I went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the annual meeting of the SHAEF Veterans and Friends Association. I am very jazzed because the weekend includes participation in the the Dwight D. Eisenhower Society and the Eisenhower Institute D-Day 80th Anniversary symposium at Gettysburg College.
SHAEF stands for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces. It was my father’s unit in the U. S. Army during WWII. My father passed away many years ago but my sister Pat and I are members of the association and go the the annual meetings.
Over the past few weeks I have been rereading, listening to actually, several books I have on D-Day in anticipation of the SHAEF meeting. Craig Symonds, “Operation Neptune. The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landing,” (2014), Steven Ambrose, “D-Day,” (2002), and Cornelius Ryan, “The Longest Day,” (1959). It has been some time since I read these books for the first time. It was useful to revisit them. They confirmed and refuted many things I thought I know about that momentous day.
Like so many historic events, there were many reasons why the invasion succeeded. I get the feeling from these books that it would have succeeded almost no matter what because of dopey things Hitler and the other Nazis did.
What I didn’t quite know was how the Americans stranded at the sea wall on Omaha Beach got off the beach. The destroyers came in close to the beach blasted installations on the bluff and in the draws.
The surviving men that landed made their way up the bluff and suppressed enough of the enemy for the survivors and successive waves to control the beach.
The other big controversy seems to be the opposing strategies of the German defense. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel wanted to defeat the invasion at the beaches. Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt wanted to let the invaders land, then he would counter-attack with armored divisions outside the reach of naval guns. Would that have worked? Probably not. A million airplanes would have swarmed over the moving German units the same way they did in the Battle of Normandy. Without some air power, any air power, I don’t see how the Germans would have defeated division after division of American, British and Canadian troops that came ashore and would continue to come ashore for the next ten months.
The Germans might have done better under Von Rundstedt’s plan but that would have just meant that the Russians would have been defeated the Germans before the Americans got into Germany.
Yesterday we went to the Gettysburg National Military Museum and Visitors Center. Very interesting. Carol and I road around the area getting a feel for the topography and the distance between the matter engagements in the three day battle in July 1863. The Civil War is such a big subject I have not gotten very deep into it. Still being here and seeing the town with its 19th Century feel has been very interesting.
Today was the D-Day + 80+ Symposium at Gettysburg College. It was everything I expected and more. Susan Eisenhower, Doug Dowds, Craig Symonds and David Eisenhower were great speakers.
I really enjoyed Craig Symonds central thesis that the Destroyers saved the day on Omaha beach. I did not appreciate that until I reread the D-Day books in recent months. My wife Carol, my sister Pat and two of Pat’s friends also went to the Symposium. The seemed to enjoy it as well even though they are not quite the WWII nerds that I am.
That’s it. Battle of the Bulge, Battle of Midway, War in the Pacific and D-Day taken care of now. I’m gonna have to find a new WWII subject to take up now.
