doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com june 6 1944

dday

It certainly is. I used to work with a lot of different people who were there that day; and a few that were dropped in before hand by several days. Sadly most have now passed over. Lagopus.....

I wondered last evening if today's news media would make mention of this famous date in history. Allied forces landed on five beaches of Normandy, Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold, and Sword, and changed the history of the world. So far I have seen nothing locally, and this is a military town. Perhaps the evening Fox news will have a story, I don't expect the others to remember, or to remind us. What a shame. So many died there, and deserve our remembrance.

What is even more of a shame is the way the fighting in Italy by Allied forces has drifted off in obscurity, partly because Rome fell two days before D-Day.

To put it in perspective, the Americans lost nearly a thousand men---946?---in a training "friendly fire" tragedy in Devon before D-Day.

That's more than they lost on Utah. And 16,000 casualties trying to break through the Winter Line in Italy.

Check it out. Relying on memory.

My favorite uncle- John Lenig- has passed on, but he'll live in my memory as my only relative to have gone ashore there that day. Omaha Beach, 1st Infantry Division, 4th wave. He survived it, as well as having survived beach landings in Algeria and Sicily before that, and two weeks as a POW after the debacle at the Kasserine Pass (quite a story there, best left for another time). Off the beach and into the bocage, and later through the Huertgen Forest, picking up three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star along the way.

He didn't keep much in the way of souvenirs. The only piece of his kit that he retained (stole, I suppose), for some unknown reason, was the canteen and cover that he carried from day 1. The canteen is dented to hell, and there are blood stains on the cover that he admitted to my dad were his. I have it now and drink a toast of water to him out of it every year on this day. It is setting at home on the kitchen counter waiting for me as I speak. To say he was my personal hero is putting it mildly...

I was born in 1946, so right after war, and I did forget about this day and I am glad you posted it. Thanks, and God bless all who served and died.
Going out to raise the flag.

Hi all, nice post, on this day in 1944 my dad was in Rome, he was an infantryman in the 88th Inf Div. The unit that was first into Rome (also with the 1st SFF).

Anyway a lot of Italian campaign vets had some hard feelings about the landings in France. After all they were fighting long before the landings. The Italian campaign was kind of a side show for the allies. Fighting was bad on both fronts with different terrain and both fought hard.

Churchill called Italy, the "Soft underbelly of Europe" Mark Clark was more in tune when he called it "A tough old gut"

Anyway, my thanks and hats off to ALL the WWII vets, no matter where they fought and whatever they did.

GOD BLESS THEM!

Greg

A great story from today's Portland Press-Herald.

Two guys from different parts of Maine who landed on Utah and fought together in Normandy, got separated, wound up surviving the war (one as a POW), wind up sharing a room in the VA hospital at Togus, Maine.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/157432795.html

I think of D-Day and the Normandy campaign every time I take out my 16 ga French guild sxs. It was taken from a Normandy farmhouse as a trophy by a 35th Inf. Div. infantryman, then held pride of place in his gun cabinet until he died in the late 80s, and until his son (not having anyone to pass it on to) sold it to me.

If that "friendly fire" incident you're thinking of is the one at Slapton Sands, it wasn't so friendly. E-Boats got into the practice landing and raised no little hell.

What's the "D" stand for? I always remember D-Day because its also my own birthday albeit in 1948...Geo