9 ms·

D-Day, as told by paratroopers

89 points by dance-me 2y ago

johnmorrow 2y ago
“The longest day” is a great book on the subject were they interviewed thousands of people who were personally involved in D-Day and wove their stories together as well
- freedomben 2y ago
  Thanks, just bought it. "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944" by Cornelius Ryan (for others looking for it, there are multiple titles called "The Longest Day")
- el_benhameen 2y ago
  Not from D-Day or the European theater, but “With the Old Breed” is a really well done personal account of combat in the Pacific. It was part of the source material for Ken Burns’ “The War” and for the “The Pacific” miniseries on HBO.
koolala 2y ago
My was inspired to be inspired about joining the military because of how amazing Band of Brothers was and paratrooping is akin to flying. Thank you for sharing this so I can read it and see another perspective.
- koolala 2y ago
  It was a lot, all at once, heart breaking and heart affirming because no one would ever want that to happen again for anyone or anything.
- vundercind 2y ago
  The stat sheets on how likely a soldier who survived D-Day was to make it to the end of the war alive and intact may be worth looking at. There’s individual heroism and that’s laudable, sure, but the war was a machine that used humans for fuel. Overall stats don’t look so bad but that’s because of how many folks it takes to support one front line soldier. If you were actually fighting your odds were… bad. Modern footage of Ukraine may have a similar effect. Waiting around bored until a shell or drone kills you. Hooray, the glory of war.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    > Modern footage of... It was a wake up call for me. I mean, I have known this, but like, when you are younger you can't seem to grasp it even though elders tell you upfront and clear. However, the real shock for me was the cheering on Reddit etc accompanied with the videos. I didn't understand I had these people around me.
davidw 2y ago
I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.
- SkipperCat 2y ago
  A lot of people, including myself, feel similar when looking back at WWII. The roles of good and evil were very clearly defined and that has forged the US foreign policy up to today. Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist. I don't think we'll ever have something as clear cut as WWII again. News was highly controlled by a few media institutions and our country (US) was much less fractured than it is today.
  - davidw 2y ago
    I have spent most of my life with the US involved in a variety of ... "not very clear cut things" and we'll leave it at that. It also feels like some things have shifted and there actually is a lot more clarity lately.
    - asdfqwertzxcv 2y ago
      Agreed. History is rhyming a lot, lately. Feels like we're reliving events from about 100ish years ago.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    You should read up a bit more on how people perceived it contemporaneously. It’s too easy to absolve oneself of having to think hard about the current goings on when we can look at WWII and act like the right answer was obvious to everyone.
    - montagg 2y ago
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
I can scarcely believe this event even happened
- jcul 2y ago
  Yes, it's surreal to read the first hand accounts.
inglor_cz 2y ago
If you read German, there are some interesting collections of memories of the other side. Pretty much everyone mentions how terrified they were of Allied white phosphorus.
- southernplaces7 2y ago
  I strongly recommend a series of books called "D-Day Through German Eyes" that narrates the experience of the seaborne invasion through the translated narratives of German soldiers. One theme that comes up again and again is their sheer demoralizing shock at seeing just how colossal the armada confronting "their" beaches was. Despite this, because of the harsh sense of discipline inherent to the German Army during the war, they fought remarkably hard against the still largely inexperienced allied western soldiers and made the first weeks after the D-Day landings much harder then they should have been for the Anglo/British/Canadian and sundry forces.
- SkipperCat 2y ago
  With good reason. It burns super hot and cant be put out with water.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Oh, yes, absolutely. It just struck me how dominant that memory was among people who served in all sorts of roles.
  - thombat 2y ago
    Even today it's wise to be careful with lumps of amber on Baltic beaches: https://www.dw.com/en/ticking-time-bombs-on-the-bottom-of-the-north-and-baltic-sea/a-40200208 https://www.dw.com/en/ticking-time-bombs-on-the-bottom-of-th...
multjoy 2y ago
Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.
- yobert 2y ago
  Amen. I used to be a pacifist before the Ukraine war. Now I feel like a completely different person.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Really? My journey was the opposite. That war in combo with another war made me realize the indignation is more or less manufactured and that the elite rather have my face blown into pieces than not lose their face in a figurative way. It is like watching a self-playing piano pitting me against another self-playing piano and I am supposed to cheer the whole parade.
  - pstuart 2y ago
    Right there with you. Making it even more surreal to be "pro-war" is that the party of the previous president was rabidly anti-Russia until he came into office and did a 180.
  - keybored 2y ago
    That you changed your principles based on a war started by the sworn enemy of the West on the contrary speaks to being the same person all along.
- lukan 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - racional 2y ago
    Bandera Ooh, scary. Here's the deal, though -- the guy is glorified by some people in Ukraine, but not in any official capacity at the national level. When an attempt was made to grant him official "Hero" status at the national level, it was rejected. The monument in particular is a local endeavor. Doesn't make Putin's war anymore justified Right, but the idea here seems to be to throw cold water on idea that Ukraine is unambiguously the victim of aggression here, or to at least sow some general confusion around it. It's all very straightforward as to why Putin invaded -- and (despite what he says) none of the Nazi stuff had anything to do with it. It's just noise that he puts out there to push people's buttons; to sow doubts about Ukraine's legitimacy as independent state or its right to defend itself; and internally, to get people to sign up for his lemming march.
jhallenworld 2y ago
