Remembering D-Day
For Tomorrow, they gave their Today.
H. A. G. Longstaff
IT’S A HEAVIER SWELL THAN YOU EXPECTED and the landing craft is pitching and rolling. Perhaps you might vomit with seasickness, but you were too nervous to eat breakfast so there’s nothing to come up. There’s a cracking in the air which you know to be rifle bullets, supplemented by the rapid chattering of German machine-gun fire. Occasionally you are drenched as a German artillery shell lands uncomfortably close in the water. Large calibre shells sound like freight trains as they head from battleships out at sea to German positions. There is smoke, confusion and a cacophony of noise. As the coxswain increases speed to get you up the beach, the change in engine tone indicates that your moment of destiny is seconds away. Then the ramp comes down …
Can you imagine the extraordinary courage needed to be in that first wave? Or to be one of the paratroopers jumping out of C-47 planes into the night sky to be scattered amongst Normandy, disrupting the German response? You would need to be propelled forward by training, a sense of duty and honour, a fear of failure, and a respect for mateship that is almost unimaginable.
Last Thursday 6 June 2024, was the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, the largest seaborne invasion ever. The sea landings started at 6.30am, just after dawn, targeting five code-named beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Watchers of movies (Saving Private Ryan’s D-Day landing is regarded as the most realistic combat scene ever) could be forgiven for thinking that this was a wholly American endeavour, and the Americans did make a significant contribution at Utah and Omaha beaches, but the British also landed at Gold and Sword, and the Canadians at Juno.
Around 11,000 Allied aircraft, 7,000 ships and boats and thousands of other vehicles were involved. More than two million Allied servicemen from a dozen countries served in the overall Operation Overlord, the battle to arrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day.
A total of 4,441 Allied troops were killed on D-Day, with over 5,000 wounded. Exact German casualties aren’t known but are estimated at between 4,000 and 9,000 men killed, wounded or missing.
I have visited the Allied cemeteries at Normandy and found them extraordinarily moving. Young men, barely older than my Year 12 cohort, who gave their today for our tomorrow.
The 80th Anniversary of D-Day was covered by ceremonies in France attended by President Macron, President Biden and King Charles III. Veterans are scarce … someone who was 20 on the day would now be 100. Most were in wheelchairs. They were called ‘the Greatest Generation’, raised in the Great Depression from parents who fought in the First World War, fighting against Nazism in the Second World War before the period of economic growth, innovation and prosperity marked by the 1950s and 1960s but also by the cloud of the Cold War.
Who now would be in those landing craft? The world now seems so much more fragmented. Do we support Ukraine, or is that for someone else? Would we sign up to serve, or are we too focused on our selfish comforts and ambitions? Is there a global bearing point of what’s right and worth fighting for that seemed so clear then? As evidence of this selfish focus, UK Prime Minister Rt. Hon. Rishi Sunak MP attended the formal ceremonies but missed the informal mingling with veterans, vital to honouring their legacy, to return to the UK for a media interview associated with the UK election.
As the RSL says, ‘the price of peace is eternal vigilance’.
Would you stand at the ramparts?
