D-Day Plus 6

The gallent men and women of the Allied Forces continue their March into Europe to free the world of the menace of fascism. June 12, 1944. Three full waves of Allied troops have come ashore, combat troops, support troops, medical teams, nurses, a total of over 325,000 men and women determined to wipe Nazism off the face of the earth. Our forces landed well over 54,000 vehicles including halftracks, tanks, trucks, jeeps, ambulances and other assorted vehicles. over 104,000 tons of supplies (that's 208,000,000 pounds) have also been put ashore. The US 7th Corps advances across the Cotentin peninsula. The 4th Division is attacking Montebourg, Crisbecq and Azeville driving towards Cherbourg while the 5th and 7th Corps advance on St Lo.

Mark Starowicz of the Globe and Mail reviews Holding Juno, June 7-12 notes:

The German army in France could still have turned D-Day into an Allied disaster if its Panzer divisions had broken through the invading troops, precariously positioned on a thin beachhead along the Normandy coast, and literally driven them back into the sea. The significance of the six days, during which the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division repulsed the infamous 12th SS Panzer Division, is that it saved not only Juno Beach, but also the British beachheads. Had the Germans broken the Canadian line, they could have crippled the broader Allied advance.

The scenes recounted here sometimes make the film The Longest Day seem tame by comparison. Canadian soldiers lying in shallow slit trenches at night in an orchard as the massive German tanks crunched through the trees and rode over the trenches; men evaporating in a cloud of red from an artillery explosion; rows of German and Canadian bodies stacked like cordwood along a roadside. Here's Trooper Larry Allen, listening to the voices of a battlefield:

I heard one of the boys say, "Did you get yours?" ..... And one groaned and answered: "Yeah, where did he shoot you?"

"In the guts."

"Me too, the dirty bastards."

"The last sound I heard from our men was [one] calling his wife's name. Then I heard some German boys as they died calling for their mothers. ..... I felt sorry for those youths who were calling, 'Mütter, Mütter.'."

Today, some 61 years later We are loosing these brave men and women at the rate of some 1500 per day. The youngest of them are in their late 70's In a few more year's time, they will all be gone. What they did however will never die.

Currently we are engaged in another war to stamp out fascism, in this case islamo-fascism. The foe is as implacable as were the Nazi's and they hold many of the same beliefs. If we lose this war, we will have lost more than our civilization, we will have lost a legacy bequeathed to us on June 6, 1944 and the next 330+ days as the tyranny of the Nazis was crushed beneath the heel of freedom.