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  1. #13
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Quote Originally Posted by GOTA View Post
    That would be incredible. I pulling for you. What an amazing experience it would be.

    I made it there about 25 years ago. We all pictured The Longest Day which was the closest Hollywood got to that event. Once Saving Private Ryan came out it put a whole new spin on it for those of us who weren't there.
    Did you ever see Band of Brothers?





  2. #14
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    I was on a college trip to Paris in 70 but we didn't go that far south but I stood above the
    Arizona. It was still leaking oil.

    Those WW1 battle fields are very important and little known. There are American cemetries there
    just like at Normandy where Americans took heavy casualties in the Argonne Forests. They
    held their ground and protected the flank which enabled Pershing to break thru.

    A big thanks to all the vets that risked their lives and are still risking their lives.





  3. #15
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Quote Originally Posted by AirFlacco View Post
    I was on a college trip to Paris in 70 but we didn't go that far south but I stood above the
    Arizona. It was still leaking oil.

    Those WW1 battle fields are very important and little known. There are American cemetries there
    just like at Normandy where Americans took heavy casualties in the Argonne Forests. They
    held their ground and protected the flank which enabled Pershing to break thru.

    A big thanks to all the vets that risked their lives and are still risking their lives.
    Trap, I had a girl (lady now I guess) that went to the Arizona like two years ago. She put pictures on facebook of the trip and you could still see the rainbow-ish glimmer on the water from the oil of the Arizona. That is crazy shit.





  4. #16
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Yea, man. It is lying in very shallow waters.

    It's still hard to believe someone was that stupid putting 90 ships in one spot unless
    that's what they wanted to do to get into the war. We still won it after losing about 90
    ships - most obsolete and left over from WW1 which is maybe why they left them out.
    Forty nine were destroyed and about 40 were damaged.
    The biggest ships - the carriers were out making runs to the islands dropping planes off.
    One carrier was 225 miles from Peril when it was being bombed.
    They also made a mistake leaving the subs alone as they went after the big boys. The
    subs bit them in the ass later on.


    Back to the ARgonne Forest, the 77th Division's Commander that held the flank was
    MG Robert Alexander from Baltimore, MD. His first mission was at Wounded Knee that ended
    the great indian wars in 1890-91. That dude saw some action.

    http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/bigshow.htm
    Last edited by AirFlacco; 06-06-2013 at 06:35 PM.





  5. #17
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Quote Originally Posted by NCRAVEN View Post
    Did you ever see Band of Brothers?
    I guess that is a little different in my mind because it focuses on the paratroopers and not the landing. Just as crazy though and important. It's just tougher to visualize when you are looking at the beach.





  6. #18
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    I thought Saving Private Ryan did a good job portraying the Normandy beaches.

    Sent from my DROID X2 using Forum Runner
    Disclaimer: The content posted is of my own opinion.





  7. #19
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Quote Originally Posted by wickedsolo View Post
    I thought Saving Private Ryan did a good job portraying the Normandy beaches.

    Sent from my DROID X2 using Forum Runner
    That was perhaps the most realistic (IMO) battle scene I've ever seen... Bc





  8. #20

    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    Quote Originally Posted by wickedsolo View Post
    I thought Saving Private Ryan did a good job portraying the Normandy beaches.

    Sent from my DROID X2 using Forum Runner
    I have met two persons who were there that day, in fact one was at the dedication of a unit plaque at the Nat'l Memorial in Bedford I mentioned. Both of them agreed that Saving Private Ryan was a very accurate depiction of the landing. The one gentleman had been an engineer squad leader who primed several hundred pounds of TNT to destroy a concrete roadblock at Vierville sur Mer, thus opening the only road available for armor to get off the beach. His sons said he asked them to watch Private Ryan with him, and he was quite overwhelmed.

    Here's some pics of Vierville. No. 8 is where the roadblock was.
    http://www.normandie44lamemoire.com/...rvilleus2.html
    Last edited by Real Fan Dan; 06-06-2013 at 08:10 PM.
    Twenty years of Cheers.
    Thanks Baltimore Ravens Fans - You're the Best!





  9. #21
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    The boys from Maryland took a heavy hit at Normandy as they went in on
    the first wave. My neighbor always had a photo of her brother in her living
    room who died that day. He was 18 and the movie Longest Day depicted young
    teenagers at Normandy. The public was horrific but it was fact.

    My dad was supposed to be there but was in an Army hospital from an earlier
    injury that probably saved his life. There was some hard fighting in North
    Africa and elsewhere before Normandy.

    The Longest Day shows how the 101st Airborne missed their drop site
    behind the lines at Normandy and were
    dropped right into the German's laps. They took over 50% casualties and
    most were dead before they hit the ground.





  10. #22

    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    I had 3 uncles who took part in the D-Day invasion...one at Normandy and two at Anzio...they did not talk about their experiences very much but you could tell it affected them for the rest of their lives. Sadly they had passed before Saving Private Ryan came out...the first 15 minutes of the movie is very disturbing and speaks highly of the men who charged up those beaches

    I visited a few WWII cemeteries in Germany when I lived there..never made it to Normandy and like many others here, it is on my list of places to visit....also visited Dachau...want to talk about a moving experience...





  11. #23
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    knots: I visited Dachau on my first trip to Europe in 1980. Amazing how you walk through the gate & the place just sucks all the color out of a bright summer day...In subsequent years I got to Buchenwald, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Maidanek, all horrific in their own ways, but there's something about the first camp.

    FTR, I think it's appropriate to give a shout out to the outside organization that was most responsible for the success of the Normandy invasion: The Red Army. If the bulk of the Wehrmacht had not been locked in massive & mortal combat with the USSR on the Eastern Front, our guys would not have made it off the beaches.

    Say what you will about the political system they fought under--the soldiers of the old Soviet Union were tough, brave, determined & could endure just about anything, & their country ran red with their blood. We lost roughly 400,000 citizens on both fronts--the USSR lost 20 million.

    (And as for an unintentional boost to the D-Day landings, let us not forget the unnamed artillery unit whose barrage of mustard-gas shells toward the end of World War I hospitalized Gefreite Adolf Hitler. Der Fuehrer had no compunctions ordering "undesirables" gassed but owing to his experience he never sanctioned its use in battle. A good thing for the Allies, who did not even suspect the existence of the nerve agents tabun & sarin developed in Germany from 1936 on, & whose protective gear would have been utterly useless against them. A thorough soaking of the beachheads would have left them littered with thousands of Allied soldiers "doing the dying cockroach," as the mid-level Army officers I once worked with put it. And it might have left large tracts of Central Europe uninhabitable for a generation--Churchill once stated that if the Germans ever used gas, he would retaliate with mass bombings of the Reich using the anthrax spores the Brits had managed to weaponize. )





  12. #24
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    Re: OT - Remembering D-Day, 6 June 1944.

    My dad was a wing commander in the 8th army air force; flew a B-17 over Normandy that day. Later he was involved in the bombing of Dresden. After the war he became a Methodist minister and, yea, he would talk about Dresden. One of his churches was Mt Vernon Place downtown.





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