June 5th 1944 On this day all over the coast of Southern Britain hundreds of thousands of men boarded LST's amd boarded c-47's
towards what Eisenhower called ''The Great Crusade.''
Right now 1007 pm pct .....Paratroopers are on their way towards the Cotentin Penninsula to drop behind the lines and clear cause ways and gun eplacements to help the seaborne troops succeed in the invasion .

Oh, by the way, thank you for that.

I spent last weekend in Normandy. Another advantage of living in Belgium, it's close to lots of cool places. I did an afternoon D-Day Tour, hitting Pointe du Hoc, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, the national cemetery, and a few related museums. Lots of great stuff. The cemetery is as moving as you'd well expect, lots of dust in the air there.

Pointe du Hoc is excellent. There are a still a number of ravaged bunkers left as well a ton of craters left by extensive bombing. You look down over that cliff and see how high and steep it is and think about the Rangers scaling this (the first using hands and knives only) in horrible weather, in the middle of the night, under enemy fire, and you realize the true meaning of "Hard Core."

The tour was interesting. The guide was a Frenchman. Needless to say an interesting perspective on some of the events.

Originally posted by CHEMICAL SOLDIER
Paratroopers are on their way towards the Cotentin Penninsula to drop behind the lines and clear cause ways and gun eplacements to help the seaborne troops succeed in the invasion .

Perhaps the bravest men of the war.

I feel bad for the poor grunts who had to stay on those crappy boats all day during the storm. That must have been a little slice of hell.

I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, but wasn't the invasion originally planned for June 5? If I'm not mistaken, they were already on the boats when June 5 came and they had to sit in them all day through bad weather. If that's the case, even more props to them. (If it's possible to earn more than they did)

Ambrose's D-Day is the best WW2 book I have read (so far).

Honolulu - you lucky dog you ...being in Belgium you have to be close to all those battlefields and historical places from past wars too . Right now .....on the faithful day the fate of the invasion and thousands of men were still undetermined and fighting rages
along the Peninsula as well as th whole world .

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
Ambrose's D-Day is the best WW2 book I have read (so far).

I need to get you a reading list

Originally posted by Fritz
I need to get you a reading list

Heh Heh. Look at Fritz responding to himself.

Originally posted by scooper
Heh Heh. Look at Fritz responding to himself.

Oh, even on acid I would not have said that about an Ambrose book.

Originally posted by Fritz
Oh, even on acid I would not have said that about an Ambrose book.

I'm just saying, I'm not convinced you two are not the same military history loving person.

On topic, I've enjoyed reading Ambrose. Who would you suggest? I'm not doubting your opinion, If there are better people to read, I'd be happy to investigate them.

I do enjoy how Ambrose breaks it down to a personal level more than reading grand discussions of strategy.

Originally posted by scooper
I'm just saying, I'm not convinced you two are not the same military history loving person.

On topic, I've enjoyed reading Ambrose. Who would you suggest? I'm not doubting your opinion, If there are better people to read, I'd be happy to investigate them.

I do enjoy how Ambrose breaks it down to a personal level more than reading grand discussions of strategy.

If you enjoy Ambrose then try Keegan. They are similar.

If you like the personal narratives, try The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studds Terkle.

If you want some stellar "with the units" type of stuff, check out anything by Ernie Pyle. Pyle's pre-war stuff is great too.

Mr. Ambrose was in the business of pop-history. I just think there are better works covering the same matter. I even prefer work by others that is not as well written if the book provides better documentation.

Don't forget "The Longest Day".

Thanks. I'll check out The Good War. Maybe I'll pick it up this weekend when the wife goes to pre-order the next Harry Potter.

What's the name of Senator's book again? I always mean to give it a look but forget the damn name of it...

What people need to remember about Stephen Ambrose is that he didn't plagarize The Wild Blue (story about B-24 crews). He just didn't cite a quote or passage properly, personally, I don't consider that plagirism.

Anyway, I don't think we'll ever see anyone else who had so much passion about reminding the American public of the sacrifices that these soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines went through. Today, I can see more people pay attention to World War II and other parts of history not just because of our surge of patriotism brought about by this new war but by the books Mr. Ambrose wrote.

More books need to be written about the pathfinders, they've in a sense been the long-forgotten guys in D-Day. The pathfinders were the first to parachute into Normandy and had to secure beacons and clear out German squads before the main airborne and seaborne forces arrived and the veterans are starting to fade away as we speak.

That day must have been some pretty scary shit.

Imagine, some men trained for three years learning to paradrop but never even got to fight the Germans because their C-47 was raked with Anti-Aircraft gunfire. Poor guys......

Dola ....Apparently alot of paratroopers drowned because vast acres of fields were flooded weeks before the invasion .
A big reason resistance in Normandy wasn't as tough is because
many of the germans were Russian POW ,Conscripts and Ukrainian POW'S.

Originally posted by Happy29
Imagine, some men trained for three years learning to paradrop but never even got to fight the Germans because their C-17 was raked with Anti-Aircraft gunfire. Poor guys......

that would have been some freaky shit since the C-17 was not delivered until the 90's..

I'm sure he meant C-47's...mean ol' Fritz.

the 47s were delivered before the 90s.

Yes thats what I meant. C-47s...