What a shit job, I'm amazed we (well they) were unified enough to do it, even with Pearl Harbor. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazism-and-madison-square-garden https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazi... https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate
- booleandilemma 2y ago
  Pearl Harbor. Larry Wall wasn't involved.
  - jhallenworld 2y ago
    Hah yes, fixed.
xkcd-sucks 2y ago
Now the popular portrayal of WWII seems kind of idealistic, but there's plenty of historical evidence to suggest many Allied troops really did not want to be there, and the scale of desertion [1] was quite high - In addition to corruption, mismanagement, and racketeering [2]. I only really considered this after encountering "Deserter: The Last Untold Story of the Second World War" by Charles Glass in a used bookstore, which is appropriately referenced etc. [1] But what is desertion, really? A legal matter the facts of which are decided through process... [1] like, Catch-22 was actually toned down from reality so to speak, yes it's technically written by a Korean war vet but
- 1123581321 2y ago
  What did Charles Glass estimate the WW2 desertion rate to be? Here’s one that estimates 0.22%, which is low historically. https://www.armyheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/ref-bibs/subjects/Military%20Service/Desertion/Desertion%20Statistics.pdf https://www.armyheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/ref-bibs/sub... I’ll certainly check out the book; thanks for the recommendation.
- cafard 2y ago
  It seems to me that a deserter in the hands of the US military system was an asset that a) had undergone training, b) was on the action side of whatever ocean, c) must be made to understand that there were worse things than the front line. The retraining camps were brutal, I gather, but the only deserter convicted by a court martial and then shot, Eddie Slovik, had said outright that if returned to the line he would desert again. And Joseph Heller was a veteran of WW II. The NY Times Magazine's issue for the 50th anniversary of VJ day included an essay by him. Some reservists were called back for Korea, but was he one of them? [Edit: added qualified military system with "US".]
- gramie 2y ago
  New Zealand had the [Furlough Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fraser#Furlough_Mutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fraser#Furlough_Mutiny), where several thousand troops refused to go back to the fighting in Europe. Canada had the [Terrace Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_mutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_mutiny) where conscripts were told they were going to be sent overseas after being assured that only volunteers would go. A train travelling from BC to Halifax with thousands of soldiers headed overseas arrived at its destination several thousand men lighter, due to desertions. The Italian campaign was infamous for the number of desertions in all the Allied armies. General Alexander wanted to bring back the death penalty to curb the losses.
willyt 2y ago
The tank commander, (edit2) David Render, in this podcast has a pretty amazing description of joining at age 18, landing on the beaches and not long afterwards finding himself commanding a squadron of tanks in Normandy. Absolute humility and incredibly sanguine about what happened to him. No bullshit about glory and bravery. Just a straightforward but very engaging description. https://www.historyhit.com/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-young-tank-commander-during-the-normandy-landings/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-young-ta... Edit: think I found a link to the podcast that doesn’t require you to login https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/warfare/id1526490428?i=1000493797191 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/warfare/id1526490428?i...
- hermitcrab 2y ago
  If you found that interesting I recommend the book 'Brothers in Arms' by James Holland, about the Sherwood Rangers tank regiment.
punk-coder 2y ago
My grandfather was a medic and was part of the storm of Normandy beach on D-Day. He never really spoke of it and had a stroke and passed away before Saving Private Ryan came out. We wondered what he would have thought of the beginning of that movie, as someone who was there and was running around helping people the whole time.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really. The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency. The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low point for things to get better and under the protagonists' control. A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.
  - 1992spacemovie 2y ago
    > A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so. No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Ye, but it was a long time ago. The point I am trying to make is that the opening is the 'low point' and then it becomes an action movie with the heroes in control.
      - Andrex 2y ago
        It's a movie. There has to be a narrative on some level.
hermitcrab 2y ago
I watched 'Band of brothers' again recently. It was well worth a second watch.
gramie 2y ago
The BBC has a series called "D-Day: The Unheard Tapes". It has actual interviews with D-Day survivors (both Allied and Axis). They use the real audio, lip-synced by actors. It's mesmerizing. You may need a VPN to use the BBC's iPlayer.
kristopherkane 2y ago
Couldn't find a single mention of the 325th.
mediumsmart 2y ago
The worlds greatest, fiercest and bloodiest battle was Russia defeating nazi forces from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Croatia in Stalingrad. It broke the back of the Nazi Germany war machine and turned the tide of the Second World War resulting in allied victory and the raising of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. Wikipedia still has problems identifying that flag https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raising_a_flag_over_the_Reichstag_600x778.png#mw-jump-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raising_a_flag_ove...
jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
Those unpowered gliders pictured in the article weren't something I knew much about until I saw it as part of a d-day in real time video. [0] Fantastic solution to a pretty specific logistics problem. I appreciate how the solution they arrived on for how to quickly get everyone out once they landed was to give the four men at the back spanners to quickly unbolt the rear end of the vehicle. 0: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4nZd_D0GWKxWrP--UNmD9d https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4nZd_D0GWK...

