You'd have thought that if all the others had gotten through and one part of the landing force was still on the beach they'd have flanked the germans? Wonder why they didn't? Seems stupid considering the losses incurred.

Good posts, the D-Day invasions I find super interesting.

I'm reading a book called 'Decision in Normandy' about the entire Normandy campaign right now, and when it got to the actual D-Day invasions (my favourite part so far), I was pretty surprised, since SPR was really my only reference when I started. Like someone said before, it took 6 hours to get a few yards up the beach. Omaha was the worst for the Americans because by a coincidence an entire German division was running training exercises on that particular beach, which the Allies were not aware of. Beaches like Gold and Sword were realtively lightly defended and were FAR less bloody than Omaha or Juno (be damned if I can remember the last one, damn...). Anyway, it was D+1 when they finally started to capture all of Omaha, that's a day of fighting. Must've been hell...

The other beach was called UTAH. BTW, what exactly are the Shingles? Is it the barbed wire or what? Thanks in advance.

I think the shingles are the explosives that are used to make trenches so that troops can advance forward.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by nwebb:
The other beach was called UTAH. BTW, what exactly are the Shingles? Is it the barbed wire or what? Thanks in advance.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I believe the shingle is the area on a beach where the most sand is piled up from the waves. Like in Saving Private Ryan where they set off the bangalore torpedoes, they were up along the shingle. That is why it was a lot safer to be up along the shingle during the D-Day invasions because you were safe from the machine gun fire.


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Yes, the shingle is all the slate and stone that is piled up along the high tide line. From eons of stormy Atlantic waves. You don’t see that stuff on swimming beaches in Florida of course. Only ones that have a lot of limestone cliffs and that kind of thing. But even on nice beaches there is that line of shell and stones right where the water meets the beach that stays dry.

Anyway, D-Day was a big confusion. Because of the post-storm tides most units landed off course and had no idea where they were exactly. They did not have satellites and cell phones and all that. One part of the beach had no idea what other parts were doing. Communication with the ships off shore was spotty at best.

Some Americans landed at Omaha and had light or no casualties because certain cliffs stuck out and blocked the view of the closest enemy troops, or because the smoke from destroyed ships or vehicles screened their advance. Others 200 yards away were butchered.

Some Americans faced Polish and French conscripts who only stayed in the trenches because a German sergeant was there with a machine pistol at their backs. Other Americans faced crack units of an elite force that had just spent a year fighting in Russia and was in fact on training exercises that morning in full field gear. (Similarly some Airborne units – like the Band of Brothers guys -landed in and around the veteran German paratroops that were also in Normandy on filed maneuvers.)

The units that were pinned down thought the whole Invasion had failed, the units that got off the bluffs by noon thought it was the same way for everyone else.

Despite the fact the units at the far right (where Tom Hanks and Co. landed) had some of the worst of it they also were among the few units that actually reached and secured their objectives, which happened to be a particularly strategic point looking over the beach head. Most other units at Omaha did not reach their inland objectives until days later.

Mange,

My favorite book about D-Day is still The Longest Day. It was virtually over looked during the 1994 anniversary stuff, probably because it was written in the 50s. In fact it took him ten years to write and was the first book of its kind - where the author went all over the world to interview the people who were there and took part from Rommel's adjudents to the yanks and tommys who hit the beaches, etc.