The Longest Day

On June 5, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this brief note, which he then put in his pocket, where it remained for the next two days:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Le Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to this attempt it is mine alone."

By God's Providence, this message was never sent. The sending of such a message would have signaled the defeat of the largest one-day invasionary force the world had ever seen, and the prolongation of a war that ultimately claimed the lives of over 400,000 American men and boys. The consequences of a defeat at Normandy are unthinkable. Nevertheless, the possibility of failure was apparently somewhat substantial, as evidenced by the fact that Eisenhower wrote such a note.

An Amazing Story

The events of D-Day, and the days and weeks leading up to it, are truly an amazing story. The Allies had selected Normandy as the location of the invasion in a series of conferences held throughout the year of 1943. The Germans expected the invasion to take place at Pas de Calais; had the Allies chosen that point for the invasion instead of Normandy, the results would have likely been disastrous. In the fall of 1943, as a result of the German high command's belief that Calais would be the location of the Allied landing, Hitler assigned to Gen. Erwin Rommel the task of strengthening the Atlantic Wall along the coast of France.

Operation Fortitude

The Germans believing that the attack would occur at Calais was greatly due to a highly successful deception campaign dubbed Operation Fortitude. The primary purpose of this campaign was to keep the Germans from strengthening their defenses at Normandy, by leading them to believe that the Allied invasion of France would occur at Pas de Calais. This was accomplished by a number of means. One was the leaking of false information about the location of the planned invasion. Double agents were used to send back the false information to the Nazi intelligence agency. Another tactic used was the construction of 'dummy' tanks (at left), trucks, artillery pieces, landing craft, etc. Fictitious divisions were fabricated in order to create the illusion of a larger force than actually existed. The transportation infrastructure in and around Calais was also bombed heavily during the weeks preceding the Normandy invasion.

A Fatal Mistake

Due to a dispute between Gen. Erwin Rommel and his superior, Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, about where to locate the German armored divisions, Hitler placed almost all of the armored and Panzer divisions under his own personal command, and located them just above the Seine River, not far from where the Allies were expected to land at Calais. Rommel's stratagem was to
position the armored divisions as close to the invasion beaches as he could, while von Rundstedt wanted to hold them in reserve away from the beaches until after the invasion was underway, when they could then be used as a tremendous counter-attack. Had Rommel had his way, the results of D-Day could have been very different.

When the invasion started on the morning of the 6th, Hitler was asleep, and his staff refused to wake him. He slept until after noon, and as a result the armored divisions were not deployed until 4 o'clock that afternoon; much to late to turn the tide of the Allied forces moving inland from the beaches.

The Desert Fox

An essential component of the D-Day invasion was the unfavorable weather. Because of that, Gen. Rommel felt secure in taking a few days leave to Berlin to visit his wife for her 50th birthday. He was confident that the Allies wouldn't possibly land an invasionary force under such adverse weather conditions. Had Rommel not been away at the time of the invasion, it's possible that he would have been able to repel the Allies, or at least the invasion long enough for the Panzer divisions to arrive.

The Largest Invasion

One cannot imagine what went through the minds of the Nazi soldiers on Normandy when they saw the Allied fleet approaching. It was the largest one-day invasionary force that the world has ever seen; over 7,000 ships and landing craft, manned by over 195,000 crew; with over 132,000 troops landing on the beaches of Normandy just on that first day. By the 30th, three weeks later, over 850,000 Allied troops had landed at Normandy. The invasion of Normandy was truly an amazing feat of complex planning and preparation.

The Landing

The invasion was divided into 5 different beaches; Juno was to be taken by Canadian forces, Gold and Sword by British forces, and Utah and Omaha by U.S. forces. The landing began at 6:30 AM. The stories of courage and valor on the beaches of Normandy are truly remarkable. One such story is that of Walter D. Ehlers, whose extraordinary story can be read here, as told in the the book: Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.

The Longest Day

Produced by Darryl Zanuck, The Longest Day (1962) is an outstanding film that brings to life the events of D-Day. Featuring an all star cast including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery and Curt Jurgens, it's truely one of the best WWII films ever made. It really helps you envision what it was like at the beaches of Normandy on "The Longest Day".

Here's the trailer for the film:

Oliver North's book War Stories III provides an excellent synopsis of the war in the European theatre. It also comes with a DVD containing an episode from Oliver North's TV show War Stories.

Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty, tells the stories of 138 living or recently deceased men who were awarded the Medal of Honor for courage and valor beyond the call of duty. Each Medal of Honor recipient's story is told in a two-page format with wartime photos as well as recent photos taken for this book.

