D'day Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to D'day. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Give it up for Harry Pottery
Niall Horan
Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.
David Kenyon Webster (Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich)
Was there any meaning to life or to war, that two men should sit together and jump within seconds of each other and yet never meet on the ground below?
David Kenyon Webster (Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich)
Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.
Stephen E. Ambrose (Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest)
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Alas, all that sound and fury disguised the fact that on Omaha Beach at least, the bombs fell too long, the rockets fell too short, and the naval gunfire was too brief.
Craig L. Symonds (Neptune: Allied Invasion of Europe and the The D-Day Landings)
Where are w-we, Gabriel? '"We're in shit, Ash," I hissed. 'Ohhh. Just another day, another d-day, then?
Jay Kristoff (Empire of the Vampire (Empire of the Vampire, #1))
How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other and when their surgical appliances lock they stay together for the rest of the day (what a day) I go by to check a slide and I say that painting’s not so blue where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met everyone’s taking their coat off so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes in little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y why not the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won and in a sense we’re all winning we’re alive the apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun they moved a day too soon even the stabbings are helping the population explosion though in the wrong country and all those liars have left the UN the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest not that we need liquor (we just like it) and the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much
Frank O'Hara
Like all truly selfish people, Kliemann believed the minutiae of his life must be fascinating to all.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
It’s do or die. D-day.
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before #2))
For the D-Day spies were, without question, one of the oddest military units ever assembled. They included a bisexual Peruvian playgirl, a tiny Polish fighter pilot, a mercurial Frenchwoman, a Serbian seducer, and a deeply eccentric Spaniard with a diploma in chicken farming.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
Eddie saw great things and near misses. Albert Einstein as a child, not quite struck by a run-away milk-wagon as he crossed a street. A teenage boy named Albert Schweitzer getting out of a bathtub and not quite stepping on the cake of soap lying beside the pulled plug. A Nazi Oberleutnant burning a piece of paper with the date and place of the D-Day Invasion written on it. He saw a man who intended to poison the entire water supply of Denver die of a heart attack in a roadside rest-stop on I-80 in Iowa with a bag of McDonald’s French fries on his lap. He saw a terrorist wired up with explosives suddenly turn away from a crowded restaurant in a city that might have been Jerusalem. The terrorist had been transfixed by nothing more than the sky, and the thought that it arced above the just and unjust alike. He saw four men rescue a little boy from a monster whose entire head seemed to consist of a single eye. But more important than any of these was the vast, accretive weight of small things, from planes which hadn’t crashed to men and women who had come to the correct place at the perfect time and thus founded generations. He saw kisses exchanged in doorways and wallets returned and men who had come to a splitting of the way and chosen the right fork. He saw a thousand random meetings that weren’t random, ten thousand right decisions, a hundred thousand right answers, a million acts of unacknowledged kindness. He saw the old people of River Crossing and Roland kneeling in the dust for Aunt Talitha’s blessing; again heard her giving it freely and gladly. Heard her telling him to lay the cross she had given him at the foot of the Dark Tower and speak the name of Talitha Unwin at the far end of the earth. He saw the Tower itself in the burning folds of the rose and for a moment understood its purpose: how it distributed its lines of force to all the worlds that were and held them steady in time’s great helix. For every brick that landed on the ground instead of some little kid’s head, for every tornado that missed the trailer park, for every missile that didn’t fly, for every hand stayed from violence, there was the Tower. And the quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.
Stephen King (Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5))
He understood, that if you teach, you learn twice.
John Antal (7 Leadership Lessons of D-Day: Lessons from the Longest Day—June 6, 1944)
wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
MOM—Mistress Of Miracles
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
D-Day is short for Dog Day, which happened during World War II, when we defeated the Germans by not letting them come over to pet our dogs anymore.
Joseph Fink (It Devours! (Welcome to Night Vale, #2))
Of all the strands in Operation Fortitude, none was quite so bizarre, so wholly unlikely, as the great pigeon double cross, the first and only avian deception scheme ever attempted.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
– Ne feledjék el – mondta [Patton] nekik [a katonáinak] egy alkalommal –, soha egyetlen fattyú sem nyert háborút azzal, hogy meghalt a hazájáért. Csak úgy győznek, ha elérik, hogy a másik rohadék haljon meg az ő hazájáért!
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
DAVID SHIELDS: Salinger told Whit Burnett... that on D-Day he was carrying six chapters of 'The Catcher in the Rye', that he needed those pages with him not only as an amulet to help him survive but as a reason to survive.
