D-Day: 76 years ago today

Completely forgotten in all of the US politically-correct, virtue-signaling insanity is what “white people” did on this day — not just for the United States, but for the entire planet. They stepped up. Some had choices. Most didn’t. Some accounted well of themselves. Some cried like babies and, yes, called for their mommies while they died bleeding, missing a leg, an arm, part of their jaw, bits of their brain on the beach covered by the lapping tide. But they still stepped up.

I mention color only because color means everything to Leftists, Demorats and the American Media Maggots these days. Some people require “reminding” about color.

D-Day was the beginning of the end for the Germans in World War II.

Seventy-six years ago today.

Named Operation Overlord, the battle began on June 6, 1944, and was also known as D-Day.

What did D-Day mean?

D for Day, H for Hour means the undetermined (or secret) day and hour for the start of a military operation. Their use permits the entire timetable for the operation to be scheduled in detail and its various steps prepared by subordinate commanders long before a definite day and time for the attack have been set. When the day and time are fixed, subordinates are so informed.

So far as the U.S. Army can determine, the first use of D for Day, H for Hour was in Field Order No. 8, of the First Army, A.E.F., issued on Sept. 7, 1918, which read: “The First Army will attack at H–Hour on D-Day with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel salient.”

More than 160,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast, by Germany, of France’s Normandy region.

Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower speaks to the troops.

The invasion was one of the largest amphibious military assaults in the history of the planet, and required heretofore unthinkable planning. How to coordinate something this large? Amongst numerous nations? Whilst trying to calculate weather and hundreds of other factors?

Churchill and Montgomery calculate the UK portion of D-Day.

Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. By late August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. The Normandy landings have been called the beginning of the end of war in Europe. And that is true.

Landscape

Go or no go? That was all up to one man. The Supreme Allied Commander, four-star General Dwight D Eisenhower. At the age of 54, he held the freedom, the fate of the entire planet, in his hands.

As an aside, Eisenhower received his fifth star as General of the Army of December 20th of 1944.

How many 5-star generals have there been in the history of the United States?

That would be five Army and four Navy officers:

  • George C. Marshall,
  • Douglas MacArthur,
  • Dwight D. Eisenhower,
  • Henry H. (Hap) Arnold,
  • Omar Bradley,

And then Admirals:

  • William D. Leahy,
  • Ernest J. King,
  • Chester Nimitz, and
  • William F. Halsey.

Omar Bradley was the last officer to receive the rank, in 1950. The rank has remained dormant ever since.

According to military regulations governing rank, only two US Army officers have ever achieved superior rank to that of five stars, even though they never got that many. They were George Washington and John J. Pershing.

And here is General Eisenhower’s D-Day message.

As per normal, fanciful flights of ephemera shape history and, instead of June 5th, Eisenhower determined to wait a day. That timing — and location of the landings — surprised the Germans, and they failed to reinforce the beachheads.

Upon that, and more, is history built.

Conjecture. Fleet. Fancy. Whimsy. Or just plain hope backed with a modicum of planning.

Do I stay or do I go?

4,414 soldiers died on D-Day. Most perished on those meat-grinding beaches.

That was the beginning. Of the end.

Of the Germans and the European Theater.

Japan was next.

You want courage, sacrifice and discipline?

Everything we’re facing now pales in comparison to that.

Everything.

BZ

 

 

BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon Radio Show, Tuesday, 6-4-19: A 75th Anniversary D-Day Tribute

Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Fornicalia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, Fornicalia, I continue to proffer my thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to utilize their studio and hijack their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, thanks to my shameless contract — as well as appear on the Sack Heads: Against Tyranny Show every Wednesday night.

HourS 1 & 2BZ paid tribute to the 75th Anniversary of D-Day.

With co-host KAISER SHUFF of Kaiser’s Castle, BZ took us on an aural journey through American history, beginning with WWI, the “War To End All Wars” through to Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, FDR’s D-Day prayer, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Normandy speech, Normandy veterans visiting the beaches and relating their stories, up to and including Dick Winter’s final words to his grandchild:

If you want to listen to the show on Spreaker, audio only, click on the yellow button below.

Listen to “BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon Radio Show, Thursday, 6-6-19” on Spreaker.

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Join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin (on Twitter @BZep, Facebook as Biff Zeppe and the Bloviating Zeppelin, and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the booze are not.

As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening later via podcast.

Please remember we only monitor the chat room at SHRMEDIA.COM — though there is chat available on both Facebook and YouTube. Come on over to the SHR chat room where you’ll meet great friends!

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Thank you one and all for listening, watching and supporting the SHR Media Network: “Conservative Media Done Right.”

BZ

 

70 years ago today

D-day-normandy-in-photos-26-6-44.

June 6th, 1944: D-Day.  The invasion of France on the bloody beaches of Normandy.

6-5-2004.

June 5th, 2004: the passing of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President of the United States of America.

Ronald_Reagan_salutes_on_40th_anniversary_of_D-DayFrom Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Normandy speech:

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.

Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor.”

I think I know what you may be thinking right now — thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles, who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold; and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots’ Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet,” and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: “Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do.” Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance — a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II. Twenty million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we’re with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value [valor] and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Our WWII veterans are almost entirely gone. My father, an 8th AF B-17 pilot, passed away on February 11th of 2009 at the age of 88. Where did we find such men? Ordinary, common men from every part of our nation, from the farmlands of Iowa to the cities of New York and Los Angeles? They all answered the call, willingly, courageously, unselfishly. They set their lives aside in order to do their part. Some made it back; some didn’t. Some came back in pieces.

Who will sacrifice for our nation’s future? Where will we find our future warriors?

I fear: I do not see so many.  Some now ask: why would we?  And considering our current VA issues, why indeed?

I still say: God bless America. The last, best hope for the entire planet.

BZ