The anniversary of the first week of the D-Day invasion recently passed.
Originally scheduled for June 5, 1944, the invasion was postponed a day because of inclement weather, which meant the giant Allied Armada departed Portsmouth, England, and crossed 161 miles on the English Channel on June 6, to reach Normandy, France.
By starting the invasion in such foul weather, the Nazis were taken by surprise. The weather leading up to the invasion was so bad that Erwin Rommel, the lead German general, had taken a break to return to Germany for his wife’s birthday.
Then there was Hitler’s refusal to accept the Normandy landings as the real thing. He was convinced the invasion would come 175 miles north at Pas-de-Calais and concluded the Allied attack at Normandy was a feint.
With his nocturnal habits, Hitler slept through the invasion – his staff was afraid to disturb him – and as a result, did not release his heavy armored divisions at the most critical time, just one of several factors that enhanced the Allied success in getting ashore.
They were not thrown back into the sea as the Nazis had projected.
Though far from certain at the time, the beginning of the end of World War II had begun.
For years, I have read and researched details of the invasion, along with its innumerable sidebars and vignettes.
There have been countless books to read and enjoy. By no means am I an expert, simply an informed enthusiast, but I have enjoyed meeting and interviewing dozens of men and women who had fascinating stories to tell about their D-Day experiences.
I even met an imposter who was so believable that he duped one and all, including the French government, until somebody figured out his story was a complete sham, leaving him a pariah in Sainte-Mère-Église, where he had previously become somewhat of a cult hero.
Cruising up the Seine River from Paris to Compiegne on a small boat with a friend was another experience that was not only memorable but brought about a serendipitous opportunity. On the trip, this friend shared with me Pegasus Bridge, a book by Stephen E.
Ambrose, to whom Coach Wallace Butts once offered a scholarship to play football at UGA. Ambrose, however, enrolled at Wisconsin instead.
Regardless, it was the story of the D-Day commandos who took the bridge over the Orme River canal in the British sector. Their glider landed very near the bridge, which enabled them to surprise the Germans before they could blow up the bridge.
This group was able to liberate the first French family from Nazi occupation, the Gondrées.
Ambrose’s story is quite illuminating and compelled me to later meet up with him on the campus of the University of New Orleans. I am fortunate to have read all his books on the war.
Ambrose also organized a seminar with many D-Day participants, along with NBC’s Tom Brokaw who had just written The Greatest Generation.
Brokaw and actor Tom Hanks, star of “Saving Private Ryan,” were the main attractions at the seminar, alongside several WWII survivors.
A former German Panzer commander, Hans Von Luck, also was among Ambrose’s guest speakers.
A protégé of Rommel, Von Luck said, “As a professional soldier, I did my job, but as a human being, I hold no hate.”
Each year in June, I recall the many WWII battlefields, monuments, gravesites, cities, and museums I’ve visited, regretting the senseless taking of lives but remembering the moving remarks of those who were directly or indirectly connected to the war.
I recall a UGA matriculate from Cohutta, in North Georgia, who was credited with killing 30 Germans at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day. He hated such publicity but when I asked him if the number was accurate, he answered, “I don’t know. In war, you do what you have to do.
Furthermore, what damn fool would keep count?”
I think of a TV personality in Budapest who took me to see The Shoes on the Danube Bank, a memorial to 3,500 Hungarians, 800 of them Jews, who were shot by fascist Hungarian militia members and left to fall into the river. She also lost family members at Auschwitz and said she did not believe in God.
“How could a god allow six million people to be murdered because of their faith?” she asked.
And at La Cambe cemetery, where most of the German soldiers killed at Normandy are buried, I found a revealing printout at the museum. It told the story of a German soldier going home on leave before the war and his wife becoming pregnant during his visit.
He was killed during the D-Day invasion and years later, the “leave” daughter left a note at his grave: “On my third trip here I still cannot meet you. How many more daughters will never know their fathers because of war?”