Third in a series.
VI
Operation Neptune laid out a carefully organized assault on the beaches. The landing diagram for the 116th Regimental Landing Team (RLT) is found in “Omaha Beachhead” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. War Department, 1945), p. 31) and reproduced in Stephen E. Ambrose, “D-Day” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 122-23). It illustrates the timing and composition of...
In 1993 Congress authorized a review of the military records of African-Americans to determine if any racially biased decisions had been made in the decisions to award the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMH), the nation’s highest honor for combat bravery. That review resulted in the awarding of seven CMHs to deserving black servicemen who had earlier been awarded Distinguished...
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)
Sometime in 1943 the German occupying force in Normandy began construction of a coastal gun battery near the inland village of Maisy about 7 km west of the now better known battery located on the Pointe du Hoc. The Maisy Battery was apparently not fully operable by June 6, 1944. It was bombed by the RAF...
VOUILLY, France—Some of the biggest names in journalism camped out in tents in front of a medieval chateau while covering the epic battles of the 1944 Normandy campaign.
In the weeks following the D-Day invasion, a chateau in Vouilly was the scene of the First Army’s U.S. press camp. Famous names lived in tents in front of the chateau while...
2nd in the Series...
IV
After baulking at American proposals for eighteen months, serious planning for a cross-Channel attack began in December of 1943, after the Tehran Conference, during which Roosevelt and Churchill assured Soviet Secretary Joseph Stalin that it would jump off in the spring of 1944. In March1943, the Imperial General Staff had established a command in London under...
ANGOVILLE-AU-PLAIN, France—An off-the-beaten-path medieval church was the scene of unbelievable heroism on a week in 1944 full of valor.
At the Romanesque church at Angoville-au-Plain, one of the oldest in Normandy, and in few guidebooks, two 101st Airborne Division medics, Kenneth Moore and Robert Wright, saved the lives of many paratroopers in the church during the night of June 6,...
VIERVILLE-SUR-MER, France—The top officer in the National Guard, and one of the oldest survivors of the D-Day landings, commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings at the National Guard Memorial on Omaha Beach here.
Gen. Joseph Lengyel, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the United States needed its allies in order to win as “no nation can...
Photos by Regina DeCoster
VIERVILLE-SUR-MER, France—The horror of war created a friendship for two families that has survived after more than 75 years.
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy, France, Houston businessman Jim Trippon, 57, spent several days last week at Chateau Vierville, an ancient...
Sad quote: [T]he UNESCO committee responsible for reviewing such applications decided last year to take a step back and figure out how to deal with what it calls “sites associated with memories of recent conflicts.” A meeting on the matter is scheduled for next year.
Remembering OMAHA BEACH after 75 years
I
On June 6 this year we will celebrate the 75th
anniversary of the Western Allies’ assault on Adolf Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, the
steel and concrete band of fortifications running along Europe’s Atlantic
coastline from the Pyrenees north to the Netherlands, a barrier that he hoped
would protect the...
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