(Bottom right) General Dwight Eisenhower gives his famous “Full victory-nothing else” speech to paratroopers just before the invasion. (Top right) Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan was the head of the planning staff for the invasion. To commemorate the battle, Origins offers ten of the most important things to know about the invasion. Opposed by German units in strong defensive positions, the Allies suffered more than twelve thousand casualties on the first day of the invasion. This foothold would be the launching point from which the liberation of France and Western Europe would proceed.
On D-Day, over 125,000 British, American, and Canadian soldiers supported by more than five thousand ships and thirteen thousand aircraft landed in Normandy on five separate beaches in order to carve out a sixty-mile wide bridgehead. Following Germany’s conquest of France in 1940 and declaration of war on the United States in 1941, a confrontation somewhere on the shores of Northern Europe became a waiting game, with only the date and location left to be answered. The Normandy Invasion (June 6, 1944) was the supreme joint effort of the Western Allies in Europe in World War II and remains today one of the best known campaigns of the war.Ĭode named Operation Overlord, it was a battle marked by its courage, meticulous planning and logistics, and audacious amphibious approach. He didn’t come back home but he saved me and he saved many others.View the video version of this article below. In another incident, he remembers a soldier charging a pillbox, a selfless act that likely ended the soldier’s life. “I still see him, I see him every night,” he told the AP recently. It’s something that still haunts his memories. He grabbed his weapon and returned fire along with the other soldiers. He remembers wading ashore and coming under fire from a German sniper. Ninety-nine-year-old Johnnie Jones Sr., who joined the military in 1943 out of Southern University in Baton Rouge, was a warrant officer in a unit responsible for unloading equipment and supplies onto Normandy. But during the Normandy invasion that didn’t mean they were immune from danger. Black troops were often put in support units responsible for transporting supplies. The Double V campaign launched by the Pittsburgh Courier, a prominent African American newspaper, called for a victory in the war as well as a victory at home over segregation, including in the military.ĭuring World War II, it was unheard of for African American officers to lead white soldiers and they faced discrimination even while in the service. But a lack of documentation - in part because of a 1973 fire that destroyed millions of military personnel files - has stymied the effort.īy the end of World War II, more than a million African Americans were in uniform including the famed Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion. senator, is heading an effort to have Woodson posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on D-Day. Woodson was wounded in the back and groin while on the landing craft but went on to spend 30 hours on the beach tending to other wounded men before eventually collapsing, according to a letter from then-Rep. Then they started with the mortar shells.” They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Of our 26 Navy personnel there was only one left. “The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88mm guns. Although Woodson did not live to see this week’s 75th anniversary - he died in 2005 - he told The Associated Press in 1994 about how his landing craft hit a mine on the way to Omaha Beach. was a corporal and a medic with the battalion.
The only African American combat unit that day was the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, whose job was to set up explosive-rigged balloons to deter German planes.
But on Normandy, they faced the same danger as everyone else.