We have so little time to thank them

There is so much of import that deserves mention. The VA secret waiting list scandal. The stock market ascending to record heights. Kim and Kanye’s wedding.

But this week is the seventieth anniversary of D Day, when 156,000 allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on one single day, June 6, 1944. The fresh faced boys who slugged their way into Europe are now in their late eighties and nineties. The ones who are still with us remember.

It was an enormous undertaking, hard to fathom. The front stretched from the Cherbourg Peninsula to the Orne River, some sixty miles. That is approximately the length of Cape Cod, from Falmouth to Provincetown. It involved thousands of naval vessels, tens of thousands of aircraft sorties, and ingenious artificial ports to protect offloading cargo ships from the fury of the storm tossed English Channel. Over 13,000 paratroopers and nearly 4,000 glider troops added muscle behind the lines.

The order of battle was simple: “You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other Allied nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” This was the pivotal moment of the war in Europe. Till now, Germany had been stubbornly victorious.

The atmosphere of the time was grim. The Germans were known to be developing secret weapons in Norway and at Pennemunde in the Baltics and other locations. It was feared that bacteriological agents, nuclear bombs, and new unmanned rockets were all being created and refined for Hitler’s portfolio. The cost of failure would “carry consequences that would be almost fatal,” according to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, causing “a setback to Allied morale and determination… so profound that it would be beyond calculation.”

Russia, a fickle ally then as much as an enigma now, was closely watching. The overall strategy of the European conflict was to press Germany from both the east and the west. Russia had held up her end of the bargain, losing millions of casualties as the cost of pushing German forces from Ukraine and Belorussia. But the agreement made between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at the Teheran Conference in 1943 was that America and Great Britain would open the western front with a cross-channel invasion. If we failed, it was feared that Russia would consider a separate peace with Hitler and withdraw from hostilities. In that event, an Allied victory would become sharply improbable.

It was with this background that southern England became a huge staging area in the spring of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of troops camped, trained, and prepared. Millions of pounds of materials and supplies were moved near ports. (Each division would require 700 tons of supplies per day while in combat and 47 divisions were to land.) The impact on the British populace was massive. Coastal shipping and ferries were diverted to the logistical effort, as were many railways. Their meager rations were further cut, travel was nearly impossible, and their fields and gardens were trampled underfoot as soldiers and supplies were staged. But in view of the consequences, these privations were cheerfully accepted.

The precise day of the landing was a bit slippery. First agreed in Teheran to be in May, the plan was changed to target early June. This was due largely to the challenge of amassing the necessary landing craft, but also to allow time for preparatory air attacks. These were intended to cripple critical transportation facilities in France to impede the  flow of German troops and to soften German defenses. Accordingly, “D Day” was moved to early June, with moonrise, sunrise, and tides dictating the 5th through the 7th. A fierce storm was forecast for that entire period, and it was feared that the invasion might need be delayed until the next favorable astronomical period in late June. The 5th of June dawned dark and stormy with wave-tossed seas, low clouds, and wind-blown, horizontal rain.

But later that night, a pause in the winds, a glimmer of starlight, a respite. June 6th it was to be.

The rest we know. Steven Speilberg and Tom Hanks documented the terror, mortality, and grim determination of that day in “Saving Private Ryan,” as did John Wayne in “The Longest Day.”

There can be no end to the thanks we owe. These veterans, few and fewer each day, deserve to be thanked and recognized and praised. Find them, and do it.