Shane Salerno (Salinger)
Wearily, he swung the glasses over to the left again. Slowly, he tracked across the horizon. He reached the dead center of the bay. The glasses stopped moving. Pluskat tensed, stared hard. Through the scattering, thinning mist the horizon was magically filling with ships—ships of every size and description, ships that casually maneuvered back and forth as though they had been there for hours. There appeared to be thousands of them. It was a ghostly armada that somehow had appeared from nowhere. Pluskat stared in frozen disbelief, speechless, moved as he had never been before in his life. At that moment the world of the good soldier Pluskat began falling apart. He says in those first few moments he knew, calmly and surely, that “this was the end for Germany.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels--all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25]
Tom Brokaw (The Greatest Generation)
As the Battle of Normandy raged, the Germans held fast to the illusion, so carefully planted and now so meticulously sustained, that a great American army under Patton was preparing to pounce and the German forces in the Pas de Calais must remain in place to repel it.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
No thoughts had I of anything, Or at least that's what I thought; I even thought I couldn't think, But now I think I never thought.
Christopher Miller (At This Point in Time)
They were firing down at us and throwing down potato masher grenades, and they also cut some ropes. I don’t really know how we got up the cliff.
Patrick K. O'Donnell (Dog Company: The Boys of Pointe du Hoc -- the Rangers Who Accomplished D-Day's Toughest Mission and Led the Way across Europe)
By morning an immense fleet of five thousand ships would stand off the invasion beaches of Normandy.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive … for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
William Gerbers” was a German-Swiss businessman living in Liverpool who had been conjured into being by Garbo before he even arrived in Britain.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
When informed that a clerk at the Portuguese embassy was spying for both the Germans and the Italians, he wrote: “Why don’t you shoot him?
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Because around a crisis point, even the tiniest action can assume importance all out of proportion to its size. Consequences multiply and cascade, and anything—a missed telephone call, a match struck during a blackout, a dropped piece of paper, a single moment—can have empire-tottering effects. The Archduke Ferdinand’s chauffeur makes a wrong turn onto Franz-Josef Street and starts a world war. Abraham Lincoln’s bodyguard steps outside for a smoke and destroys a peace. Hitler leaves orders not to be disturbed because he has a migraine and finds out about the D-Day invasion eighteen hours too late. A lieutenant fails to mark a telegram “urgent” and Admiral Kimmel isn’t warned of the impending Japanese attack. “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog (Oxford Time Travel, #2))
Captain Lewis Nixon and I were together every step of the way from D-Day to Berchtesgaden, May 8, 1945 - VE-Day. I still regard Lewis Nixon as the best combat officer who I had the opportunity to work with under fire. He never showed fear, and during the toughest times he could always think clearly and quickly. Very few men can remain poised under an artillery concentration. Nixon was one of those officers. He always trusted me, from the time we met at Officer Candidate School. While we were in training before we shipped overseas, Nixon hid his entire inventory of Vat 69 in my footlocker, under the tray holding my socks, underwear, and sweaters. What greater trust, what greater honor could I ask for than to be trusted with his precious inventory of Vat 69?
Dick Winters (Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters)
As the real army plowed through the waves toward Normandy, two more fake convoys were scientifically simulated heading for the Seine and Boulogne by dropping from planes a blizzard of tinfoil, code-named “Window,” which would show up on German radar as two huge flotillas approaching the French coast.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
General Montgomery, despite his considerable qualities as a highly professional soldier and first-class trainer of troops, suffered from a breathtaking conceit which almost certainly stemmed from some sort of inferiority complex.
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
There are guys bleeding to death who don't know it, they're smiling, they're talking, they don't feel pain because they're in shock, they ask you for some water and then they're dead. On D-day I ran past a guy lying on his spilled guts with his eyes closed and his thumb in his mouth. Eisenhower's speech had been read to us over the loudspeaker by our commander when we crossed the channel that morning. What valor and inspiration were in his words- all about how we were embarked on a great crusade, that the hopes and prayers of a liberty loving people were going with us....I got gooseflesh when he asked for the blessing of almighty god on this great and noble undertaking. But how to reconcile that with spilled guts on a beach and flies in the eyes of some dead nineteen year old kid who traded his life for some words on paper?