Founding Legacy

232 years ago, 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of liberty and freedom. I wonder how many Americans today would be willing to do that? Most people don’t even realize the significance of that phrase. We’re so familiar with the words lives, fortunes, and sacred honor that we never think about what they really mean. It wasn’t just a superfluous way of signing a document. They were truly pledging their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. And indeed, many of the signers sacrificed their fortunes, and some even their lives or the lives of family members.

Take for example Francis Lewis, signer of the Declaration from New York. His home was plundered and destroyed by British troops, his wife was taken captive and kept prisoner under horrible conditions. She was exchanged just a few months later, but her health had been so severely damaged during her imprisonment that she died shortly afterward.

Here is an excerpt from a speech written by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr. (father of the political talk-show host Rush Limbaugh) telling about the sacrifices the signers made for their country:

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact. And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

One thing that stands out in the phrase lives, fortunes, and sacred honor is the fact that they listed their lives and their fortunes, but it was only their honor that they held to be sacred. Honor was a thing to be prized above fortune and life. Life and fortune were things that could be taken from you, but no one could take your honor from you. As journalist and educator William Lyon Phelps said,

"You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor."

Today in our society we have lost the concept of what true honor is. Webster's 1828 dictionary defines honor as "Reputation; good name... True nobleness of mind; dignified respect for character..." I think this succinctly sums up what true honor really is. As Thomas Jefferson said,

"Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong."

To us, the founding generation, living in a society and culture that hardly resembles our own, may seem irrelevant to us. But there are many lessons still to be learned from their generation; from their successes and their failures, from their strengths and their shortcomings. Philosopher and poet George Santayana (1863-1952) summarizes it well,

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But not only can we hope to avoid their mistakes, we can also build upon and imitate the good and noble things that they did, in their public and private lives. Sadly, most Americans have no knowledge of men like Patrick Henry, Benjamin Rush, John Witherspoon, and Nathaniel Greene. These are the men who should be our heroes and role models, but instead, we look to Hollywood for the heroes of today.

We are forgetting and forsaking the incredible legacy left to us by our Founding Fathers. It has been cast aside and disdained by this generation. But we must honor and remember that legacy that has been given to us as Americans. America is facing hugely important issues today: abortion on demand is growing more and more acceptable (see this article by Dr. Albert Mohler), traditional marriage is being destroyed, our borders remain unprotected while thousands of illegal immigrants pour into our country, and it is very possible that Barrack Hussein Obama will be the next president of the United States.

We cannot just stand by and watch as our country crumbles into the ash heap of history. I think what George Washington told the Continental Army after the signing of the Declaration applies to us today:

"The fate of millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions -- The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from tyranny mediated against them."

And with the passing in recent years of such great men as Bill Buckley, Jerry Falwell, and D. James Kennedy, we have huge shoes we must fill. We must begin to reclaim America by standing firm for the truth, for as Edmund Burke so eloquently put it,

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

"We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness." (Ronald Reagan, A Time for Choosing speech, 1964). If our generation does nothing to stop the decay and destruction of our liberties and freedoms, we will plunge future generations into "a thousand years of darkness." We must not allow our liberties to be taken from us, for liberties once lost are not easily regained.

So I will leave you with the following stanza from the poem The Rising of 1776 by T.B. Read.

"Who dares?" -- This was the patriot preacher's cry,
As striding from the pulpit he came, --
"Come out with me, in Freedom's name,
For her to live, for her to die?"
A hundred hands flung up reply,
A hundred voices answered, "I!"

Recommended reading:

A Time for Choosing (1964), by Ronald Reagan
The Americans Who Risked Everything, by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr.
Whence Independence?, by Pat Boone
Was the Revolution a Biblically Justified Act?, by David Barton
America Is Not An Accident, by Tom Delay
Christians vs. Deists, by Dr. Joe Morecraft – CD
1776, by David McCullough

The Invasion of Normandy -- June 6, 1944

On June 5, 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote this brief note, and then put it in his pocket, where it remained for the next few days:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Le Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to this attempt it is mine alone."

By God's Providence, this message was never sent.  If such a message had been sent, it would have signaled the defeat of the largest one-day invasionary force the world had ever seen, and the prolongation of a war that ultimately claimed the lives of over 400,000 American men and boys.  The consequences of a defeat at Normandy are unthinkable.  The possibility of failure was evidentially somewhat substantial, as evidenced by the very fact that Eisenhower wrote such a note. 

