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D-Day: A President’s Prayer, A General’s Letter and a Quote
Yesterday, I posted on my blog a photo I took on a D-Day tour of the lovely, peaceful, tranquil scene of Omaha Beach as it appeared in the Summer of 2019, as a brief commemoration of this day which began, with horrible loss of life and immeasurable injuries, the destruction of the Nazi war machine. It can be accessed here. I would like to add two items that struck me as most important to a fuller appreciation of what those Crusaders were subjected to in those critical hours for the survival of Western Civilization.
Before those items, which I will copy out in their entirety in view of what I see as their importance, I happened upon this quote from one who survived D-Day which, of all the millions and millions of words written about that day of horrors and death, very possibly hit me as hard as anything I have read. It appears at p. 423 of the Illustrated Edition of Stephen Ambrose’s book “D-Day”:
Seaman Exum Pike was on patrol craft 565. The job was to guide LCIs and other craft onto the beach. But with landmarks obscured by smoke and haze and with no clear path through the obstacles, PC 565 could not accomplish its mission. It became, in effect, a gun boat, firing its machine guns at the bluff, from which Pike cold see “a rain of fire that appeared to be falling from the clouds.” Pike remembered seeing a DUKW hit an obstacle and set off the mine. “I saw the bodies of two crewmen blown several hundred feet into the air and they were twisting around like tops up there, it was like watching a slow-motion Ferris wheel.”
Then PC 565 took a hit. Six men were wounded. “Blood was rushing down the gunwales of that boat like a river.” Recalling the scene forty-five years later, Pike commented, “I have often told my two sons I have no fear of hell because I have already been there.”
One of the two items I would like to bring to your attention is an article which appeared today in a Georgia paper, authored by Callista and Newt Gingrich, and I copy it out in its entirety as it contains both General Eisenhower’s letter to the troops that fateful morning and President Roosevelt’s Prayer on the evening of June 6, 1944. Both are beautiful and fitting for this day of remembrance:
Commentary: Remembering D-Day
by Ambassador Callista L. Gingrich and Speaker Newt Gingrich
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.There are 3 comments.
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I worked with a guy who claimed to have driven landing g craft in D-day. He was, in all other respects, a completely honest man. So I have no reason to doubt his story ….
He said….
The commanders responsible for Omaha Beach demonstrate that failure at war is often disguised for political purposes. The landings at that beach were incompetently led and were almost bad enough to fail completely.
Rather than fire those responsible, we lionize them and the troops their failures killed. We SHOULD remember the lives lost, but it would be better had someone been held responsible for so many errors.
It was probably another unit that landed in the wrong place, which was common on Omaha.