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.

Winter and fortitude

The 2014 Winter Olympic Games are over and the verdict is in: Norway placed second in gold and third in total medals behind the United States and Russia.

But stop and think a moment. Norway has a relatively tiny population of 5.1 million, some 1.5 million less than the state of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts were a country and garnered Olympic medals at the same rate as Norway, we would have walked away with the world’s top honors.

This puts into perspective the remarkable Norwegian achievement, whose winter athletes won medals on par with world superpowers. How can this be?

Obviously, Norway is geographically located in the far north. Its capital, Oslo, is farther north than Juneau, Alaska, and the country extends well past the Arctic Circle. Norwegians live winter ten months of the year.

But these simple facts don’t begin to tell the story of this tenacious people, their extreme mental and physical toughness. For that, we must turn to the historic exploits of Jan Baalsrud and the Norwegian villagers who saved him.

During World War II, Norway was occupied by the Nazis. It was a dark time, as Hitler’s forces turned the Scandinavian Peninsula into their northern fortress. The Germans launched Norwegian-based submarine raids against supply convoys destined for Russia. Air patrols projected control over the North Sea. Nazi troop concentrations convinced Sweden to maintain its uneasy neutrality.

Worse, Norway’s abundant hydroelectric power was at the heart of Hitler’s nuclear energy program. If successful, the war’s outcome would have been grim and quick, with Hitler as the new world ruler. This could not be allowed to stand.

Jan (“yahn”) Baalsrud was one of a patriotic band of Norwegian resistance fighters. Early in the war he escaped to Russia and eventually arrived in England, where he was recruited into an elite commando unit. After completing a grueling training program, he was assigned a dangerous mission to disrupt a Nazi airfield and recruit others into the resistance.

Departing from the Shetland Islands in late March, 1943, aboard the fishing cutter Brattholm with a crew of eight, Baalsrud and three other commandos were covertly landed on the Norwegian coast. Through a tragic mistake, they made contact with a Nazi sympathizer having the same name as their intended contact. Not knowing their cover was blown, they returned to the boat to prepare their weapons and explosives.

The next morning, the Brattholm was attacked by a Nazi patrol boat. To avoid the capture of sensitive codes and materiel, the crew sank her using a time delay fuse and eight tons of explosives. The crew and commandos set out in a small boat which was promptly sunk by cannon fire. Baalsrud and the others swam to shore, now teeming with troops, and attempted to evade capture. All were killed except Baalsrud, who, soaking wet and missing one boot, managed to kill a Gestapo officer and escape into the icy mountains towering 3,000 feet over the sea.

And then began a two-month, desperate bid for survival, aided by villagers at great risk to themselves. They dared not allow Baalsrud to stay in their homes, as the Gestapo would shoot an entire family if discovered. But they provided him with skis and sent him into the mountains to a hidden hut. Snow blind, frostbitten, and near death, Baalsrud managed to survive between the very occasional deliveries of provisions by the villagers, who could not allow the Nazi’s to detect their mountain forays.

As a measure of his grim ordeal, Baalsrud was forced to amputate his own toes to prevent the spread of gangrene. This rough surgery was extraordinarily painful but ultimately successful.

Eventually, the villagers managed to convey Baalsrud into the high, frigid interior plateau where they met a group of native Lapps. The Lapps agreed to carry him to safety in Finland using reindeer-drawn sleighs. Baalsrud survived, spent seven months in a Swedish hospital, and returned to England. After learning to walk again without toes, he resumed his role as a commando, training others and eventually returning to Norway as a freedom fighter.

This short narrative gives only a slight hint of the physical and mental fortitude of the Norwegian people. The full story involves cross country skiing at high speed to escape vehicle-mounted Nazi patrols, and skiing uphill thousands of feet into frozen mountains and glaciers, all while blinded by wind-whipped snow.

No, it is small wonder that Norway won so many gold medals. In games, as in life, they are toughened by winter. Something to which New Englanders can certainly relate.