89 points by dance-me 2y ago

“The longest day” is a great book on the subject were they interviewed thousands of people who were personally involved in D-Day and wove their stories together as well

freedomben 2y ago
Thanks, just bought it. "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944" by Cornelius Ryan (for others looking for it, there are multiple titles called "The Longest Day")
el_benhameen 2y ago
Not from D-Day or the European theater, but “With the Old Breed” is a really well done personal account of combat in the Pacific. It was part of the source material for Ken Burns’ “The War” and for the “The Pacific” miniseries on HBO.

koolala 2y ago

My was inspired to be inspired about joining the military because of how amazing Band of Brothers was and paratrooping is akin to flying. Thank you for sharing this so I can read it and see another perspective.

koolala 2y ago
It was a lot, all at once, heart breaking and heart affirming because no one would ever want that to happen again for anyone or anything.
vundercind 2y ago
The stat sheets on how likely a soldier who survived D-Day was to make it to the end of the war alive and intact may be worth looking at. There’s individual heroism and that’s laudable, sure, but the war was a machine that used humans for fuel. Overall stats don’t look so bad but that’s because of how many folks it takes to support one front line soldier. If you were actually fighting your odds were… bad. Modern footage of Ukraine may have a similar effect. Waiting around bored until a shell or drone kills you. Hooray, the glory of war.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  > Modern footage of... It was a wake up call for me. I mean, I have known this, but like, when you are younger you can't seem to grasp it even though elders tell you upfront and clear. However, the real shock for me was the cheering on Reddit etc accompanied with the videos. I didn't understand I had these people around me.

davidw 2y ago

I got unexpectedly shook up and a bit weepy reading about some of the goings on yesterday. I'm not much of a 'rah rah' guy, but those people stood up in the face of tyranny and many didn't come home. I thought what it'd be like for my own boy to go off to war. Democracy and freedom are worth defending.

