"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

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."

This Speech was given by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Western Europe.



6 June 1944 - 66 years ago

As dawn broke over the English Channel that morning, German coast artillery troops along a 30-mile stretch of the Normandy Coast saw an apparition that could have been custom-designed as their worst nightmare. The grey light gradually revealed a horizon filled with ships, rolling towards them in black waves: minesweepers, warships, transports and merchantmen. One German officer purportedly said, in disbelief, "It's impossible ... there can't be that many ships in the world."

Nevertheless, there were. Never before have there been that many ships in one area at any one point. The Spanish Armada rivals closest with only 197 ships. Even the early battles of World War II pale in Comparison to the Armada Force that which of D-day. The Battle of Midway, the largest early Naval Battle of the Pacific, had only seen 26 US ships and 126 Japanese ships.


150,000 Allied Troops landed that hour including 4 British and Canadian Divisions, the 3rd British Infantry Division, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, the 50th British Infantry Division and the 79th Armored Division, along with 3 American Divisions, the 29th, 1st, and 4th Infantry Divisions.









The D-Day Landings were enormously significant. It was the beginning of the end of the war which meant the destruction of Nazi tyranny and oppression. It provided a beachhead along the Atlantic Wall which Allied Forces would begin to liberate the rest of Europe. After D-day, Bocage, or hedgerow fighting, followed in which fierce firefights broke out, towns leveled by heavy bombing, and corn fields scorched. The British and Canadian Forces flanked eastward of and would take Caen while American Forces would flank westward and take the port city of Cherbourg and the towns that lay across the the western coast. The Forces would then unite and form the Falaise Pocket which surrounded a numerous amount of German Forces. American forces advanced rapidly from the counter-offensive Operation Luttich. British, Canadian, and Polish Forces advanced from Operations Totalize and Tractable.


We must never forget what was done today. With almost 9,000 casulties that happened on the landings, it was not an easy mission. Many soldiers drowned, accumulated seasickness, burned alive inside knocked out tanks, pieced up by German Bunkers housing MG-42s, and lost buddies right beside them as the doors opened up on the front Landing Crafts.




To commemorate this day and the other operations of which the Allied Forces conquered Normandy and defeated German Opposition, our Battlefield Division will host a few events between now and into the latter parts of this year (hopefully) which correspond to real Operations that happened 66 years ago.

The 1st One, will start today and will continue into tomorrow because of late posting. I, along with some other BF Division Officials, will get it started today.



Yours truly,
Colonel thebronxbomber

I remember seeing my great grandfather's name on my high school wall of people who left to fight in WW2. These were some of the best men ever and they deserve and have nothing but my full respect! I only wish that I could have been their to lend my hand to the cause of freedom. *Salutes all WW2 veterans*

Truly Epic. I honor those Solders.

Honor to those brave men, who freed Europe from the Nazis.

Great stuff Bronx, glad to see events like these being commemorated in the 13th.

Some D-Day trivia -

-Although many people refer to the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy as "Operation Overlord", the operation was actually called "Operation Neptune". The landings were originally known as Overlord, but in September 1943 the codename was changed to Neptune, and Overlord from then on was used to refer to the general Allied strategy in northwestern Europe.

-The D in "D-Day" actually stands for day, so technically it was called Day-Day.

-While some members of MI5, Britain’s counter-espionage service, were whiling away their spare moments in May 1944 by doing the Telegraph Crossword, they noticed that vital code-names that had been adopted to hide the mightiest sea-borne assault of all time, appeared in the crossword. They noticed that the answer to one clue, ‘One of the USA’, turned out to be Utah, and another answer to a clue was Omaha. These were the names, given by the Allies, to the beaches in Normandy where the American Forces were to land on D-Day.Another answer that appeared in that month’s crossword was Mulberry. This was the name of the floating harbour that was to be towed across the Channel to accommodate the supply ships of the invasion force. Neptune another answer, referred to the code-name for the naval support for the operation.
Perhaps the most suspicious was a clue about a ‘Big-Wig’, to which the answer was Overlord. This was the code-name given for the entire operation!
Alarm bells rang throughout MI5 …was the crossword being used to tip-off the Germans? Two officers were sent immediately to Leatherhead in Surrey, where a man called Leonard Dawe lived. He was the crossword compiler, a 54 year-old teacher. Why, the officers demanded to know, had he chosen theses five words within his crossword solutions? “Why not?” was Dawe’s indignant reply. Was there a law against choosing whatever words he liked? MI5 eventually became convinced of Dawe’s honesty and he managed to convince them that he had no knowledge of the coming D-Day invasion. His crossword solutions it appears were perhaps just another of life’s astonishing coincidences!

In my opinion of course the soldiers were brave and deserve respect, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place. The second world war was avoidable, yet foolish pride afflicted the victors of the first world war, except of course for the American President at the time. Woodrow Wilson, he foresaw the second world war and had a plan of how to stop it from happening, yet no one would listen. An unusual sadness wells up inside me when I think about what was going through the minds of those men running forward blindly some only to meet their death in a war they never wanted to fight. Being of Japanese descent i also feel for those who were killed only fighting for they believed in on the Japanese side as well. At the same time, it feels like the A-Bombs were dropped on Japan instead of Germany because the Americans at the time felt it insignificant. When i was a little younger i would awaken in the middle of the night to my mother humming a song out in the living room, I'd open my door just enough to see outside and i'd see the tears steaming down her face as she stared down at the ORIGINAL Japanese flag and old worn pictures of men i never knew. After i aged, she told me the song she hummed was the same song her father lulled her to sleep with, a song his best friend taught him in the war, I looked closely at the flag and saw several names barely legible on, most were KIA. I feel a deep sadness for mankind, such that cannot ever be reversed.

I heard from an old WW2 vet once that in another place or another time they could have been good friends with their German enemies at the time! It's sad that it never got to happen

my grandfather was an army engineer storming the beaches of Normandy

One heckuva thread post bronx. I honor all the soilders who risked there lives for the lives we live today. Amazing how a war could effect the entire world huh?

Once again, bronx made a WIN

Proud to be in a clan with a leader with as much compassion for the bravery Allied Soldiers showed as him.

Nice job. I love WWII history and especially D-Day. And now I shall add to soem of the trivia supplies for D-Day

-Soldiers were trained with fake maps, they had the same geopraphic layout as Normandy but all the names were changed and they only saw the part that involved them.

- A diversion was set up several miles away in another town that included wooden tanks and cutouts of soldiers and the Germans actually believed it was a camp.

-(this is my favorite) Hitler's wife's birthday was the next day and the general wnated to look rested for the occasion. He took some sleeping pills and ordered nobody to wake him. Once the attack commenced, none of the officers dared disobey his orders so they let him be. Hard to believe but it was on a documentary on the History channel so I'll buy it.

I think my grandfather was D-Day+19? or something like that, bit hard to storm the beaches with an artillery gun

Its good that we don't forget. I hope you all wear poppies on rememberance day.

Well done America and the allied forces!