USO Canteen FReeper Style.......D-Day....Lest We Forget!.......June 6,2002

FRiends of the USO Canteen FReeper Style and Snow Bunny

[Snow Bunny]

I want you to think of everything you did today. The breakfast you ate, the car you drove to work, the money you made, and the TV you are watching now. Everything you know would not be, if not for those brave guys who made that endeavor for you that day on those French beaches and in those hedgerows, many making the ultimate sacrifice. Over two thousand Americans, British, Canadians, and Australians died that first day, trading their lives for a single ambition...so we could live free.

The allied commander of the D-Day invasion , Gen Dwight D Eisenhower gives the order of the Day. "Full victory - nothing else" to paratroopers in England, just before they board their airplanes to participate in the first assault in the invasion of the continent of Europe. Some of the men with Gen Eisenhower are presumed to be: Pfc William Boyle, _______, Cpl Hans Sannes, Pfc Ralph Pombano, Pfc SW Jackson, _______; Sgt Delbert Williams, Cpl William E Hayes, Pfc Henry Fuller, Pfc Michael Babich and Pfc W William Noll. All are members of Co E, 502d. The other men shown on the photo are not identified. 6 June 1944.

D-DAY JUNE 6th 1944 NORMANDY FRANCE
….”In some sectors the area was so heavily occupied by the Germans the paratroopers were fired upon while in the plane, in decent, and after landing... Many men were wounded or killed during one phase or another... The illumination created by fires on the ground was a death sentence if you were caught in an open field... This great confusion created by the troopers, moving in all directions, completely baffled the Germans in that they could not establish how many allied paratroopers had landed, or determine where our front line was. The fact that we were scattered over many miles, (mistakenly,) became advantageous to our mission..”
Artist B.P.Christenson 1922 - 1999

"Pat" Christenson tells of his story, of one of the Band Of Brothers, in a most unique way. Pat took to the board with only a pencil in hand, ultimately creating some of the most compelling visual imagery of WW11 . The pull of his work so undeniable, that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg adorned the walls of their visual creative room for the " Band of Brothers", HBO production with a collection of his prints.

FIRST WAVE

Behind them was a great invasion armada and the powerful sinews of war. But in the first wave of assault troops of the 29th Infantry Division, it was four rifle companies landing on a hostile shore at H-hour, D-Day - 6:30 a.m., on June 6, 1944.

The long-awaited liberation of France was underway. After long months in England, National Guardsmen from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia found themselves in the vanguard of the Allied attack. In those early hours on the fire-swept beach the 116th Infantry Combat Team, the old Stonewall Brigade of Virginia, clawed its way through Les Moulins draw toward its objective, Vierville-sur-Mer. It was during the movement from Les Moulins that the battered but gallant 2d Battalion broke loose from the beach, clambered over the embankment, and a small party, led by the battalion commander, fought its way to a farmhouse which became its first Command Post in France.

The 116th suffered more than 800 casualties this day - a day that will long be remembered as the beginning of the Allies' "Great Crusade" to rekindle the lamp of liberty and freedom on the continent of Europe. They were part of the part of the National Guard

"Members of an American landing party lend helping hands to other members of their organization whose landing craft was sunk be enemy action of the coast of France. These survivors reached Utah Beach, near Cherbourg, by using a life raft".

The People at Omaha Beach

Brig. General Norman "Dutch" Cota
General Cota was second in command of the 29th Infantry Division. He had little faith in the accuracy of air and naval bombardment, thought it would do little good, and had wanted to make the landing under cover of darkness.
Cota landed at 0730 with the main command group of the 116th, Company K. Several in his LCVP were killed immediately as the ramp went down. When Cota got to the sea wall he made an immediate and critical command decision. He saw at once that the plan to go up the draws was obsolete. It simply could not be done. Nor could the men stay where they were. They had to get over the shingle, get through the heavily mined swamp, and climb the bluff to drive the Germans from their trenches and take the draws from the inland side.
Lieutenant Shea described Cota's actions: "Exposing himself to enemy fire, General Cota went over the seawall giving encouragement, directions, and orders to those about him, personally supervised the placing of a BAR, and brought fire to bear on some of the enemy positions on the bluff that faced them. Finding a belt of barbed wire inside the seawall, General Cota personally supervised placing a bangalore torpedo for blowing the wire and was one of the first three men to go through the wire. At the head of a mixed column of troops he threaded his way to the foot of the high ground beyond the beach and started the troops up the high ground where they could bring effective fire to bear on the enemy positions."