Elizabeth Berg (Dream When You're Feeling Blue)
Out of a hundred birds of the same stock perhaps one will be that bird all breeders hope for—a bird of highly individual character, courageous and resourceful. Much depends on the individual bird and especially its character and intelligence.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
And he began recruiting sluggish British carrier pigeons to be sent on this secret mission to infiltrate the German pigeon service and destroy it from within. Soon there was a force of 350 double-agent pigeons at his disposal, disguised as German pigeons, ready to do their bit.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
The Double Cross system was now not only self-financing but profitable, to Masterman’s delight: “The actual cash supplied by the Germans to maintain their and our system between 1940 and 1945 was something in the region of £85,000”—the equivalent of more than £4.5 million today.
Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Well, I thought, climbing slowly out of the slit trench, the shells will catch us above ground now. But if you have to go, you have to go. F Company’s in trouble, and we have to help them. We’re in reserve, so we have to go. And if we’re shelled, we’re shelled. There is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
David Kenyon Webster (Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich)
In launching Operation RYAN, Andropov broke the first rule of intelligence: never ask for confirmation of something you already believe. Hitler had been certain that the D-day invasion force would land at Calais, so that is what his spies (with help from Allied double agents) told him, ensuring the success of the Normandy landings. Tony Blair and George W. Bush were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that is what their intelligence services duly concluded. Yuri Andropov, pedantic and autocratic, was utterly convinced that his KGB minions would find evidence of a looming nuclear assault. So that is what they did.
Ben Macintyre (The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War)
As supreme commander, Eisenhower had to balance political and personal rivalries, while maintaining his authority within the alliance. He was well liked by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and by General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander-in-chief of 21st Army Group, but neither rated him highly as a soldier.
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
Across the nation, in sleeping towns and villages, lights flashed on. Quiet streets suddenly filled with sound as radios were turned up. People woke their neighbors to tell them the news, and so many phoned friends and relatives that telephone switchboards were jammed. In Coffeyville, Kansas, men and women in their night attire knelt on porches and prayed.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
failure at one point could throw the momentum out of balance and result in chaos. All in that room were aware
Stephen E. Ambrose (D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II)
Of course, I found later in June, July and August 1944 that even such a beautiful place as Normandy could be turned into an absolute nightmare by battles between men.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
they’d been handed an order of the day from General Eisenhower. “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade,
Kate Messner (D-Day: Battle on the Beach (Ranger in Time Book 7))
This was the pattern. Brigadier General Cota, the 29th Division’s assistant commander, had been setting an example almost from the moment he arrived on the beach.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
The harder we work to remember, the better we get at it. The more we remember, the better we become at mastering the present.
Ray Lambert (Every Man a Hero: A Memoir of D-Day, the First Wave at Omaha Beach, and a World at War)
Every June we think of D-Day, every September we think of Holland, every December we think of Bastogne.
Edward Heffron (Brothers In Battle, Best of Friends)
My loader was moved by this, and he shook his head, saying that the Americans should not sacrifice their men in this way.   You
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
She was very much ahead of her fellow students and, had she been with others as mentally mature as herself, she would have shown herself even more capable.
Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II)
The ship’s head was directly behind these bunks, and one veteran recalled that the LSTs “stank of diesel oil, backed-up toilets, and vomit.
Craig L. Symonds (Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings)
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing
John Antal (7 Leadership Lessons of D-Day: Lessons from the Longest Day—June 6, 1944)
It's D-day for King Kong Lookalikes
Bruce Andrews (I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up: (or, Social Romanticism) (New American Poetry))
Sixty-five years ago [written 2009], in a brief lull between storms in a remarkably stormy June, even by the standards of Channel weather, the heirs of Harold and the kinsmen of the Conqueror came to Normandy. They were supported by the remnants of their first, North American, empire, the two great nations that they had planted in the New World in the time of Good Queen Bess and James 6th and 1st: the Americans, who had rebelled in the name of the rights of Englishmen, and the Canadians, who had stood loyal in the name of the Crown. … The honours of these regiments are ancient and moving: Minden and Malplaquet, Mysore, Badajoz, Waterloo, Inkerman, Gallipoli, the Somme, Imjin. None shines more brightly than Normandy 1944. The paths of glory may lead but to the grave; yet all, even golden boys and girls, must come to dust. It is a better path to the grave than any of the others, not because glory is something to seek, but because, not once or twice in our long island story, the way of duty has been the path to glory; and duty is to be done. …Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.
