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
D day

This Sunday marks the 77th anniversary of the greatest gamble in World War II.

On June 6, 1941, more than 156,0000 allied forces launched from the sea onto the beaches of Normandy.  Nearly 7,000 allied ships commanded the French coastline, and more than 3,200 aircraft dominated the skies.  A few miles inland, 23,000 paratroopers landed to block German reinforcements from the shore.

After years of preparation, practice, and training, the Allies had come to break German power in Europe.

For the American, British, Canadian, and other soldiers who landed in Normandy that day, this was a crusade.  Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s message to the allied forces made clear the moral implications of D-Day:

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.  The eyes of the world are upon you.  The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.  In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one.  Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944!  Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41.  The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man.  Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground.  Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.  The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.  We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made the moral commitment of liberating Europe clear in a radio address that evening when he asked the American people to join him in prayer:

My fellow Americans:  Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation.  It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God:  Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings.  Their road will be long and hard.  For the enemy is strong.  He may hurl back our forces.  Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won.  The darkness will be rent by noise and flame.  Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace.  They fight not for the lust of conquest.  They fight to end conquest.  They fight to liberate.  They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people.  They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return.  Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home — fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas — whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them — help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer.  But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer.  As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too — strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith.  Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade.  Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled.  Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.  Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies.  Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men.  And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

Thousands of men and women sacrificed their lives for our freedom that day on the beaches of Normandy.

May we always remember D-Day and our indebtedness to those who risked everything in World War II’s greatest gamble.

The second piece, which I discovered thanks to Powerline, tells the story of a visit to the Normandy beaches where her father landed in 2016, and I include it here especially because it contains the D-Day orders passed onto her father’s, and all others’, ships before the Great Crusade Gen. Eisenhower referred to above; it is a poignant reminder of what those men faced on that day:

The small grey ship is crashing through the waves, set against a calm sky. If you didn’t know what a small, World War II-era patrol boat looked like, you might even mistake the ship in the painting for a fishing boat.

But the short, 175-foot vessel is actually a U.S. Navy ship named PC-565 better known to Anne Wilson and her five siblings as ‘dad’s ship’.

Wilson opens up a photo album and looks through the pages in search of ‘dad’s ship.’

The album, along with the painting, tells a story, a story her father never recited to her family after he returned home from WWII. Talking about the war was just something her father, mother and siblings didn’t do, Wilson said.

“(WWII) was very much a part of him,” Wilson said looking at a photo of her father in uniform.

On June 6, 1944, Wilson’s father, Frederic Floberg, was the executive officer on PC-565 as it escorted and protected the fleet of U.S. ships heading toward the beaches of Normandy, France, during the D-Day invasion in World War II — the largest amphibious operation in history.

In October, Wilson will have her own photos of the North Atlantic Ocean and the beaches of Normandy, France, when she and her husband visit the WWII museum in Caen, France, and the gravesites of soldiers who lost their lives during the D-Day invasion, she said. Then, the two will walk the beaches of Normandy.

Wilson, a fourth-grade teacher at Creekside Elementary School, was one of 33 teachers at Franklin schools to receive a grant that will allow them to take a trip of their choice and bring lessons from it back to the classroom. Wilson’s $5,000 grant will incorporate the journey of journalist Ernie Pyle, who covered WWII, from his hometown of Dana, Indiana, to the beaches of Normandy, where he wrote the first article about D-Day, breaking the news to millions of Americans back in the states.

Pyle was Wilson’s mother’s only connection to the events of the war, as was the case for every American with a loved one overseas during WWII.

Four of Wilson’s five siblings have stood at, on, or near the beaches of Normandy, France. Her son has, too. When Wilson was 22, she had the chance to visit, but opted against it.

“It wasn’t important to me (then). But the older I get, I begin to realize the significance more than when I was younger,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s father was in Harvard law school in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. Immediately, like so many young men in his generation, her father wanted to enlist, Wilson said. Harvard expedited his degree path and he was in the Navy by 1942, Wilson said. In 1944, he returned to the United States, briefly, to marry her mother Ruth, Wilson said.