SkipperCat 2y ago
A lot of people, including myself, feel similar when looking back at WWII. The roles of good and evil were very clearly defined and that has forged the US foreign policy up to today. Of course, there's a lot of things we know now which show the conflict was a lot more complex, but at its core, the Axis needed to be defeated for our western style of freedom to exist. I don't think we'll ever have something as clear cut as WWII again. News was highly controlled by a few media institutions and our country (US) was much less fractured than it is today.
- davidw 2y ago
  I have spent most of my life with the US involved in a variety of ... "not very clear cut things" and we'll leave it at that. It also feels like some things have shifted and there actually is a lot more clarity lately.
  - asdfqwertzxcv 2y ago
    Agreed. History is rhyming a lot, lately. Feels like we're reliving events from about 100ish years ago.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  You should read up a bit more on how people perceived it contemporaneously. It’s too easy to absolve oneself of having to think hard about the current goings on when we can look at WWII and act like the right answer was obvious to everyone.
  - montagg 2y ago

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

I can scarcely believe this event even happened

jcul 2y ago
Yes, it's surreal to read the first hand accounts.

inglor_cz 2y ago

If you read German, there are some interesting collections of memories of the other side. Pretty much everyone mentions how terrified they were of Allied white phosphorus.

southernplaces7 2y ago
I strongly recommend a series of books called "D-Day Through German Eyes" that narrates the experience of the seaborne invasion through the translated narratives of German soldiers. One theme that comes up again and again is their sheer demoralizing shock at seeing just how colossal the armada confronting "their" beaches was. Despite this, because of the harsh sense of discipline inherent to the German Army during the war, they fought remarkably hard against the still largely inexperienced allied western soldiers and made the first weeks after the D-Day landings much harder then they should have been for the Anglo/British/Canadian and sundry forces.
SkipperCat 2y ago
With good reason. It burns super hot and cant be put out with water.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  Oh, yes, absolutely. It just struck me how dominant that memory was among people who served in all sorts of roles.
- thombat 2y ago
  Even today it's wise to be careful with lumps of amber on Baltic beaches: https://www.dw.com/en/ticking-time-bombs-on-the-bottom-of-the-north-and-baltic-sea/a-40200208 https://www.dw.com/en/ticking-time-bombs-on-the-bottom-of-th...

multjoy 2y ago

Ukraine is about as black and white as it gets.

yobert 2y ago
Amen. I used to be a pacifist before the Ukraine war. Now I feel like a completely different person.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  Really? My journey was the opposite. That war in combo with another war made me realize the indignation is more or less manufactured and that the elite rather have my face blown into pieces than not lose their face in a figurative way. It is like watching a self-playing piano pitting me against another self-playing piano and I am supposed to cheer the whole parade.
- pstuart 2y ago
  Right there with you. Making it even more surreal to be "pro-war" is that the party of the previous president was rabidly anti-Russia until he came into office and did a 180.
- keybored 2y ago
  That you changed your principles based on a war started by the sworn enemy of the West on the contrary speaks to being the same person all along.
lukan 2y ago
[flagged]
- racional 2y ago
  Bandera Ooh, scary. Here's the deal, though -- the guy is glorified by some people in Ukraine, but not in any official capacity at the national level. When an attempt was made to grant him official "Hero" status at the national level, it was rejected. The monument in particular is a local endeavor. Doesn't make Putin's war anymore justified Right, but the idea here seems to be to throw cold water on idea that Ukraine is unambiguously the victim of aggression here, or to at least sow some general confusion around it. It's all very straightforward as to why Putin invaded -- and (despite what he says) none of the Nazi stuff had anything to do with it. It's just noise that he puts out there to push people's buttons; to sow doubts about Ukraine's legitimacy as independent state or its right to defend itself; and internally, to get people to sign up for his lemming march.

jhallenworld 2y ago

What a shit job, I'm amazed we (well they) were unified enough to do it, even with Pearl Harbor. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazism-and-madison-square-garden https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-nazi... https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/great-debate

booleandilemma 2y ago
Pearl Harbor. Larry Wall wasn't involved.
- jhallenworld 2y ago
  Hah yes, fixed.

xkcd-sucks 2y ago

Now the popular portrayal of WWII seems kind of idealistic, but there's plenty of historical evidence to suggest many Allied troops really did not want to be there, and the scale of desertion [1] was quite high - In addition to corruption, mismanagement, and racketeering [2]. I only really considered this after encountering "Deserter: The Last Untold Story of the Second World War" by Charles Glass in a used bookstore, which is appropriately referenced etc. [1] But what is desertion, really? A legal matter the facts of which are decided through process... [1] like, Catch-22 was actually toned down from reality so to speak, yes it's technically written by a Korean war vet but