G.M.W. Wemyss
Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my friends. Then, pretending that we were doughboys in France, we assaulted one another with clods of clay and long, dry reeds. We went to the village hall and studied the rust rifles and machine guns that the Legion post had brought home from the First World War and imagined ourselves using them to fight Germans. But we never seriously thought that we would ever have to do it. The stories we heard later; the Depression veterans with their apple stands on sleety New York street corners; the horrible photographs of dead bodies and mutilated survivors; “Johnny Got His Gun” and the shrill college cries of the Veterans of Future Wars drove the small-boy craving for war so far from our minds that when it finally happened, it seemed absolutely unbelievable. If someone had told a small boy hurling mud balls that he would be throwing hand grenades twelve years later, he would probably have been laughed at. I have always been glad that I could not look into the future.
David Kenyon Webster (Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich)
As for the American state, we perceived that as controlled by the forces of international finance and banking, who wished to abolish national governments and have the world run by banks and corporations.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Regarding the Americans, I think that most of us soldiers made a distinction in our minds between the American government, which we believed was a pawn of international finance, and the Americans as individuals.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
Churchill once remarked that the Americans always came to the right decision, having tried everything else first. But even if the joke contained an element of truth, it underplayed the fact that they learned much more quickly than their self-appointed tutors in the British Army. They were not afraid to listen to bright civilians from the business world now in uniform and above all they were not afraid to experiment. The
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
Maybe she’ll have a file labeled, My Evil Plan,” I suggested. “That would be super helpful.” It had taken us three days to come up with a strategy to get into the office. Cal was distracting Lara with questions about his own powers and how they might be useful to “the cause,” while Jenna and Archer kept an eye on Mrs. Casnoff. Since she’d taken to just wandering in circles around the pond, that wasn’t particularly challenging. Which left the most important part to me and Elodie using Elodie’s magic to get into the office and search it for anything that might help us stop the Casnoffs. As far as plans went, it wasn’t exactly D-day, but it was the best next step. Now Elodie looked at my reflection and said, “It’s weird. Looking in a mirror and seeing you.” Yes, I think we’ve established this is kind of awful for everyone involved. Can we go now? We don’t have much time.”
Rachel Hawkins (Spell Bound (Hex Hall, #3))
Having said that, many of the local French people emerged from their houses and looked through the railings of the square at us, and made insulting remarks; but of course, these were the same people we had been bartering and trading
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
including the magazines ‘Signal’ and ‘Die Wehrmacht,’ which were widely read by German troops. Dieter Eckhertz left journalism after the war, but he continued to work on one final project, which was a series of interviews with German
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
Pvt. Robert Fruling said he spent two and a half days at Pointe-du-Hoc, all of it crawling on his stomach. He returned on the twenty-fifth anniversary of D-Day “to see what the place looked like standing up” (Louis Lisko interview, EC).
Stephen E. Ambrose (D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II)
German perspective of D Day was simple: shortly before the Normandy landings, he had visited several locations on the Atlantic Wall and interviewed a number of the troops there with a view to writing a feature for ‘Die Wehrmacht’ magazine. He
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
When you talk about combat leadership under fire on the beach at Normandy,” Ellery concluded, “I don’t see how the credit can go to anyone other than the company-grade officers and senior NCOs who led the way. It is good to be reminded that there are such men, that there always have been and always will be. We sometimes forget, I think, that you can manufacture weapons, and you can purchase ammunition, but you can’t buy valor and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.”18 •   •
Stephen E. Ambrose (D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II)
At OKW the message was delivered to Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations. The message remained on Jodl’s desk. He did not order an alert. He assumed Rundstedt had done so; but Rundstedt thought Rommel’s headquarters had issued the order.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
Through the late afternoon and into the evening, there were more casualties those five hours at Franklin than in the nineteen hours of D-Day—and more than twice as many casualties as at Pearl Harbor. There were moments so bloody and overwhelming that even the enemy wept. When a fourteen-year-old Missouri drummer boy—a mascot of Cockrell’s Brigade—charged up to a loaded and primed Ohio cannon and shoved a fence rail into its mouth, witnesses said the child turned into what was described as the “mist of a ripe tomato.
Robert Hicks (The Widow of the South)
Thank you to those men and women who put self aside because they held the thought of us on the inside. So, whether that be the bloodied beaches on D-Day or any number of other battles remembered or forgotten, we now hold you on the inside and we say “thank you.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
One thing in particular struck many of us as amazing: all along the beach, there were no horses!   This was a surprise for you?   Yes, we found it astonishing. This huge army had brought with it not one single horse or pack-mule! All their transport was mechanised.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
The shells had landed on the cobblestone road. "Sonsofbitches," Wiseman muttered. We looked up and grinned at each other. "Here they come again!" Sitting in an inch of water. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and clutched my elbows with my arms around my knees. Three more shells came in, low and angry, and burst in the orchard. "They're walking 'em towards us," I whispered. I felt as if a giant with exploding iron fingers were looking for me, tearing up the ground as he came. I wanted to strike at him, to kill him, to stop him before he ripped into me, but I could do nothing. Sit and take it, sit and take it. The giant raked the orchard and tore up the roads and stumbled toward us in a terrible blind wrath as we sat in our hole with our heads between our legs and curses on our lips.
