The Hour Was Now: Eisenhower, the Supreme
Gamble, and the Note in His Pocket

It all came down to the men who jumped at night or stormed the beaches at dawn. Courage!

Thanks to a great man who lead the allied armies on that fateful day. Thanks also to Patton, who sold the ruse that the landings would be at Calais. Thanks to Hitler, who refused to listen to his generals and kept additional resources away from Normandy. Thanks for all those young men who stormed the beaches, many of which never came home again. Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. RIP.

D-Day was quite costly in terms of human life but the American soldier always does what is necessary. Ike knew that and we know it today.

D-Day. Think about it. Read about it. Be thankful for it. The heavy price paid to free Europe from tyranny will continue in our memories. Just as important as those who gave their lives are those who survived it and continued on to victory, most of whom are all but gone now. Again, be thankful for them.

A close friend landed at Normandy and fought through the Battle of the Bulge to victory. He passed away in 2017 and very rarely spoke of his experiences. They must have been horrendous. God Bless all of those men and women. We owe a debt we can never repay.

When I lived in Florida, I was privileged to become acquainted with the soldier who was General Eisenhower's driver and took care of his messages. I'm sure he did other things but I don't remember. He was talking about how balloons would be launched at night to get caught in the propellers of the enemy planes. In that group also was a lady who learned to fly and delivered planes to where they were needed. It was a Sunday School class and was chock full of outstanding older people.

#5 My uncle was not so lucky. He jumped with the 101 on the 6th, died of wounds on the 11th. He was 21. I've been to Normandy , the beaches, the hedgerows,The American Cemetery, a very sobering experience.

Eisenhower followed in the footsteps of General George Washington. A Patriot and a humble soul.

And, far behind the scenes, and decades earlier, Winston Churchill had spent thousands of sleepless nights and obsessed days trying to understand how you can supply a landing army over the beach. Making the landing is one thing, but getting enough 'beans, bullets and band-aids' across the beach to troops under fire was the REAL problem. Churchill had been the First Lord of the Admiralty in WW1, and had supported the landings in Galipoli, in Turkey. The landings were successful, but the efforts to supply the troops, and add more troops under fire was a losing battle. Churchill was personally blamed, and exiled from British government for almost 20 years. He spent the time thinking and consulting with experts on how such resupply and landing huge, immense quantities of supplies over a beach, without capturing a major port could be done. The end result were the LSTs, or Landing Ship Tanks. The Brits built a prototype ship, with the ability to shift ballast and drive up on a beach, open the bow ramps and let off trucks and tanks. They brought the prototype to the USA and we said, roughly "Gee, that's a great idea....but why so small?" The Brits didn't have the capacity to develop and produce them, but we did. At the end of the war we had 1,051 built, over a hundred ships went to Britain, and we used, heavily, the rest. They became a mainstay of our 'island hopping campaign' in the Pacific, and of the landings at Anzio, the landings in the south of France, mostly a diversion, and very much in Normandy. We couldn't capture the nearest large port, even with huge effort, was captured 42 days later....it was Caen, and captured with the help of the troops landed in Normandy. Churchill's personal nightmare led to the solution for landing supplies over a contested beachhead, rapidly, under fire. The magnificently ugly, but indespensible LST. Churchill was no technical guy, and certainly no ship designer, but he asked intelligent, pointed questions of very capable men who were technical geniuses and naval designers. And then the USA made them larger, faster and far more capable, and then we made them COMMON. And there are only three left, and one is docked at Evansville, Indiana and open for tours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_LST-325

Interestingly, a poster on another D-Day thread noted that he had served on an LST near to the end of their service in the USN. A link to real history, sir......slsusnr.