#106 D-DAY
#106
HUMANITY LEARNED A NOT SOON FORGOTTEN LESSON THAT DAY
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
T
he forward movement of people across the channel waters was made possible by the machines.
Operation Neptune involved the transportation by machines of machines and ground personal for the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944. America had sent 200 warships and 865 landing craft. 14000 Canadian troops landed among the 170,000 soldiers storming the beeches from the land, sea and air.
But there was more, so much more as not to be believed without recuring remembrances.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Bernard Montgomery (Winston, Ike, Monty) will be remembered in the historical record, but so will the men and women that spent long hours tossing and turning during the planning phase of D-Day. Just contemplating the invasion must have been almost unimaginable, the scale of the endeavour at the time was just so grand.
Normandy was further away from Portsmouth than Calais, more dangerous, better defended but less predictable.
HUMANITY NEVER CEASES TO AMAZE WITH THAT UNIQUE ABILITY TO UNITE COMPETING INTERESTS IN AN UNWAVERING COMMITMENT TO A CAUSE – IN THIS CASE – TO DEFEAT TYRANNY
The long wait was over, after being delayed since May 2, and in the planning stages for two years or more. For a moment, under the lazy early summer moon in full over the dark cold waters, men and machine became one, if in nothing else, at least in purpose, determination and drive.
The possibility of a D-Day landing began with the end of the trench warfare during World War I. The increasing use of machines in warfare, such as tanks to roll over the trenches, and the possibility of the airplanes bombing from above, accelerated human reliance on machines.
Humanity designed machines for industry. And humanity designed machines for war. War machines enabled the fascists to sweep across the continent with lightning speed. And machines would be put into play to drive the enemy back from whence they came.
The Allied invasion force not only freed France from the grip of fascism, but the storming of the beaches in the early morning hours also began the liberation of democracy and freedom throughout Europe, and ultimately saved the world from the growing scope of tyranny.
The battle to liberate France would take 77 days. A bit less than a bitter year of battle more was required before victory in Europe was finally assured on May 8, 1945. But beginning in the early morning before the sun rose on the English Channel on June 6, not a minute was taken for granted. Death was imminent, for everyone, almost randomly determined as an eventuality for too many of the soldiers.
Humanity never ceases to amaze, though, with the ability to unite competing interests in an unwavering commitment to a cause – in this case, to defeat tyranny.
The victory came at a heavy price of life, though. Of the 156,000 Allied soldiers that would make their way into the European Theatre of War through Normandy on that fateful Tuesday, 4,400 were killed on heavily defended beaches.
The soldiers that did get off the beaches and into the streets of occupied small towns continued to sacrifice their lives fighting from street to street, bridge to bridge, small town to small town, and moving ever so incrementally in the direction of Berlin.
The monumental human achievement set the stage for future missions. Humanity would go to the Moon in part based on the technology developed in Europe during the war. Technology can be created to kill. Technology to kill can be commodified for peaceful endeavors. But the achievement in operating as one entity also inspired humanity to unite as one.
Normandy was 5 times further away from the launching point in Portsmouth, England than the closest point of crossing at Pas De Calais. But that beachhead at Calais was too easy and too obvious for an invasion.
The planes had bombed positions along the Atlantic Wall during the days and nights leading up to the invasion.
Bombers had taken out enemy munition factories, manufacturing plants for making more machines to buttress the Atlantic Wall, and the supply lines to the Normandy coast, including a purposeful targeting of locomotives by the marauding fighters set loose freestyle after escorting the B-17 Flying Fortresses on their bombing runs deep into enemy territory.
For example, the German Airforce lost 2,605 planes in February 1944 alone.
The P-51 Mustangs were commodified with Rolls Royce Engines and extra gasoline tanks so as to be able to fly from England to Berlin and back again.
