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VOL. 5/ISSUE 31
THURSDAY, JUNE 8, 2017
Crucial join-up accomplished, but at high cost Mary Kemper STAFF WRITER
mkemper@veteranvoiceweekly.com
In this the 73rd anniversary year of the D-Day landing in Normandy, almost everyone knows about the harrowing first day, and the terrible cost paid to secure a foothold on European soil once and for all. Certainly mistakes were made, as was bound to happen in a situation involving multiple nations and staggering amounts of troops and logistics. The weather played its own part — and not to mention a stiff resistance from the German Wehrmacht. However, only two days after the initial landing, one small miracle took place — troops from Omaha and Gold beaches joined up. This may
seem a relatively small matter, but it helped achieve great things in the long run. In contrast to Omaha Beach, where American troops suffered the most resistance and heaviest casualties, Gold Beach was less well fortified, but still dangerous to the British, Polish and Dutch troops who attacked it. The winds were so high that their landing craft were forced closer to the shore than they wanted. Fortunately, the preceding bombardment by HMS Ajax and HMS Argonaut took out three of the four heavy guns deployed by the Germans, and the Allied troops lost many fewer casualties than they would have done. One of the biggest problems during the whole invasion was breakdowns in communication. Radios were lost or destroyed and there were language barriers as well, even among American and British troops. One notable anecdote tells of a British platoon commander coming under withering German fire, contacting his American counterpart requesting reinforcements. “We’re in a bit of a sticky situation,” he is reported to have said. With this typical British understatement, the American assumed he wasn’t really in all that bad of shape. Notwithstanding, the whole join-up between the
Photo by Artt Miss
See D-DAY page 11