1123581321 2y ago
What did Charles Glass estimate the WW2 desertion rate to be? Here’s one that estimates 0.22%, which is low historically. https://www.armyheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/ref-bibs/subjects/Military%20Service/Desertion/Desertion%20Statistics.pdf https://www.armyheritage.org/wp-content/uploads/ref-bibs/sub... I’ll certainly check out the book; thanks for the recommendation.
cafard 2y ago
It seems to me that a deserter in the hands of the US military system was an asset that a) had undergone training, b) was on the action side of whatever ocean, c) must be made to understand that there were worse things than the front line. The retraining camps were brutal, I gather, but the only deserter convicted by a court martial and then shot, Eddie Slovik, had said outright that if returned to the line he would desert again. And Joseph Heller was a veteran of WW II. The NY Times Magazine's issue for the 50th anniversary of VJ day included an essay by him. Some reservists were called back for Korea, but was he one of them? [Edit: added qualified military system with "US".]
gramie 2y ago
New Zealand had the [Furlough Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fraser#Furlough_Mutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Fraser#Furlough_Mutiny), where several thousand troops refused to go back to the fighting in Europe. Canada had the [Terrace Mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_mutiny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrace_mutiny) where conscripts were told they were going to be sent overseas after being assured that only volunteers would go. A train travelling from BC to Halifax with thousands of soldiers headed overseas arrived at its destination several thousand men lighter, due to desertions. The Italian campaign was infamous for the number of desertions in all the Allied armies. General Alexander wanted to bring back the death penalty to curb the losses.

willyt 2y ago

The tank commander, (edit2) David Render, in this podcast has a pretty amazing description of joining at age 18, landing on the beaches and not long afterwards finding himself commanding a squadron of tanks in Normandy. Absolute humility and incredibly sanguine about what happened to him. No bullshit about glory and bravery. Just a straightforward but very engaging description. https://www.historyhit.com/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-young-tank-commander-during-the-normandy-landings/ https://www.historyhit.com/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-young-ta... Edit: think I found a link to the podcast that doesn’t require you to login https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/warfare/id1526490428?i=1000493797191 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/warfare/id1526490428?i...

hermitcrab 2y ago
If you found that interesting I recommend the book 'Brothers in Arms' by James Holland, about the Sherwood Rangers tank regiment.

punk-coder 2y ago

My grandfather was a medic and was part of the storm of Normandy beach on D-Day. He never really spoke of it and had a stroke and passed away before Saving Private Ryan came out. We wondered what he would have thought of the beginning of that movie, as someone who was there and was running around helping people the whole time.

rightbyte 2y ago
My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really. The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency. The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low point for things to get better and under the protagonists' control. A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.
- 1992spacemovie 2y ago
  > A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so. No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.
  - rightbyte 2y ago
    Ye, but it was a long time ago. The point I am trying to make is that the opening is the 'low point' and then it becomes an action movie with the heroes in control.
    - Andrex 2y ago
      It's a movie. There has to be a narrative on some level.

hermitcrab 2y ago

I watched 'Band of brothers' again recently. It was well worth a second watch.

gramie 2y ago

The BBC has a series called "D-Day: The Unheard Tapes". It has actual interviews with D-Day survivors (both Allied and Axis). They use the real audio, lip-synced by actors. It's mesmerizing. You may need a VPN to use the BBC's iPlayer.

kristopherkane 2y ago

Couldn't find a single mention of the 325th.

mediumsmart 2y ago

The worlds greatest, fiercest and bloodiest battle was Russia defeating nazi forces from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Croatia in Stalingrad. It broke the back of the Nazi Germany war machine and turned the tide of the Second World War resulting in allied victory and the raising of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. Wikipedia still has problems identifying that flag https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raising_a_flag_over_the_Reichstag_600x778.png#mw-jump-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raising_a_flag_ove...

jimbobthrowawy 2y ago

Those unpowered gliders pictured in the article weren't something I knew much about until I saw it as part of a d-day in real time video. [0] Fantastic solution to a pretty specific logistics problem. I appreciate how the solution they arrived on for how to quickly get everyone out once they landed was to give the four men at the back spanners to quickly unbolt the rear end of the vehicle. 0: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4nZd_D0GWKxWrP--UNmD9d https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsIk0qF0R1j4nZd_D0GWK...