JUNE 6, 2021 – No matter how much I read about it; no matter how many movies I’ve watched, I can’t imagine myself on the beach at Normandy on that day—this day—in 1944.
The Germans knew it was coming but didn’t know when or exactly where. Thanks to their Führer who thought he was a military genius but wasn’t, the Wehrmacht compounded its weaknesses by committing major mistakes. The war in Europe would rage on for another 11 months, but D-Day marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
To “ABC” (American, British, Canadian) troops who stormed the beaches on that fateful day and charged headlong into German machine gun fire along the bluffs, “the end in sight” was a purely theoretical construct.
Many of us know the story of General Eisenhower’s chess game with meteorology, logistical operations, the delivery of airborne troops the night before the invasion, the timing and target of pre-invasion bombardment, and so on. But raise your hand if you’ve heard about the “five-star meal plan.”
The brains behind the invasion believed that before the G.I.s were sent into the flames of hell, they deserved one last hot meal with all the fixins. Some soldiers were provided an “all you-can-eat” luxury breakfast, complete with eggs, bacon, and toast in quantities familiar to any American farm boy of those times. They could wash it down with endless streams of coffee dispensed from wall taps. Other soldiers got pork and mutton, all very greasy, giving it added flavor and calories.
None of this mixed well with ocean motion. On the crossing the heavy food led to heavy vomiting, as the heart-stopping naval bombardment pounded German defenses. I know little about soldiering, but I know I wouldn’t want to be heaving half-digested mutton or bacon over the gunwale as I contemplated my next move: leaping into waist-deep seawater while trying to keep my head low and my rifle high.
Stalin was angry with Churchill and FDR for taking so long to stage the invasion. To this day the Russian spin is that the “ABCD-Day” was delayed so Russia would bleed on the Eastern Front until the Reds turned white. Perhaps there’s some truth to the charge, but there’s greater evidence of Stalin’s evisceration of the Soviet officer corps in the 1930s, his pact with Hitler in August 1939, and Uncle Joe’s abject panic and unexplained disappearance from command in the early days of Barbarossa (German code for the invasion of Russia in June 1941). Twenty million Russians died.
Yet none of the bickering between Stalin and Churchill/FDR mattered one iota to any of the men who headed for Normandy on this day nearly four generations ago. Our soldiers were scared . . . sick. Perhaps the “all-you-could-eat” breakfast was a blessing in disguise: as they disembarked to “do or die,” at least they weren’t to be slowed by full stomachs.
May their bravery and sacrifice be remembered and honored on this anniversary of D-Day.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