David Kenyon Webster (Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper's Memoir of D-Day and the Fall of the Third Reich)
Churchill had foreseen the consequences of the dramatic Red Army advances. He dreaded a Soviet occupation of central Europe. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had convinced himself that by charming Stalin instead of confronting him, a lasting post-war peace was a real possibility.
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
When my father died and was buried in a chapel overlooking Portsmouth—the same chapel in which General Eisenhower had prayed for success the night before D-Day in 1944—I gave the address from the pulpit and selected as my text a verse from the epistle of Saul of Tarsus, later to be claimed as “Saint Paul,” to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 8): Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. I chose this because of its haunting and elusive character, which will be with me at the last hour, and for its essentially secular injunction, and because it shone out from the wasteland of rant and complaint and nonsense and bullying which surrounds it.
Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
Sergeant Donald Gardner of the 47th and his men were dumped into the water about fifty yards from shore. They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine-gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard someone say, “Perhaps we’re intruding, this seems to be a private beach.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
I was astonished at this sight. I wondered if I was hallucinating, or if this was a delirium of some kind. I had never seen such an assembly of ships, and I’m sure nobody will ever see such a thing again, perhaps not in human history. The sea was absolutely solid with metal, that is no exaggeration.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes 2)
Many grew introspective and talked of things men usually keep to themselves. Hundreds later recalled that they found themselves admitting their fears and talking of other personal matters with unusual candor. They drew closer to one another on this strange night and confided in men they had never even met before.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
(Actually, nobody at this time could even imagine the full extent of the Nazi barbarism that had washed across Europe—the millions who had disappeared into the gas chambers and furnaces of Heinrich Himmler’s aseptic crematoria, the millions who had been herded out of their countries to work as slave laborers, a tremendous percentage of whom would never return, the millions more who had been tortured to death, executed as hostages or exterminated by the simple expedient of starvation.) The great crusade’s unalterable purpose was not only to win the war, but to destroy Nazism and bring to an end an era of savagery which had never been surpassed in the world’s history.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
In the course of the war, some 70,000 French people were killed by Allied bombs: “collateral damage” in France thus included almost one-third more civilians accidentally killed than the British suffered from the Luftwaffe’s deliberate assault on their island. Bombing played a critical role in slowing the German buildup after D-Day, but the price was high.
Max Hastings (Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945)
We heard engines, and suddenly there were Jeeps in the courtyard, and these huge American fellows, like giants, with their Thompson guns over their shoulders, were already making friends with our nurses. I don’t know whether the Americans put their tallest men in the front line, or if this was by coincidence, but these fellows were close to two metres tall, all of them.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes 2)
Along Dog Green and Dog White, a crusty fifty-one-year-old general named Norman Cota strode up and down in the hail of fire, waving a .45 and yelling at men to get off the beach. Along the shingle, behind the sea wall and in the coarse beach grass at the base of the bluffs, men crouched shoulder to shoulder, peering at the general, unwilling to believe that a man could stand upright and live.
Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day)
Lise was on only the first day of what would be a three-day bicycle ride over small back roads “through thick enemy formations” to the combat zone. She slept in ditches when she tired, then picked up her vélo and began traveling again to her headquarters. She was nowhere near a radio when the communiqué from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces, aired for the people of Normandy: The lives of many of you depend on the speed with which you obey. Leave your towns at once—stay off the roads—go on foot and take nothing with you that is difficult to carry. Do not gather in groups which may be mistaken for enemy troops. The largest armada the world had ever known was minutes away from landing on the northern beaches of France. The hour of your liberation is approaching.
Sarah Rose (D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II)
One last thread which strikes me is the role that luck plays in a soldier’s survival or death. Those of us who have never been in action surely cannot imagine the stress which comes from knowing that the path of a bullet or shell, falling almost at random, might immediately kill you, or might pass you by. Such stress must surely be common to all combatants, whatever their motivation or uniform.   ***
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
Mamaw felt disloyalty acutely. She loathed anything that smacked of a lack of complete devotion to family. In her own home, she'd day things like "I'm sorry I'm so damned mean" and "You know I love you, but I'm just a crazy bitch. But if she knew of anyone criticizing so much as her socks to an outsider, she'd fly off the handle. "I don't know those people. You never talk about family to some stranger. Never.
