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.

Remembering Okinawa

Marines from the 1st Marine Regiment on Wana Ridge, Okinawa.

Each year in June, we remember the brave troops who first directly challenged the Nazi juggernaut on continental Europe. Operation Overlord, the assault on Nazi-occupied western Europe, began with the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944.  The veterans of that action, if still alive, are 86 years or older.  This action, which over 60 days claimed the lives of over 20,000 American troops (and an additional 16,000 allied troops) has been memorialized by no less than John Wayne in “The Longest Day”, 1962, and Tom Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan”, 1998.  The enormous courage of these brave men broke the back of the Nazi war machine and directly led to victory in Europe in May of 1945.

While we should not, we must not, fail to recognize this enormous sacrifice, the month of June is somewhat unjustly overshadowed by D-Day.  Not as well known, one year later, on June 21, 1945, the Battle of Okinawa ended.

The war in the Pacific was viewed at the time as secondary to the war in Europe.  But the Japanese were fierce adversaries and had proven their battle mettle at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and China.  The threat of Japanese hegemony in the Pacific basin was very real. They were aggressively securing oil and mineral resources to fuel their formidable war machine. Not wishing to cede California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska (and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) to Emperor Hirohito, we fought back. Hard.

There followed a series of swirling naval battles, such as the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, intermixed with grueling island campaigns like the battles for Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.  The Marine Corps, in particular, was the sharp end of the spear and suffered grievous losses.  But slowly the inexorable march to the Japanese homeland continued.

In April of 1945, Operation Iceberg was mounted. Okinawa, 340 miles from mainland Japan, was considered home Japanese territory.  This was the first Allied assault directly on Japanese native soil.  It was fiercely resisted.

Over 1,300 Navy ships and 183,000 troops (five Army and three Marine Corps divisions) were committed to Okinawa. Unlike the beaches of Normandy, the supply lines to Okinawa stretched across the Pacific, delivering over 750,000 tons of materiel.  The casualties were enormous: 72,000 Americans wounded, 12,500 dead, and 107,000 Japanese troops and over 100,000 civilians killed, more than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (estimated at over 150,000 killed).

As horrible as the atomic toll was, it paled in comparison to the projected loss of life if Operation Downfall, the invasion of mainland Japan, were undertaken.  Various estimates centered around a half million Americans killed and perhaps several million Japanese military and civilians. These estimates were largely based on the desperate battle for Okinawa, and informed President Harry Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons in a bid to cut short the war.

In the end, terrible as was the carnage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is clear that many Japanese and American lives were saved by avoiding the ultimate land battle for Japan.  Okinawa, a key factor in this calculus, deserves to be remembered. The ghosts of our troops, our fathers and grandfathers’ brothers, demand it.