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.