Although the lead elements of the assault had been on the beach for almost an hour, none had progressed farther than the seawall. Most were clustered under the wall, pinned down by machine-gun fire. The beach was jammed with dead and wounded. General Cota had landed to fine a completely stalled attack. He went to work immediately.

Once on the beach, General Cota did move from group to group, encouraging the men to begin to move. "Don't die on the beaches, die up on the bluff if you have to die, but get off the beaches or you're sure to die."

Cota found Schneider at his CP. Cota remained standing, even with the German firing; Schneider also stood up to converse. One witness remembers Cota saying to Schneider,"We're counting on your rangers to lead the way."

Father Joe Lacy
Father Lacy was described by one of the Rangers as a "small, old, fat Irishman." But there he was, on the beach that first terrible morning, tending to the wounded.

The Rangers had insisted that he would never be able to keep up with them in combat. They were finely tuned and in great physical shape, he was not. But he had insisted in coming along. On the transport on the night of June 5-6, he told the others, "When you land on the beach and you get in there, I don't want to see anybody kneeling down and praying. If I do I'm gonna come up and boot you in the tail. You leave the praying to me and you do the fighting."
Once on the beach, the men saw Father Lacy "go down to the water's edge and pull the dead, dying, and wounded from the water and put them in relatively protected positions. He didn't stop at that, but prayed for them and with them, gave comfort to the wounded and dying. A real man of god."

Maj. General Percy Hobart

On D-Day strange canvas covered bathtub looking vehicles came in from the ocean and landed on the beach. The vehicles were Sherman tanks fitted with a flotation device which allowed them to drive off an LCT and into the ocean, then navigate to the beach. One tank driver later said, "I still remember very vividly some of the machine gunners standing up in their posts looking at us with their mouths wide open."

These tanks were the brainchild of Maj. General Percy Hobart of the British Army. The floating tank, These tanks were the brainchild of Maj. General Percy Hobart of the British Army.

The Real "Saving Private Ryan" & Colonel Vandervoort

Ste,-Mere-Eglise was a quiet village with a couple of hundred gray stone houses. It was a village in which nothing much of consequence had happened for ten centuries. The road N-13 ran through the village, heading north to Cherbourg and east to Caen and onto Paris. Without the use of N-13 the Germans to the north would be cut off. If the Americans lost control many paratroopers would be cut off and the 4th Infantry Division would be unable to move off the beach to the west and north. Because of this the battle for the little village took on a great importance.

Colonel Vandervoort, despite a broken ankle during the parachute drop and having to be moved around in a wheelbarrow, moved his battalion into the village. Between them and another battalion, they did not have the men form a complete defensive perimeter so they decided to only defend both ends of the main road.
About 1pm on D-Day a Frenchman rode his bicycle up to them and announced in English that some American paratroopers were bringing in a large contingent of German prisoners from the north. Sure enough, when Vandervoort looked in that direction there was a column of troops marching in good order right down the middle of N-13, with what appeared to be paratroopers on either side of them waving orange flags (the American recognition signal on D-day).
Vandervoort grew suspicious when he noticed two tracked vehicles at the rear of the column. He told one of his men to fire a short machine gun burst to the right of the column. Sure enough the "prisoners" and "paratroopers" both jumped into ditches and began to return fire. The Germans outnumbered the Americans five to one and began to flank his position. He sent for reinforcements and ordered the men to begin a fighting withdrawal.
Finally only sixteen of his forty three men were in a condition to fight and they were preparing for a "last stand". Then a medic volunteered to stay behind and look after the wounded. Pvt. Julius Sebastain, Cpl. Ray Smithson, and Sgt. Robert Niland offered to form a rearguard to cover the retreat of the remainder of the platoon. The three were able to put up an energetic defense that actually stopped the German advance for a time and allowed the others to escape.
The twenty-eight badly wounded men which were left behind along with two of the three volunteers who stayed behind were captured. The third volunteer, Sgt. Bob Niland, was killed at his machine gun. One of his brothers, a platoon leader in the 4th Division, was killed the same morning at Utah Beach. Another brother was killed that week in Burma. Mrs. Niland received all three telegrams from the War Department announcing their deaths on the same day. Her fourth son, Fritz, was in the 101st Airborne and was pulled out of the front lines by the Army.
Lt. Col. Ben Vandervoort, and his 2nd Battalion (505th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division) later saw action at the Nijmegen bridge in Operation Market Garden (movie: A Bridge Too Far). His battalion was assigned to take the west end of the Nijmegen bridge while Maj. Julian Cook's 3rd Battalion took the east end, crossing the river in the small boats.