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
tenth anniversary of D Day in 1954, when many Germans preferred to draw a veil over the events of the war, my grandfather made enormous efforts to track down some of the troops whose units he had visited. He encouraged these men to discuss with him their personal memories of the Atlantic Wall, their frame of mind at the time of the invasion, and their actions during the historic day of June 6th. His intention
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
For all his faults, Captain Sobel had seen that the men were highly proficient in conducting nocturnal patrols and movement. The problems associated with forced marches across country, through woods, night compass problems, errors in celestial navigation, had all been overcome in the months preceding D-Day. Prior to the invasion, Easy Company had experienced every conceivable problem of troop movement under conditions of limited visibility.
Dick Winters (Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters)
In an instant, the PAK gunner fired off the projectile, and we saw this large, bulbous warhead fly off to the tank. It hit the tank straight on the front plate, low down, and it exploded. It was just as we had been trained to do. The Sherman gave a great jolt and lurched from side to side. I was astonished that it was so simple to knock out the famous Sherman tank. I began to have wild thoughts that we could knock out many more, perhaps dozens of them . .
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes 2)
We have to remember that the use of stimulating drugs was more common in the 1930’s and 40’s, and much less frowned upon, than it is today in the 1950’s. Let’s remember that Bayer, which I think is probably still the largest German pharmaceutical company, they invented their two wonder drugs in the 1930s, Aspirin and Heroin. They were intended to go hand in hand, if you remember back then (Aspirin = Hope, Heroin = Heroism.) You could get Heroin very easily from a pharmacist, just like Aspirin. Today
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes 2)
After the initial burst of energy and determination that I felt when the attack started, I began to feel pity for these troops, because they kept arriving in landing craft. The craft would deposit them in the shallows, and they would walk towards us through the water in the same way as the first set of troops. We fired at them in the same way, causing the same deaths and injuries. My loader was moved by this, and he shook his head, saying that the Americans should not sacrifice their men in this way.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
She had always thought history was made up of grand gestures, as recent, momentous events seem to demonstrate. The British Prime Minister kowtowing to the Nazi Fuehrer at Munich, the quarter-million troops landing on D-Day, the two atomic bombs that ended World War II. But now she knew better. History could be judged grand even if the event was, on the surface, small. For here, right in front of her, was history in the flesh, history that would be immortalized in print and film. The city council and mayor had surrendered, and evidently so had the biggest department store in town.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
Fortunately, the British security service had captured all German agents in Britain. Most of them had been ‘turned’ to send back misleading information to their controllers. This ‘Double Cross’ system, supervised by the XX Committee, was designed to produce a great deal of confusing ‘noise’ as a key part of Plan Fortitude. Fortitude was the most ambitious deception in the history of warfare, a project even greater than the maskirovka then being prepared by the Red Army to conceal the true target of Operation Bagration, Stalin’s summer offensive to encircle and smash the Wehrmacht’s Army Group Centre in Belorussia. Plan
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
We saw the British as an outdated Imperial force, organised by freemasons, who sought to turn the clock back one hundred years to the days when their word was the law around the world. Why should they be entitled to install their freemason puppet, De Gaulle, in France, to rule as a proxy? The Vichy government had three consistent points in its propaganda regarding the threats to the French people: these were De Gaulle, freemasonry and communism. As for the American state, we perceived that as controlled by the forces of international finance and banking, who wished to abolish national governments and have the world run by banks and corporations.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
No matter how bad things got, no matter how anxious the staff became, the commander had to “preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable.” Eisenhower realized that “optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction.” He learned that a commander’s optimism “has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory—that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow.
Stephen E. Ambrose (D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Battle for the Normandy Beaches)
This section of Scripture reminds me of the rows of white crosses along the wind-swept hills of Normandy. We’re free today because, in June 1944, during the three-month battle of Normandy, nearly fifty-three thousand “nobodies” paid the ultimate price to defeat Nazi tyranny. No fewer than 9, 387 grave markers overlook Omaha Beach, many of them bearing the names of men who died during the first hours of the invasion called D-day. Beneath every white marker lies a person of significance because each one had an impact on the rest of history; each one made a difference. It’s a very moving place to be. Visitors to that patch of land near Colleville-sur Mer, France, frequently weep quietly because there the real heroes of the war are silently honored.
