The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/m...rnie-pyle.html

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Most of the men in the first wave never stood a chance. In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944, thousands of American soldiers crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast. Their senses were soon choked with the smells of wet canvas gear, seawater and acrid clouds of powder from the huge naval guns firing just over their heads. As the landing craft drew close to shore, the deafening roar stopped, quickly replaced by German artillery rounds crashing into the water all around them. The flesh under the men’s sea-soaked uniforms prickled. They waited, like trapped mice, barely daring to breathe.

A blanket of smoke hid the heavily defended bluffs above the strip of sand code-named Omaha Beach. Concentrated in concrete pill boxes, nearly 2,000 German defenders lay in wait. The landing ramps slapped down into the surf, and a catastrophic hail of gunfire erupted from the bluffs. The ensuing slaughter was merciless.

But Allied troops kept landing, wave after wave, and by midday they had crossed the 300 yards of sandy killing ground, scaled the bluffs and overpowered the German defenses. By the end of the day, the beaches had been secured and the heaviest fighting had moved at least a mile inland. In the biggest and most complicated amphibious operation in military history, it wasn’t bombs, artillery or tanks that overwhelmed the Germans; it was men — many of them boys, really — slogging up the beaches and crawling over the corpses of their friends that won the Allies a toehold at the western edge of Europe.

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A good read on Ernie Pyle.

Thanks for finding that, Fred...Ernie Pyle was never the type who wanted to report from a desk in the rear echelons where all that was known about the battle came second-hand from survivors...He had his own to think of at home just like the others with him on the battle lines, and did his writing from a hole dug out of the sand with his helmet...After the Normandy beachhead was secure, he went to the Pacific to cover the other end of the war...This from another publication:

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Pyle was accepted and respected by combat units he joined even though he was unarmed while assigned to small units as they fought in North Africa, Italy and from the Normandy beaches to the liberation of France...He suffered through his own emotional injuries of battle while still struggling with marital difficulties with his alcoholic wife at home...He even gained combat pay for infantrymen by lobbying Congress from his typewriter...

After moving to the Pacific Theater, Pyle ran afoul of the US Navy by butting heads against their regulations and writing unflattering columns in his inimitable style...He was killed by enemy fire during his coverage of the Battle of Okinawa, and was buried there with honors alongside the others who had fallen in battle, being later reinterred at the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii...

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:march:...Ben

Estimates now have American dead during that fateful day ~2500. I recall reading accounts of a practice landing exercise on an English coast before D-Day in which a German submarine caught the operation’s ships at sea torpedoing one or more of them (my recollection is hazy) drowning over 10,000 troops. The abject disaster was kept secret for decades. Perhaps our WWII historian can fill in the blanks.

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Originally Posted by wacojoe

Perhaps our WWII historian can fill in the blanks.

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Well, Joe, until he gets here, I'll try to fill in...The event I recall reading about was this one, with hundreds, not thousands, of Americans drowning, and not as a result of a U-Boat attack, but rather the also deadly E-Boats...I'll wait for verification from your historian when he shows up...:march:...Ben

I knew I could rely upon Prof. Ben to correct my memory. Thanks, the article was excellent on the tragic “Exercise Tiger,” which served to provide vital lessons at an horrific price.