by D-Day or the Allied invasion of the beaches of German-occupied Normandy took place 74 years ago today on June 6, 1944. To kids like me born in the 50s and who grew up in the 60s, D-Day wasn’t the distant past. Our parents came of age during WWII and had passed that knowledge of the war on to us.
While searching for something to use for this blog post, I came across this first-ever documentary about D-Day. It had been put together by the Public Relations Division of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) for viewing by military leadership. Sometime after that, it was deemed classified and forgotten. Archivists rediscovered this documentary when they found films of in the Eisenhower Library back in 2014.
As an unrelated aside, this morning I was going through my father’s military records and found that he was sent to Korea on June 6, 1957. It is just an interesting coincidence with no relevance to this.
I had a friend who was there. He saw a buddy with a mortar plate step off a sandbar which was over their heads. The guy went under, and my friend never saw him again.
My friend brought back some interesting war trophies, including a drilling, a Luger, and several other long guns.
He told me an interesting story: When they were back in New Jersey after the war (Fort Dix?), the CO came through the barracks and told the men to lay all the guns they brought back on their bunks.
Then he told him he would be back (in an hour?) to confiscate all guns in excess of three per man. When he came back, there were only three guns on each bunk!
That's an interesting clip. Thanks!