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Time Lines 21

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower is shown in March, 1944 when as Commander of invasion of Europe. Standing

beside Ike was British air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur W. Tedder. In left background was British field marshal

Montgomery. (AP-Photo)

Carrying full equipment, American assault troops

move onto a beachhead code-named Omaha

Beach, on the northern coast of France on June 6,

1944, during the Allied invasion of the Normandy

coast.

of a mine geysering brown sand into the air… That

plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with

blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line

as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still

sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by

the high grass beyond the beach. That plus an in-

tense, grim determination of work-weary men to get

this chaotic beach organised and get all the vital sup-

plies and the reinforcements moving more rapidly

over it from the stacked-up ships standing in droves

out to sea. Now that it is over it seems to me a pure

miracle that we ever took the beach at all.”

The D-Day invasion, as well as NAZI failures in the

Russian winter, proved to be the final turn of the tide.

With a toe-hold on the continent, the Allied forces

swept across Europe

Less than a year later, May 8 1945, NAZI Germany

formally surrendered.

“At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the

difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t

want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So

they fought, and won, and we, all of us, living and

yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful,”

author Stephen Ambrose said.