The 82nd was to then later play a major role in the defense of the allied position during the Battle of the Bulge

Normandy Burial Ground

Artist Mitchell Jamieson

St. Mere Eglise

St. Mere Eglise ,was the principal objective of the 82nd Airborne on the early morning of June 6. It was the site of three days of intense fighting as the Germans repeatedly counter attacked in attempts to retake the strategic town from the occupying American paratroopers. The village is perhaps best remembered for its church, in the center of the town square, where Paratrooper John Steel of the 505th PIR became trapped when his parachute was ensnared by a steeple. He watched helplessly as the rest of his company was killed by the waiting Germans.

The stained-glass windows of the church are a tribute to those who liberated St. Mere Eglise. At the upper left are airborne wings. At the upper right is the parachute and glider that made up the badge of American Airborne Command. The lower left cut-out shows the insignia of the 82nd Airborne Division (AA for "All American Division"). The faint parachutes at the lower right are a constant motif in the windows. The symbol of the Free French (the Cross of Lorraine) is shown bottom center.

To Those Who Served.......

We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who gave their lives in this giant struggle and to those who were lucky enough to come back home.

We can only imagine the horror and the dying that took place. We need to perpetuate their story of sacrifice and glory for as long as we live.

Can you see the thousands of ships offshore that formed the most powerful armada that the world has ever seen? A huge salvo is being laid down prior to the invasion. Troops climb down rope ladders into landing craft. Many invasion force craft are circling around, grouping up, just before they make their final drive for the beach.

The Germans are entrenched in concrete bunkers and gun emplacements and are shelling the approaching landing craft. Many men never make it to the beach, but instead die in the churning surf. Those who do get to the beach and tumble out of their craft are subject to horrendous machine gun fire from pillboxes that rake the entire shore. There are the dead and the dying.

Valiant army engineers mount a superhuman effort to blow a hole in the concrete barricade so troops can move inland, away from the murderous fire coming from above them.

Those first few hours must have indeed been some of the longest ever faced by bold and courageous men. May their honor and sacrifice not be forgotten, and may this event in history go down not as just about death and dying, but as a turning point for the world, toward peace. God willing, it will never have to be repeated.

[Snow Bunny]

Tribute to Vietnam Veterans....Please click on picture

The great intangible of America's wars beyond logistics, beyond strategy, beyond wonder weapons and Generals, is the spiritual force of its fighting men and women - and that is the force that the USO so serves.

Free Republic....Click for Donations

Thank you from all those that frequent the FReeper Canteen to Jim Robinson, Founder of FRee Republic and Navy Veteran.

[Snow Bunny]

[Snow Bunny]

Welcome to the FReeper USO Canteen.

[Snow Bunny]

The USO Canteen FReeper Style has been given permission to have an address where you can write snail mail and or send packages to our Soldiers in TF Rakkasan.We are proud to adopt this Sergeant Major to our FReeper Canteen"I can not say how to get a package to the Ranger Bns, but if you want to send one any way there are some great soldiers right here in TF RAKKASAN that would enjoy the package and most of them have been rangers anyway since that is where they seem to flow to when the get to the 101st. You can use my address if you want and I will pass it out to the grunts on the line for you and damn sure let them know." Address:SGM R A Herman TF Rakkasan HHC 3Bde APO AE 09355

[Aeronaut]

Good morning Bunny.

[MeekOneGOP]

Mornin' All!
Beautiful job, Snow Bunny!

[larryjohnson]

Just yesterday I took the picture of Private Chris Birx Jr. from my parents album and framed it for my study. It was taken in Dec 1941 in our home,the parsonage. He was killed at D Day and his parents gave me some of his boyhood things. Good mornin to all who serve,did serve and you who support us. To those who have lost loved ones in war or later,I know it never heals but pride in their service is not a sin.

[MeekOneGOP]

A little bit of news.............

Link between Saddam and New York attack: US claims
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/695440/posts

US security services are investigating possible new links between Iraq and the September 11 attacks. They have identified a new candidate as being the possible mastermind of the atrocity.

He was named as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a Kuwaiti-born member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation and a blood relative of Ramzi Yousef, the key figure behind the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre in 1993.

