I found these words in the comments section of the “D-Day Rembered” on Little Green Footballs. They are worth posting:

Tomorrow, the sun will rise, as it does every morning but tomorrow it will be June Sixth, the sixty second anniversary of D-Day.
Right now, on this very minute sixty two years ago, tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen took one last look at loved ones, dashed off a last letter and otherwise did whatever they could to calm their nerves. They had boarded their ships or were boarding. The largest armada ever assembled sailed out to determine the fate of the world.

Eisenhower made the decision to go and the world would never be same again.

Sixty six hundred allied troops would not be alive in 24 hours. Thousands more would be injured. In the cold industrialized mechanized planning that was D-Day, half of the soldiers were there so their bodies would offer shelter, weapons and ammo to the survivors.

By late morning tomorrow, when you are having that second cup of coffee, sixty two years ago Omaha beach was a gory bloodbath, our soldiers were being slaughtered to the point that Gen. Omar Bradley was not sure the invasion had worked.

How safe and easy are our lives. We owe so much to this, the most magnificent army in history, a generation of brave men who stormed ashore because they believed in something greater and something better, the very lives that we lead today.

They followed orders and charged into a hopeless situation without question. Sheer mass was the only armor they had. As I have for the past couple of years, I write to honor their memory and perhaps say one new thing that might help others appreciate and remember.

D-Day was a triumph of planning and production but it is mostly a triumph of the spirit of the nation that calls itself the United States of America. It was an expression of a nation’s will, its character and its future as the greatest power on earth.

After D-Day, the US would be the greatest power the world had ever seen. The American nation had shown that it was capable of doing anything, including the impossible, of fighting for the ideals of freedom against any odds and against any enemy. And winning. After D-Day, some might question America but D-Day was not just an event it was transformative to the nation itself the springboard to today.

Any nation that wishes to supplant the US from its global peak will have to commit deeds of greatness that will enable that nation to transcend the nation that risked everything for freedom and gave the world a vision of freedom and equality that I hope shines forever.

One night I had a wonderful dream. A bugle blew in heaven and an endless troop of soldiers marched to the gates themselves and presented arms and saluted; the honor guard of heaven were the allied soldiers of June 6, 1944.

No other place of honor is good enough for what they did.
So I ask you to take a moment and think about the day that gave birth to the modern world and remember the brave men who made it possible.

Thank you, BabbaZee, for the reminder.

Over at The Cool Blue Blog there is a first person story of the days leading up to and on the invasion day aboard the Navy’s oldest battleship.

Omaha Beach and the USS ARKANSAS. It’s a good read…

Note: Our wounded service members need some help…see details on Valour-IT funding laptops with voice recognition software here.

Thanks for your considertaion of this great project!

See D-Day Remembered on Black Five for more stories commemorating this day in history.

Part I,Part II and Part III of the Adventures of Jim, Sr

Jim Helinger, Sr, USAAF

I can’t say this post is full of D-Day info, for Jim Helinger, Sr, Glider Pilot, USAAF, doesn’t talk about combat much. He says there are plenty of other things to talk about, and he is right. I choose to take a few words to highlight Jim’s service in this battle , as well as the others.

CG-4A WACO Glider Info

The links at the top of the post take you to the story Jim told to me over dinner last year. He was one of those men in the gliders on D-Day, being towed over the English Channel in order to get supplies and troops on the ground, and then return to fly again. As a part of the 442nd Troop Carrying Group, he hauled some of the 82nd Airborne Division into battle on this day, 62 years ago.

Jim also had other duties beside flying. He was tasked to determine airworthiness of the gliders on the ground. He said he guessed he always made a good guess. Ever wonder how they got the glider pilots back? How about you find a glider that looks sound after it’s landing, tell the surviving pilots to get in and strap in, you set up a pair of goal posts, stretch a line between them, attach a tow line (nylon) to the line across, then shoot a flare for the orbiting C-47 to see. That signals the C-47 to come do a low altitude pass, dangling an arresting hook like arrangement, that snagged the glider back into the air and ultimately home.

Jim in the pilot’s seat – taken by his co-pilot

He also flew at least 40 other combat glider missions, and ended up doing a little defensive work on the ground at the Battle of the Bulge. Jim said not all the pilots took the ride home from D-Day. Besides being pilots, they also had to dismount and fight with the troops until the area was secure. He siad a few of the pilots fought on the ground all the way to Germany, and at the end of the war, they finally met back up with their units.

The glider crews don’t get a lot of pages of print, nor combat artwork, for the most part. The C-47, and a fine airplane it is, gets the lion’s share of the credit for hauling lots and lots of paratroopers, as it did. It also hauled the WACO and HORSA gliders, too. JIm said they mostly only saw the C-47 pilots when they were briefing for a mission, but they pretty much stayed apart during normal working routine. The glider pilots were at least qualified as Co-Pilots in the C-47, in case they needed extra hands.

A glider pilots view of the tow plane

D-Day was a phenomenal efforts, and many parts and pieces went into making the battle plan function. Jim Helinger, Sr, was one of those men who did his part that day.

Thanks to BlackFive for the D-Day Blogburst!