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 6th 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.