A Story of Providence

The victory at Normandy is a story of God's Providential Hand in guiding and directing the events of that day, and the days and weeks leading up to it.  The Allies had selected Normandy as the location of the invasion in a series of conferences held throughout the year of 1943.  If the Allies had chosen Pas de Calais, as the point of invasion instead of Normandy, as the Germans had expected, the results would have likely been disastrous.  Because of the German high command's belief that Calais would be the location of an Allied landing, in the fall of 1943, Hitler assigned to Gen. Erwin Rommel the task of strengthening the Atlantic Wall along the coast of France.  

Operation Fortitude

The  reason the Germans believed the attack would occur at Calais was greatly due to a highly successful deception campaign dubbed Operation Fortitude.  The purpose of this was to lead the Germans to believe that the main invasion of France would occur at Pas de Calais, thus keeping them from strengthening their defenses at Normandy.  This was accomplished by a number of different means.  One was the construction of 'dummy' trucks, tanks, artillery pieces, landing craft, etc.  Another means used in Operation Fortitude was information leaks giving false information about the location of the planned invasion.  Double agents were also used to send back false information to the Nazi intelligence agency.  The transportation infrastructure in and around Calais was also bombed heavily during the weeks preceding the Normandy invasion.

A Fatal Mistake

Due to a dispute between Gen. Rommel and Gen. von Rundstedt, Hitler placed almost all of the Panzer tank divisions under his direct command, and located them just north of the Seine River, not far from where the Allies were expected to land at Calais.  If Rommel had been allowed to have his way, the events of D-Day could have turned out much different than they did.  On the morning of the 6th, Hitler didn't get up until after noon, and because the Panzers were under Hitler's direct control, the Panzer's weren't deployed to the site of the invasion until 4 o'clock that afternoon, which was much to late to turn the tide of the Allied forces moving inland from the beaches. 

The Desert Fox

Another Providential event that occurred concerning the D-Day invasion was the unfavorable weather.  Because of that, Gen. Rommel felt entirely secure in taking a few days leave to Germany for his wife's birthday.  Although he was known as 'The Desert Fox', he let his guard down by believing that the Allies wouldn't possibly land an invasionary force under such adverse weather conditions.  Had Rommel not been away at the time of the invasion, he might have been able to repel the invasion, or at least hold it back until the Panzer divisions could arrive. 

 The largest invasion

One can only imagine what went through the minds of the Nazi soldiers on Normandy when they saw the Allied fleet approaching.  It was the largest one-day invasionary force that the world has ever seen; over 7,000 ships and landing craft, manned by over 195,000 crew; with over 132,000 troops landing on the beaches of Normandy just on the first day.  By the 30th, 3 weeks later, over 850,000 Allied troops had landed at Normandy.  The invasion of Normandy was truly an amazing feat of complex planning and preparation.

The Landing

The invasion was divided into 5 different beaches; Juno was to be taken by Canadian forces, Gold and Sword by British troops, and Utah and Omaha were to be taken by U.S. forces.  The landing began at 6:30 AM.  I won't go into the details of what took place at each location, but the stories of courage and valor from the beaches of Normandy are truly remarkable.  One such story is the story of Walter D. Ehlers, whose story can be read here, taken from the book Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.

The Longest Day

Last Saturday we watched the 1962 movie about D-Day, The Longest Day.  Produced by Darryl Zanuck, The Longest Day features an all star cast including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Red Buttons, Curt Jurgens, and 36 other international stars.  It's one of those rare movies that for the most part stays true to the historical record. 

There is one exception I take with the movie, and that's when it portrays the climbing of Point-du-Hoc as fruitless because when they got to the top they discovered that the guns they were sent to destroy were not there.  But if they hadn't climbed the cliffs, they wouldn't have been able to find where the guns had been moved and destroy them.  If the guns had remained intact, they would have been able to reek incredible havoc on the beaches with a rain of artillery, which would have been devastating to the efforts of the main forces to get off the beaches and move inland.  So the climbing of the cliffs by the boys of Point-du-Hoc was definitely not fruitless.

If you've never seen the movie, I highly recommend that you get it, because it really helps you to envision what it looked like on D-Day.  Here's the trailer for the film:

War Stories III: The Heroes Who Defeated Hitler

Oliver North's book War Stories III provides an excellent synopsis on the war in the European theatre.  And it also comes with a DVD containing an episode from Oliver North's TV show War Stories. 

I also recommend the book Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.  It tells the stories of 138 living or recently deceased men who were awarded the Medal of Honor for courage and valor beyond the call of duty.  Each Medal of Honor recipient's story is told in a two-page format with wartime photos as well as recent photos taken for this book.

One last thing I recommend to read is President Ronald Reagan's Boys of Pointe-du-Hoc speech given on June 6, 1984 commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day.   The text of the speech can be read here.