Charles R. Swindoll (Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives (Great Lives Series Book 9))
The poet Keith Douglas, a twenty-four-year-old captain in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, wrote to Edmund Blunden, that poet of the previous war, ‘I’ve been fattened up for the slaughter and am simply waiting for it to start.’ Douglas was one of a number of men who harboured a strong sense of imminent death and spoke to their closest friends about it. It is striking how many turned out to have been right, and yet perhaps such a belief somehow turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Douglas went to church parade on the last Sunday. He walked afterwards with the regimental padre, who recorded that Douglas was reconciled to his approaching death and not morbid about it. In the view of a fellow officer, he was fatalistic because he felt that he had used up his ration of luck in the desert war. Almost
Antony Beevor (D-Day: The Battle for Normandy)
I share it not for myself, but to tell you what we all went through - and to show that whatever difficulties you, too, encounter, they can be overcome. While we were working on this book, I found an old newspaper with a story about my medic unit from before the war. The page was brittle, the ink faded, but if you were patient and careful, the words came clear enough. It seems to me that is a metaphor not only for memory, but my aim: to pass down what I remember before it fades, so you, too, can know and remember. Age tugs at me, dimming what I can see when I look back. but I found that working on this book sharpened what I knew, making my memory clearer. That, too, is a metaphor. The harder we work to remember, the better we get at it. The more we remember, the better we become at mastering the present.
Ray Lambert (Every Man a Hero: A Memoir of D-Day, the First Wave at Omaha Beach, and a World at War)
How was it to be a prisoner of the Americans?   Well, even those of us who believed that the Allies could be thrown out of France fell silent when we saw the way the Americans were organised, and the resources they had to work with. Their planes were constantly in the sky. Everything was mechanised, all supplies were carried by truck or train, with seemingly no concern over the amount of fuel used. If a jeep or a truck broke down, it was neglected rather than repaired, and a fresh one was used, still shiny from the factory. Instead of using local food, they ate from tins and cans of food that were made in America. We found this fascinating, and we formed an impression of an unstoppable power that would simply roll over any obstacle. And this is what eventually happened, as we now know, both in France and in Germany.
Holger Eckhertz (D DAY Through German Eyes - The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944)
I begin this chapter with President Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Speech on January 11, 1989. President Reagan encouraged the rising generation to “let ’em know and nail ’em on it”—that is, to push back against teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, and others in the governing generation who manipulate and deceive them: An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs [protection]. So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.1
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
The Oreo cookie invented, the Titanic sinks, Spanish flu, Prohibition, women granted the right to vote, Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic, penicillin invented, stock market crashes, the Depression, Amelia Earhart, the atom is split, Prohibition ends, Golden Gate Bridge is built, Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Korean War, Disneyland, Rosa Parks, Laika the dog is shot into space, hula hoops, birth control pill invented, Bay of Pigs, Marilyn Monroe dies, JFK killed, MLK has a dream, Vietnam War, Star Trek, MLK killed, RFK killed, Woodstock, the Beatles (George, Ringo, John, and Paul) break up, Watergate, the Vietnam War ends, Nixon resigns, Earth Day, Fiddler on the Roof, Olga Korbut, Patty Hearst, Transcendental Meditation, the ERA, The Six Million Dollar Man. "Bloody hell," I said when she was done. "I know. It must be a lot to take in." "It's unfathomable. A Brit named his son Ringo Starr?" She looked pleasantly surprised: she'd thought I had no sense of humor. "Well, I think his real name was Richard Starkey.
