The Hammock Papers: D-Day

Showing posts with label D-Day. Show all posts

17 June 2026

Weather.

In June 1944, the success of the greatest military invasion the world had ever seen depended on weather readings taken by one woman, Maureen Sweeney ...

06 June 2026

Jim Radford, "The Shores of Normandy"

As the years pass by

I can still recall the men I saw that day

Who died upon that blood-soaked sand

Where now sweet children play

And those of you who were unborn

Who've lived in liberty

Remember those who made it so

On the shores of Normandy ...

Noble.

At about this time, on this day in 1944 ...

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 hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

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! The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, 6 June 1944

05 June 2026

Synchronizing.

Malindine, Commanders of the 22nd Independent Parachute Company Synchronizing Watches, June 5, 1944, 1944

D-Day Overlord presents 308 events that marked Operation Overlord hour by hour, minute by minute (an event every 5 minutes for 24 hours).

06 June 2023

By the end of the day, the Allies had suffered major casualties and had failed to achieve many objectives, including seizing Caen. By the end of June 6, the Allies had suffered an estimated 10,000 casualties, including more than 4,400 dead.

That figure was roughly the same number of dead the U.S. military would suffer decades later during more than eight years of war in Iraq.

But the Germans had failed to push them off the beaches.

Nearly a year of bloody fighting lay ahead. But the Allied victory in Europe was assured.

CONNECT

Important.

05:58: Sunrise. The weather is gray, the swell very important, low clouds let out short rains. Wind force is 3 to 4.

CONNECT

Blessing.

President Franklin Roosevelt's prayer for D-Day ...

Profoundly.

Capa, American forces arrive on Omaha Beach, 1944

On this day in 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.

Stephen Ambrose, from Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany

"D-Day Greatest Combined Operation In World's History" (1944) ...

05 June 2023

Great.

On this evening in 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the following order ...

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

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 hope 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, 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

06 June 2022

Crusade.

On this date in 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

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 hope 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 will 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, 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.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

15 January 2022

Remember.

Ten years after he participated in the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach as a lieutenant colonel in the 2nd Ranger Infantry Battalion, Major General James Earl Rudder returned to Pointe-du-Hoc with his 14 year-old son ...

“It sure is pretty now, with the waves and everything,” the boy said. “You’d never think there was any fighting here,” The late-morning sun had finally started to eat through the haze, and you could begin to feel its warmth. It was quiet on the deserted beach. with just the soft rhythmic slur of the waves and the occasional cry of a wheeling gull.

“I want you to try to picture this. Bud,” Rudder said, turning again to look along the length of the beach and sweeping it with his right arm, “A lot of American boys died here.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“You’ve got to picture this whole beach covered with all kinds of equipment, with boats and trucks and jeeps and tanks, a lot of them wrecked, and with American soldiers, and the Germans firing into them from the high ground and a smoke haze over everything.”

Rudder paused, and then said to the boy,”You remember General Cota, Bud?”

“Yes, sir.”

Major General Norman D. Cota, of Philadelphia, was assistant commander of the 29th Infantry Division and took the 116th Regiment into Omaha on the right flank of the 1st Infantry Division. Later he became commander of the 28th Infantry Division. and Rudder led the 109th Regiment, under Cota, through the Bulge and on to Germany.

“Here’s where he did his good work, getting the boys up off the beach,” Rudder said. “A lot of them just froze from the horror of it, and he got them up.”

“Is he the one gave me that toy watch?” the boy said.

“His wife gave it to you.”

“I remember.”

They walked along the beach together, not saying anything, the boy swinging the mask at his side and watching the white waves slush up on the sand. Then the father turned back toward the smooth white stones at the foot of the sea wall and the boy followed him. When Rudder reached the stones he kneeled down. With one hand he began to pore among them, to the smaller stones underneath. “Here,” he said, handing three or four to the boy. “Put these in your pocket.”

CONNECT

30 May 2021

Tough.

Dick Winters: "Hang Tough" honors one of World War II's most respected combat leaders - Major Richard D. Winters. Emmy winning actor Damian Lewis narrates the documentary that traces Winters' early years, his development as a leader, the famed attack on Brecourt Manor on D-Day, and the dedication on June 6, 2012 of the Richard D. Winters Leadership Monument in Normandy, France ...

06 June 2020

Crusade.

On this date in 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

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 hope 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 will 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, 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.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

30 May 2019

Jim Radford, "The Shores of Normandy"

June 6th will mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion at Normandy.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."