Radio was used to create deception. False radio messages were sent out intending to be overheard about a deep fake invasion plan in the north and another deep fake invasion to the south of Normandy. The uncertainty of when and where the invasion would happen meant that the heavy war machines used by the enemy, such as the 10 Divisions of slow moving Panzer Tanks, with 500 tanks in each Division, stationed as far as 40 miles away from the eventual inflexion point of the war, could not be everywhere all at once.
Technological advances made the idea of D-Day more imaginable. People innovated to increase the odds of success, such as the development of artificial harbours that would be used along the Normandy coast to bring in the mainstay of troops and equipment for the large scale advance on enemy occupied Europe.
Once securing the beachhead at Normandy, the mission became moving into Europe almost 2 million soldiers and their war machines before the enemies could mobilize a similar army to defend against the invasion.
THE DARK DRAWN OUT FACES OF SACRIFICE STILL LIVE IN THE SHADOWS SWIRLING ABOUT IN THE COLD CHANNEL CURRENT WITH THE SAND AND BLOOD, NOT FORGOTTEN, NOT EVEN EVER SO BRIEFLY
The machines had risen before. WWI, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers mired in the trenches, was only brought to an end with the active use of tanks and the increasing dominance of machines from the sky. And even then, the enemy gave up in part because they had run out of money to build machines.
The rising power of the machines began in earnest with the Industrial Revolution. The mass production of machines to move people about changed everything: the agrarian economy, the politics of small towns, and the daily life of individuals no longer isolated in neighbourhoods too distant from the city hubs.
War makes the most heart wrenching stories of human existence. And war also makes machines faster, smarter and more powerful than before.
The little details put everything into perspective – no one knowing with certainty the outcome or whether one person or the other would see the sunrise the next day – what would be there when the metal door opened on the troop carriers facing directly onto the beaches against the fortified gun batteries.
As in war, individual sacrifice and community perseverance alone may only take humanity just so far along in peacetime.
The spectacle of over 156,000 soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy and of the resolve of the Allies was inspiring for the Free World, and also a warning to all those who might challenge the determination of democracy with mercurial opposing views.
The world could set aside minor inconsequential differences to unite in a common cause and defend against an enemy, but to also extend peace for as long as possible, hopefully for generations to come, but at least for just a few more days would do just fine, and even then, if the world could find peace for just one minute more.
The draw of enemy forces to the Western Front also freed up the Allies on the Eastern Front, who were fighting a similar bloody battle from street to street, and who ultimately liberated the concentration camps in occupied Poland, bringing an end to the Holocaust.
Other words come to mind in reference to the soldiers on the beachhead, such as valor and sacrifice. Thousands of soldiers sacrificed their lives for the greater cause of humanity – more often than not connected and increasingly more so losing that connection to an intimate loved one and extended family and friends. Soldiers, who did survive, and their families lived on in one deconstructed form or another.
War is a horrible derivative of civilization’s competing interests for many of the same essential tangibles existing in a finite supply, even more so if that need is wanting just that one brief ethereal moment of tranquility. War has been throughout the ages an inevitable outcome that has shaped civilization since the first communities formed.
War would never look the same again, after D-Day, with that passive acceptance of the inevitable kept in check by the remembrance of the now undeniable ability to summon the forces of good under one banner.
The dark drawn out faces of sacrifice still live in the shadows on the beaches swirling about in the cold channel current with the sand and blood not forgotten, not even ever so briefly in the smiles of liberation a few kilometers inland.
Eighty years later, the D-Day landings are an example of what humanity can accomplish together, drawn together from a number of sources, but unified in one direction for a singular purpose. In 1944 the cause was freedom and democracy. In 1957, conquering space was on everyone’s minds. In 1973, oil was important.
But throughout this time and moving into the future, the cause of humanity has become for peace at last, at least for a few moments of celebration, anyway, on those same sinking beaches with the tide all in, gradually ever so subtly, almost without notice, receding, and pulling all the long lost shadows of deconstructed bits and pieces of humanity back into the mercurial sea, on June 6.
Normandy ’44, by James Holland, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2019.
