The Sixth of June

The seemingly solid wall of noise – screaming and yelling men, thunderous explosions, the r-r-r-r-r-riiiiiipppping reports of multiple Nazi MG42s raking the beach and shallows at twenty-five rounds per second, the roaring diesel engines of  landing craft attempting to escape the hellish, bloody waters as bullets, mortar and artillery shell fragments spang off their sides…

The magnified smell of war, of burning men and equipment, their smoke stinging  eyes and choking throats of those still living, making it hard to see iron obstacles and tangle-foot wire that is strewn everywhere, effectively blocking and delaying the delivery of the craft’s load of men and equipment onto the very doorstep of Hell.

Finally, as if in slow motion, the large metal ramp of your own landing craft crashes down, splashing unheard over the noise of war into the saltwater and introducing its men to the world of death, of limbs ripped from bodies, soldiers lying everywhere in various stages of dying or who are dead already. Eyes witnessing bullet impacts and geysers of blood leaping from newly-mangled flesh, artillery rounds exploding in the wet sand and flinging those unfortunate enough to be near them skyward, most dead before landing, none fully intact.

It is D-Day, the 6^th of June on the coast of Normandy, a place where the occupying German army has had well over a year to prepare for the arrival of Allied forces intent upon driving them out of the land. Over a million anti-personnel and anti-armor mines have been planted, thousands of miles of barbed wire scattered along every possible landing site off the Atlantic Ocean, reinforced concrete bunkers, gun emplacements, trenches and ‘pill boxes’ lining every square mile of what has been dubbed ‘Fortress Europe’.

One-hundred-fifty-six-thousand men have been sent to breach the walls of that fortress; before the battle is over, 37,000 American soldiers will have been killed.

For those of us who weren’t there, it is impossible to imagine the sheer terror inside those men approaching the beaches of Normandy, riding inside the landing craft and hearing those sounds, smelling the aroma of death’s spectre and, ultimately, seeing it a multitude of times over.

The patriot heroes that survived Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno beaches and still live this day, seventy-three years later, have daily been accompanied by that horror since; their brothers already gone from this life thankfully witnessing the end of their own nightmares.

We owe all of them, living and dead, an eternal debt. We owe them honor and remembrance for the sacrifice made in the name of freedom on that day, the Sixth of June, 1944.

D-Day.