doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Where were YOU, "D-DAY" June 1944?

Chief --- it's amasing what you can remember as a young lad. Dave has brought it all flooding back.

David, I couldn't agree with you more --- here's to the men with backbone/courage. ken

I was only three at the time, having been born shortly before Pearl Harbor, but I do have vivid memories of my father taking me to the local Army air base in Lubbock, Texas and showing me all the gliders that soldiers were training in for the invasion. Strange how such young memories such as this can stick with a person. Just flashes, not clear memories.

I had just finished my Freshman year of high school and became a farm laborer, read the paper every day following the war.

I wasn't around for another 12 years to the day!!! I believe my father to be was in the Pacific on that day with the Marines.

I was nearly three years in the future; my older brother was the family bundle of joy. My father was helping keep the flight deck of the USS Wolverine in repair while they trained carrier pilots on Lake Michigan. His oldest brother was a doctor in charge of health at military construction camps, his immediately older brother was just back from 25 missions as a B-17 radio operator, and his youngest brother would shortly become an infantryman (he did a hike from the Rhein at Remagan across Germany in the spring of '45). My mother's brother was a radar operator in an Avenger, one of her cousins commanded a destroyer and another was XO on a DE in the Pacific. The all came home safe and sound, but they didn't forget!! The rest of the family was growing food or loading 40mm ammo.

I wouldn't be born for quite some time, but my Father lost a cousin at Anzio. I know it effected him deeply, and Dad did 22 years active in the USMC, with a decade after in the reserve.

Godspeed to the casulties we will hear about today, in a different part of the world.
Best,
Ted

Waaay before my time. My maternal grandpa flew a fighter, and my paternal one baked bread at a bakery in Lubeck, Germany.

I was only a "glint in the eye" of a young 2nd Lieutenant waiting in southern England to jump in on D+3. On the approach to Brest and the huge submarine base there, a German sniper took out each of his company's officers until he was senior. 30 minutes later they got him ... one round through both thighs. His sergeant threw him over a hedgerow and into a field, where he lay for 24 hours waiting to be evacuated. Once hospitalized, he somehow talked the docs out of amputating both legs, and after two years in Army hospitals, eventually recovered almost fully -- certainly enough to walk many a mile in search of pheasants.

One of many thousands from many nations, but my personal hero. Thank you, David, for thinking of them all on this special day. Here's to my dad and yours. TT

Way before I was born as well but like many here my father was there,also like many here very quiet about it when asked.
He has passed and while going through his photos and items that where left to me I found a book about this day "Many a Watchful Night" John Mason Brown.He was on the same ship as my father, The Augusta,as was General Bradley,General Royce,Admiral Kirk and Admmiral Struble that day off the coast on Normandy.I also found lots of pictures of him with many of the Generals in the engine room where he was a engineer, a "90 day wonder" he once told me.
Still amazing that so many,all so brave that saved the world could have been so quiet and came home to build a family and life and not say much at all about that time.No fan fare just like it was no big deal.
Very sad to see them pass on with every day soon they will be gone.
Thanks for the post Dave T I think I will sit down tonight and read that book again while looking through those pictures.
DaveK

I was going to school in a fishing village but nothing at the time was more poignant to all those in our village than the death of FDR three weeks before the Nazi surrender. It was as a family member had died.

I do not err in retrospect when I say his death touched this 12-year-old more deeply than any other aspect of the war, even more than the July day in 1942 when the telegram came that my bomber-pilot father had been shot down.

Fathers wouldn't die, no, and he didn't, the only survivor of his crew. Americans should know of the reverence their president commanded and deserved for his leadership as the world watched his body fail his great heart.