Posted on 05/26/2019 7:31:43 AM PDT by rktman
GRAIGNES, France (Reuters) - The lost U.S. paratrooper tapped on the door of the Rigault family’s farmhouse in Normandy in the early hours of June 6, 1944, miles south of his intended drop zone and soaking from his landing in the surrounding marshland.
After four years under German occupation, 12-year-old Marthe Rigault, awoken by the roar of aircraft overhead, watched as her parents warmed the foreign soldier with a flask of coffee.
By dawn, dozens of men from the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment had hunkered down on the Rigault farm outside the village of Graignes. As they did, the distant boom of heavy artillery carried inland as allied forces invaded Europe on the Normandy beaches to drive the Nazis from France.
“They said, ‘Don’t be afraid, we’re you’re friends, the Tommies,’” Rigault, now 86, recalled. “We thought we’d been liberated. We were overjoyed. We didn’t know it that morning, but it would be a month before Graignes was set free.”
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
This place is 21 miles Southwest of Omaha Beach.
I was able to visit Normandy and the beaches of D-Day in 2000. The local French people were very pro American, clearly understanding the role we played in their eventual liberation. Walking along the cliffs above the beaches where allied boats landed, my impression was “how did we beat these guys?” The bunkers they had built were several feet thick containing huge guns and only a slit for us to fire into. If the Germans had had a legit air force, we would have been decimated that day.
BFL
Wow. This made me cry.
Walking along the cliffs above the beaches where allied boats landed, my impression was “how did we beat these guys?”
He asked, “Where are the horses?”
I don’t know if we weren’t decimated!!
But our men had the numbers and perseverance to win the day.
But I heard an American guy who was there speak on the TV yesterday and he was brutally honest.
He said he had no choice but to go, he couldn’t swim and it was a massacre at the start.
12 guys out of his division lived.
He had a Spanish name and maybe his statements weren’t the most patriotic but I wouldn’t have wanted to be there!
And so many guys died just SINKING to the bottom because they were dropped too early in too deep water with all that gear!!
What a ####ing nightmare SMH
Poor kids. And most of them were what I consider now to be kids.
Rips the heart out.
War is Hell.
That’s why, if you’re ever in one, you want to win.
I think I have watched "The Longest Day" 10 times and consider it to be the best representation of what happened that day.
Worthy of a few tears.
We had plenty of horses: Ford, Dodge, Studebakers.
Basically, screw “ police actions” . Our military are not cops. We should have been gone from A-Stan a long time ago. Win it or GTFO.
I saw that. I have to watch it again.
The soldiers say that “...Private Ryan” is the most realistic portrayal.
Also incredibly hard to watch the first 20 minutes.
The technology to film a scene like that didnt exist when The Longest Day was made and it would have been too graphic for that time too.
I shall watch it again though as it’s been a long time.
You see many more American flags in Normandy than in most parts of the US.
The Ouistreham sequence from The Longest Day is still one of the great scenes, you would have thought they used drones.
One of the less heralded intentional tactics used in the US bombing campaign was using the bombers as bait in order to attrite the Luftwaffe fighters in preparation for the invasion.
As such, "safer" flight plans were not always chosen if there was a chance to take out more fighters while hitting the targets.
4000 dead before the beach was secure. Were that today the press would be demanding withdrawal and surrender.
Lots of comments like:
We don’t belong there!
What American interests do our troops need to die for in Europe?
Get out now!
The price is too high.
We need to defend America first.
ETC
70,000 USAAF died in WWII.
4,000. Good grief.
You’re right. The press would have made those death occur for nothing.
It’s hard to even think of young boys laying in pieces in a foreign land calling for their mothers.
It’s almost too much.
Which is why it should be one of the MOST IMPORTANT lessons in our history books.
And the first 20 minutes of Private Ryan should be mandatory viewing.
But it won’t be.
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