The officials said they believed he was at large somewhere in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mohammed had previously been implicated in the thwarted attempt by Yousef and others to blow up 12 airliners above the Pacific Ocean in 1995 and there were suspicions that he was involved in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

However, it had not been known for sure that he was involved with al-Qa'ida, let alone at such a high level.

Some hawks in the Bush administration anxious to launch a military invasion of Iraq believe that Yousef is in fact an Iraqi agent and that the man ultimately responsible for many of the terror plots of the past decade is Saddam Hussein.

The new information, suggesting that Mohammed was deeply involved in both the operational and financial planning of the September 11 attacks, came largely from captured al-Qa'ida members including Abu Zubeida, one of Osama bin Laden's closest lieutenants. ( Independent News Service)

[leadpenny]

Powerful presentation, SB. You're the best!

[Pippin]

Good Morning, Snow Bunny! What a beautiful day it is to celibrate the freedom that those brave men gave their all to ensure on June,6, 1944! Maybe someone will re-post the picture of President Bush walking among the graves of those brave men in Normandy. Be at Peace today!

[Pippin]

Good Morning, Meek! Hope you have a blessed day! :0)

[tomkow6]

Good morning, EVERYBODY!

Great opening (as always) Snow Bunny!

Anyone wanna go bungee junpin' with me?

Perhaps, I'll just hang around today.

[tomkow6]

Old Aunt Bertha was sitting on his porch, when this fella walked up with a pad and pencil in his hand.

"What can I do for you?" Aunt Bertha politely asked. "You selling something?"

"No, ma'am, I'm not. I'm a Census Taker."

"A what?"

"A Census Taker. We're trying to find out how many people are in the United States."

"You're wasting your time here. I have no idea."

[JohnHuang2]

Good morning, friends =^)

[deadhead]

"Soldier’s Prayer Gave Solace to Millions in Battle It was June 6, 1944 — D-day in Normandy. A Catholic Chaplain crawled along the beachhead, administering to the dead, the dying and the wounded. On 30 of these men, the chaplain found copies of the same short, simple poem. Some of the dead clutched the poem in their hands. Dozens of copies of this same poem blew about on the debris-strewn sands...."

Found the above article, not sure which Soldier's Prayer they are referring to, so I posted one of the many I found. God Bless Our Troops and Veterans. God Bless Our Fallen Heroe's. I know what FREEDOM is because of each and everyone of them. Another excellent thread Snow Bunny, Thank You.

[Lee'sGhost]

Man. . . this is beautiful. I love you. I guess if it was 1944 somebody like Frank Sinatra would say, "What a dame!"

Same goes to you, Billie.

[Aeronaut]

Hello John, I hope all is well.

[JohnHuang2]

Thanks, amigo. Things are fine here -- hope it's likewise with you.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

I'd like to pay tribute to the founder and hostess of the USO Canteen.
One has to wonder why Snow Bunny has such love for our military and vets.
I think that a glimpse from her past, as posted on her profile page, will reveal why.
Thank You Snow Bunny for your past and present service to our country.



The major stars traveling with Bob Hope and the USO tour stayed at the main bases,
My heart would not let me.
I asked and received permission to visit the sprawling base camps
to small firebase’s to remote outposts manned by a few GIs.
In Vietnam things got hot at times with enemy snipers close by, but the show went on.
I still love choppers to ride in, but in Nam it was a totally different feel to riding in a chopper.

There was one time the helicopter I was in was shot down, experiences of mortar fire sometimes exploding around me, and bullets passing by.

My visits were also to places like rifle companies, where I chatted with the men in bunkers, visited motor pools, maintenance shops, and graves registration and the morgue. The gangrene ward, where we were given masks and gowns Every case was a double or triple amputee.

Snow Bunny says sending e-mails to our military
every day is really easy and rewarding.
Would you please "hop" on over and join her.
Just click on the E-mail sign.

[Tennessee_Bob]

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine."

Thank God and the Allied fighting men that Eisenhower did not have to release this statement.

Mr. Rick Farrell, my neighbor when we lived in Montgomery, Alabama, went ashore at Omaha as a Staff Sergeant. When they got off the beach, he was a Lieutenant. My current next door neighbor, Mr. Rule, made it through D-Day and the fighting from that point, and was captured at Bastogne, during the Battle of the Bulge. Mr. Farrell, Mr. Rule, my nine-year old daughter knows now what you did - you will not be forgotten.