Staggering contrast

In the late 1990s, her sister was visiting Normandy when at dinner one night residents learned that her father fought in the D-Day invasion and was a part of the United State’s effort to liberate France. Each of the locals came over to her sister’s table just to say thank you, Wilson said.Wilson’s sister walked the beach with her children, who, naturally, were playful and too young to understand the significance of the location. When her sister came across a sign, she tried reading the top in French before giving up on translating the message, instead reading of the bottom of the sign in English, Wilson said. The message was bold and clear: Stay off the beach; it is unknown if all the mines have been found.

Her older brother, Fred Floberg, visited Normandy in 1967. In a letter he wrote home to his family, he said he, too saw children playing on the beaches. He had a hard time wrapping his brain around the innocent joy of children in the moment, just 23 years since the D-Day invasion took place.

“(I) couldn’t help but think about the contrast between the children playing on the beach and the hell that that sand was for some men. It staggers any rational approach,” Fred Floberg wrote.

“I remember getting to the beaches of Normandy and it was awe-inspiring,” Fred Floberg said. “You realize this was a scene of unbelievable brutality — 5,000 American casualties.”

When Fred Floberg visited the cemeteries of the fallen U.S. soldiers, the magnitude of what an incredible sacrifice those men made really hit home, looking at the crosses of those who fought on French soil to keep WWII off the doorstep of the United States, he said.

He also served in the Navy.

On D-Day, 72 years ago today, Frederic Floberg was in his 20s, navigating larger ships and landing crafts through the water and avoiding mines, so that soldiers and supplies, such as vehicles, could be unloaded, Fred Floberg said.

“It had to be an extraordinary spectacle that day,” Fred Floberg said. “(PC-565) would have been close enough to the shore that they could have been hit. He never really talked about it in detail, he just said ‘we did what we had to do. We gave them the cold steel that day’. Valor and courage, these guys lived it, they were the real heroes.”

Before D-Day, Frederic Floberg navigated ships across the North Atlantic for nearly two years, escorting larger ships through dangerous waters infested with German U-boats and submarines responsible for a lot of sunken ships transporting supplies to the allies. Frederic Floberg went to bed every night wondering if he would wake up at the bottom of the ocean, Fred Floberg said.

Memories run deep

And looking back at their childhood, it was amazing how their father could put the war behind him and just move on, they said. Back then, post-traumatic stress disorder was not something people knew about. Most of the veterans from WWII carried their mental and emotional scars with them, Fred Floberg said.Through the years following WWII, Frederic Floberg would organize reunions with his shipmates.

Memorial Day was difficult each year. On that day, Frederic Floberg would toast to the boys who never came back and on special occasions, would recite King Henry V’s speech, “band of brothers”, which he knew by heart, Fred Floberg said.

“He lived it. Experienced it. Survived it. We knew (WWII) was (with my dad). He had a painting of his ship above our fireplace. WWII is a part of the fabric and history of who we are,” Fred Floberg said. “It wasn’t until dad was gone when I starting thinking about those times more than I did before, where we would watch and listen to his toast.”

Wilson is the youngest of Frederic’s six children, so her childhood was further removed from the WWII era and not as engaged as Fred, who was the oldest son and closest to the end of the war, Fred Floberg said.

So, for Wilson, that painting above the fireplace was one of the only open expressions of honor, pride and respect to those men who never made it back.

Their father was a lawyer in Chicago following the war, though he stayed in the Navy reserves during that time.

In 1986, at 68 years of age, Frederic passed away.

Frederic Floberg, who never spoke of his experiences in WWII to his wife or children, requested he be buried in his Navy uniform, Wilson said.

“I don’t think I ever remember seeing my dad in his uniform (for any occasion). WWII was just a part of his world he didn’t want to share. But he had a lot of WWII in him his whole life, he just didn’t talk about it,” Wilson said.

But Wilson and her siblings do talk about it. And it’s the reason why this trip in the fall is something she feels a sense of obligation to go do. WWII, and specifically the D-Day invasions, are something that has very much become a part of who Wilson is, she said.

