 1944, just two weeks after the Normandy landings, the report originated in the offices of Field Marshal von Rundstedt (1875 - 1953) and served to document the German reaction to the Allied Operations in Normandy.
The triumphs of the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day stand as a testament to the superb combat leadership skills of Lt. Colonel James E. Rudder (1910 – 1970), who is the subject of the attached article. As a participant in the planning the Allied invasion of Normandy, General Omar Bradley recognized that the German heavy guns situated above and between the Omaha and Utah beaches had to be silenced if the landings were to be successful; Bradley selected Rudder and his group to do the job, later remarking that this order was "the most difficult he had ever, in his entire career, given anybody".
Written ten years after that historic day, this article is about Rudder's return to Omaha Beach with his young son, and his recollections of the battle that was fought.
A good read; an even more in-depth study regarding the assault on Pointe du Hoc can be found at Amazon: Rudder's Rangers.
More about Rangers can be read here...
"About the Russians in Normandy...and they weren't much help to Adolf, either. Here are two stories, one of which tells how Russians, captured and forced to fight for the enemy, turned the tables on Jerry; the other which tells what happened when the Americans liberated Russian prisoners from a concentration camp."
The following is an extract from General Eisenhower's report on the Allied operations from June 6 through the 26 of August, 1944:
"Many factors are woven into warp and woof of this great victory...One was the meticulous care in planning and preparation, another was the fact that we achieved some degree of surprise involving place, timing and strength of attack. The excellence and sufficiency of amphibious equipment, with measures for dealing with beach defenses and obstacles, was also important. In the air, the Luftwaffe has taken a fearful beating. Since June 6, 2378 German aircraft have been destroyed in the air and 1,167 on the ground..."
"D-Day for my outfit was a long, dull 24-hour wait. We spent the whole day marooned in the middle of the English Channel, sunbathing, sleeping and watching the action miles away on the shore through binoculars. We could hear the quick roars and see the greenish-white flashes of light as Allied Battleships and cruisers shelled the pillboxes and other German installations on the beach."
"On D-plus-one we took off for shore. Four Messerschmidtts dove down to strafe the landing crafts as we headed in, but a Navy gunner drove them off with a beautiful burst of ack-ack..."
If you ever wondered why The National W.W. II Museum is located in New Orleans rather than West Point, Annapolis or the nation's capitol - the answer can be spoken in two words: Andrew Higgins. Higgins was the innovator who designed and manufactured the landing crafts that made it possible for the Allied forces to land on all those far-flung beaches throughout the world and show those Fascists dogs a thing or two. His factory, Higgins Industries, was located on Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans and it was for this reason that the museum board of directors chose to doff their collective caps, and erect their repository in his home town.
Attached is a five page photo-essay about Higgins and all that he was doing to aid in the war effort.
Perched on the quarter deck of an LST off the coast of one of the American beachheads during the D-Day invasion, COLLIER'S war correspondent, W.B. Courtney, described the earliest hours of that remarkable day:
"I stared through my binoculars at some limp, dark bundles lying a little away from the main activities. In my first casual examination of the beach I had assumed they were part of the debris of defensive obstacles. But they were bodies - American bodies."
"That was the way D-Day began, the second front the Allies had waited for for two years. It came like a shadow in the English midnight... The Nazi news agency, DNB, flashed the first story at 12:40 a.m. on June 6, Eastern wartime. Before dawn, British and American battleships were pounding shells into Havre, Caen and Cherbourg, high-booted skymen of the [88th] and 101st U.S.A. paratroop divisions had dropped into the limestone ridges of the Seine valley and landing barges filled with American, Canadian and British infantrymen nosed up to the beaches along the estuaries of the Orne and Seine rivers."
"The focal point of the attack apparently was aimed at Le Havre, the fine port at the mouth of the Seine. Nazi reports indicated a series of drives to cut the Brittany Peninsula with the center of gravity at Caen. It seemed certain that the Reich was awaiting news of other attacks."
In time, the American dead from D-Day and the Normandy campaign would be buried at the larger cemetery located in Colleville-sur-Mer, but in late July of 1944, these honored dead were interred at Cardonville, France.
"'
Down ramp!' shouted the coxswain from the elevated stern."
"Down it came with a clank and splash. Ahead - and it seemed at that moment miles off - stretched the sea wall. At Lieutenant Crisson's insistence we had all daubed our faces with commando black. I charged out with the rest, trying to look fierce and desperate, only to step into a shell hole and submerge myself in the channel. Luckily my gear was too wet and stinking to put on so I was light enough to come up."
This Newsweek journalist was the only allied war correspondent to have witnessed the derring-do of those in the first wave.
Click here to read more about the D-Day reporters.
"In the first 48 hours the Canadians had captured a dozen towns, taken more than 600 prisoners, stopped a small enemy tank force outside Caen and then joined the British in repeated attacks on Caen."
More about the Canadian Army can be read here.
"On the evening of D-Day, President Roosevelt led a radio audience estimated at 100,000,000 in a prayer of his own composing:"
"Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor... Lead them straight and true... Their road will be long and hard... Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them."
Luftwaffe Diva Hanna Reitsch (1912 – 1979) sitting under the bright lights of her interrogators cursed the name of Hermann Goring who rejected her plan to fly bomb-laden aircraft into the hulls of the Allied
ships sitting off the Normandy coast on June 6, 1944.
