By Chris Gibbons
(Excerpt from his book, Soldiers, Space, and Stories of Life. This story was originally published in the June 4, 2004, Philadelphia Daily News)
“They were chosen by fate and circumstance to represent us on the beaches that day.” (Filmmaker and historian Charles Guggenheim)
On June 5, 1944, Dwight Eisenhower casually walked among the young paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division who were preparing themselves for the D-Day invasion. He had just given the order for the invasion to commence early the next morning and the soldiers, with their blackened faces, rifles, and assorted equipment, momentarily stopped their preparations to talk to the General. The men were understandably apprehensive, and Ike tried to calm their fears. He told them not to worry, and that he had confidence in them. “We ain’t worried, General,” a young sergeant said. “It’s the Germans that ought to be worrying now.”
Eisenhower watched all of the big C-47 transport planes carrying the paratroopers take off that night. He often affectionately referred to the soldiers as “my boys”, and it was feared that the 101st would suffer 70 percent casualties. As the last plane left the runway, the General had tears in his eyes.
Although the Allies had meticulously planned every detail of the operation, the success of the invasion was by no means a given. Eisenhower and the other Allied generals knew that all of the planning in the world couldn’t compensate for the courage and improvisation necessary for the invasion to succeed. Ultimately, it would all come down to the performance of the various combat units and their soldiers that would decide the outcome.
The individual acts of bravery on that day were astonishing. Despite witnessing several soldiers die in failed attempts to cut through barbed wire that had his platoon trapped on the beach, Sergeant Philip Streczyk of the 16th RCT ran through a barrage of German machine-gun fire to cut the wire, and then waved the rest of his troops through. Paratrooper Sgt. John Ray landed in the middle of a Ste.-Mere-Eglise town-square full of alarmed German soldiers. Shot in the stomach and dying, Ray still managed to shoot a German soldier who was about to kill two other American paratroopers. Technician John Pinder, shot twice and terribly weakened by loss of blood, continually waded back into the surf to retrieve vital communication equipment. While struggling back out of the water, Pinder was shot for a third time and killed, but not before he had retrieved a workable radio.
Various allied combat units also performed brilliantly that day. The textbook capture of the critical Orne River Bridge by British paratroopers is still marveled at to this day by military strategists. The destruction of the German gun batteries at Brecourt Manor by the outnumbered 101st Division’s Easy Company was immortalized in the HBO miniseries, “Band of Brothers.” And the sacrifice of that day was epitomized by the 29th Division at Omaha Beach. Of the 35 soldiers in the 29th from little Bedford, VA, 19 died in the first 15 minutes and two more died later that day. Fittingly, Bedford is the site of the National D-Day Memorial.
These are just a few of the heroic individuals and military units that distinguished themselves that day. To list them all would surely require every page of this newspaper.
It’s so easy to forget and take for granted what happened on the Normandy coast 80 years ago. Had the invasion failed, the resulting consequences to civilization would have been appalling. Accordingly, most historians regard D-Day as the most important day of the 20th century. However, its true meaning to each subsequent generation of Americans has been gradually diminished by the passage of time. Sadly, this 80th anniversary reveals the steadily thinning ranks of “Eisenhower’s boys.” So, if you happen to know a veteran of the D-Day invasion, take a moment while you have the opportunity to thank them for what they did. They represented us on the beaches that day, and all of us should feel privileged to have known them and lived among them. We are obligated to preserve and honor their legacy for all future generations to come.
AFTERWORD
The inspiration for this D-Day essay was Steven Spielberg’s epic war film, “Saving Private Ryan”, and I wrote it shortly after seeing the movie for a second time on HBO. It is still the most intense experience I’ve ever had while watching a movie in a theater. I was so moved by the film that shortly after seeing it for the first time, I wrote a letter to the Philadelphia Daily News that was published in the August 8, 1998 edition. Parts of the letter follow, and it still sums up my feelings quite well: “I was unprepared for the intense and realistic depiction of the Normandy invasion in “Saving Private Ryan.” Throughout the first 25 minutes of the movie, my fists were clenched so tightly that my palms still have fingernail impressions. How, I thought, could those American soldiers face such a murderous barrage of machine-gun and mortar fire and continue to assault that beach? What was it that kept them moving forward? Fighting in a war thousands of miles from home, a generation of Americans was tasked with helping to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe. A madman, whose crimes against humanity were not yet fully known, had to be stopped. How well these men fought would determine our country’s fate. I wondered if they realized that that they were not only fighting for those alive then, but also for those yet to be born? I shudder to think of what might have been if Hitler had pushed the Allies back into the sea that day and the war had been delayed long enough for the Nazis to develop atomic weapons before the United States did. Most of us would not be here today.”