Soon, she will stand on the sand just a couple hundred yards away from where her father lived his finest hours among so many other American heroes.

“I think it’s great (for Anne),” Fred Floberg said. “My dad always said being involved in D-Day was the greatest thing he ever did, the most important day of his life. Five of his six kids (will now) have gone to see Normandy on their own time to see what was such an incredible event in their father’s life. It’s a really moving experience, especially when you have DNA in what took place.”

At a glance

Anne Wilson has a copy of the D-Day orders passed onto her father’s ship in May of 1944. Here is the briefing all members of the United States Navy received just two weeks before D-Day, June 6, 1944.

27 May, 1944.

Secret

From: Naval Commander, Western Task Force

To: ALL HANDS

1. We of the Western Naval Task Force are going to land the American Army in France.

2. From battleships to landing craft ours is, in the main, an American Force. Beside us will be a mainly British force, landing the British and Canadian troops. Overhead will fly the Allied Expeditionary Air Force. We all have the same mission — to smash our way onto the beaches, and through the coastal defenses, into the heart of the enemy’s fortress.

3. In two ways the coming battle differs from any that we have undertaken before: it demands more seamanship, and more fighting. We must operate in the waters of the English Channel and the French coast, in strong currents and twenty-foot tide. We must destroy an enemy defensive system which has been four years in the making, and our mission is one against which the enemy will throw his whole remaining strength. These are not beaches held by apathetic Italians or defended by hasty fortifications. These are prepares positions, held by Germans who have learned from their past failures. They have coastal batteries and mine fields; they have (illegible) and E-boats and submarines. They will try to use them all. We are getting into a fight.

4. But it is not we who have to fear the outcome. As the German has learned from failure, we have learned from success. To this battle we bring our tested methods, with new weapons, and overwhelming strength. Tides and currents present a challenge which, forewarned, we know how to meet. And it will take more than the last convulsive effort of the beaten “master race” to match the fighting spirit of the American Navy. It is the enemy who is afraid.

5. In this force there are battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. There are hundreds of landing ships and craft, scores of patrol and escort vessels, dozens of specials assault craft. Every man in every ship has his job. And these tens of thousands of men and jobs add up to one task only — to land and support and supply and reinforce the finest army ever sent to battle by the United States. In that task we shall not fail. I await with confidence the further proof, in this the greatest battle of them all, that American sailors are seamen and fighting men second to none.

6. Captains will please publish this letter at quarters on the day that the ships are sealed; then post on bulletin boards; and remove and burn prior to sailing.

A.G. Kirk (Commander, U.S. Navy)

(Emphasis added)

These men lived, in the most literal sense, hell, and they “gave them the cold steel that day.”

They saved the world and our civilization. Our debt to them simply cannot be measured. May the Good Lord hold and comfort their souls.

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  1. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    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….

    I took the 1st wave ashore.   I watched them come down the cargo nets.   To a man, every soldier was by-the-book equipped.   Helmet, rucksack, spats on the boots, weapon in the glassine envelope.    Just as the manual prescribed.    When we got back with the second wave there were guys on the beach with .38’s in shoulder holsters, pump-action shotguns,   lever action Winchesters for Christ’s sake!    Where did they get these from.    I watched them come aboard.  Nobody… No-bo-dy was anything but manual-perfect.   Where did they hide this stuff?!?!?   How did they get this stuff on the beach?!?!?   It was incredible.

    • #1
  2. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    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.  

    • #2
  3. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    Ekosj (View Comment):

    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….

    I took the 1st wave ashore. I watched them come down the cargo nets. To a man, every soldier was by-the-book equipped. Helmet, rucksack, spats on the boots, weapon in the glassine envelope. Just as the manual prescribed. When we got back with the second wave there were guys on the beach with .38’s in shoulder holsters, pump-action shotguns, lever action Winchesters for Christ’s sake! Where did they get these from. I watched them come aboard. Nobody… No-bo-dy was anything but manual-perfect. Where did they hide this stuff?!?!? How did they get this stuff on the beach?!?!? It was incredible.

    It was probably another unit that landed in the wrong place, which was common on Omaha. 

    • #3
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