Melanie Gideon (Valley of the Moon)
we have much to learn from the struggles in Alabama and Mississippi in the early 1960s. In the spring of 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King launched a “fill the jails” campaign to desegregate downtown department stores and schools in Birmingham. But few local blacks were coming forward. Black adults were afraid of losing their jobs, local black preachers were reluctant to accept the leadership of an “Outsider,” and city police commissioner Bull Connor had everyone intimidated. Facing a major defeat, King was persuaded by his aide, James Bevel, to allow any child old enough to belong to a church to march. So on D-day, May 2, before the eyes of the whole nation, thousands of schoolchildren, many of them first graders, joined the movement and were beaten, fire-hosed, attacked by police dogs, and herded off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. The result was what has been called the “Children’s Miracle.” Inspired and shamed into action, thousands of adults rushed to join the movement. All over the country rallies were called to express outrage against Bull Connor’s brutality. Locally, the power structure was forced to desegregate lunch counters and dressing rooms in downtown stores, hire blacks to work downtown, and begin desegregating the schools. Nationally, the Kennedy administration, which had been trying not to alienate white Dixiecrat voters, was forced to begin drafting civil rights legislation as the only way to forestall more Birminghams. The next year as part of Mississippi Freedom Summer, activists created Freedom Schools because the existing school system (like ours today) had been organized to produce subjects, not citizens. People in the community, both children and adults, needed to be empowered to exercise their civil and voting rights. A mental revolution was needed. To bring it about, reading, writing, and speaking skills were taught through discussions of black history, the power structure, and building a movement. Everyone took this revolutionary civics course, then chose from more academic subjects such as algebra and chemistry. All over Mississippi, in church basements and parish halls, on shady lawns and in abandoned buildings, volunteer teachers empowered thousands of children and adults through this community curriculum. The Freedom Schools of 1964 demonstrated that when Education involves young people in making community changes that matter to them, when it gives meaning to their lives in the present instead of preparing them only to make a living in the future, young people begin to believe in themselves and to dream of the future.
Grace Lee Boggs (The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century)
I am suprised to a mad extent that people who claim to be intelligent and truth seeking go to church, hear their religious leaders say something, and without vetting it to a reasonable extent swallow it hook and all. Now the church has moved from speaking truth to power but has now aced her game by canvassing for politicians who have no business with God or his people. "by the use of simple propaganda even the most spiritual among us can be sold for the price of an orange," and the church is already falling into this snare. Without sentiments my prayers has been that God should raise us leaders who will futher his enterprise, leaders who will put God and the masses first. So it does not matter if it is Buhari or Jonathan, after all God used Cyrus who was a full blooded gentile(Isaiah 45 verses 1-8) to futher His cause. I strongly urge Nigerians to continue in their prayers for this Jerusalem. Left to some of our religious leaders they will even go the extent of helping God to decide who gets the votes. Let's not allow ourselves to be blinded by the curtains of religion and politics. And instead of using social media to spread bad blood and create feuds, let's encourage and spread the message of peace. Come the D day, we will go out there, vote (at least we have that right), and leave the rest to God. I am a Patriot
Paul Bamikole
How about when you feel as if you are at a treacherous crossing, facing an area of life that hasn’t even been on the map until recently. Suddenly there it is, right in front of you. And so the time and space in between while you first get over the shock of it, and you have to figure out WHAT must be done feels excruciating. It’s a nightmare you can’t awaken from. You might remember this time as a kind of personal D-day, as in damage, devastation, destruction, damnation, desolation – maybe a difficult divorce, or even diagnosis of some formidable disease. These are the days of our lives that whole, beautiful chapters of life go up in flames. And all you can do is watch them burn. Until you feel as though you are left only with the ashes of it all. It is at this moment you long for the rescue and relief that only time can provide. It is in this place, you must remember that in just 365 days – you're at least partially healed self will be vastly changed, likely for the better. Perhaps not too unlike a caterpillar’s unimaginable metamorphosis. Better. Stronger. Wiser. Tougher. Kinder. More fragile, more firm, all at the same time as more free. You will have gotten through the worst of it – somehow. And then it will all be different. Life will be different. You will be different. It might or might not ever make sense, but it will be more bearable than it seems when you are first thrown, with no warning, into the kilns of life with the heat stoked up – or when you get wrapped up, inexplicably, through no choice of your own, in a dark, painfully constricting space. Go ahead, remind yourself as someone did earlier, who was trying miserably to console you. It will eventually make you a better, stronger person. How’d they say it? More beautiful on the inside… It really will, though. That’s the kicker. Even if, in the hours of your agony, you would have preferred to be less beautiful, wise, strong, or experienced than apparently life, fate, your merciless ex, or a ruthless, biological, or natural enemy that has attacked silently, and invisibly - has in mind for you. As will that which your God feels you are capable of enduring, while you, in your pitiful anguish, are yet dubious of your own ability to even endure, not alone overcome. I assure you now, you will have joy and beauty, where there was once only ashes. In time. Perhaps even more than before. It’s so hard to imagine and believe it when it’s still fresh, and so, so painful. When it hurts too much to even stand, or think, or feel anything. When you are in the grip of fear, and you remember the old familiar foe, or finally understand, firsthand, in your bones, what that actually means.
Connie Kerbs (Paths of Fear: An Anthology of Overcoming Through Courage, Inspiration, and the Miracle of Love (Pebbled Lane Books Book 1))