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Extremely rare and striking photos of the days leading up to and after the historic D-Day invasion have been put on display, nearly 70 years after World War II's dramatic turning point. The full-colour images, taken by photographer Frank Scherschel, display anxious American soldiers as they prepared for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy.

American D-Day veterans are crying foul over a French initiative, approved last month by President Nicolas Sarkozy, to construct over one-hundred 525-feet wind turbines just off the Normandy landing grounds. According to Gérard Lecornu, president of the Port Winston Churchill Association of Arromanches, the giant structures, expected to be built seven miles from the beach, will be visible from the Normandy battleground beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. “Three million tourists come from the world over to the landing beaches. The first thing they do is look at the line of horizon from where the landings came,” he...

It truly was the opportunity of a lifetime. From June 1-8 thanks to an invitation from The Greatest Generations Foundation headquartered in Denver, I accompanied twelve World War II veterans for a visit to Normandy during the 67th Anniversary of the D-Day invasion. For many of these veterans, it was the first time they had been back to Normandy since the June 6, 1944 invasion by the allies. As expected, it was an enormously emotional experience. We crossed the English Channel by ferry from London arriving at dawn with the beaches of Normandy in front of us, creating a visual...

Video of President Ronald Reagan's Address at the Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-day at Point-du-Hoc - 6/6/84.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had to take a gamble and hope the weather would hold June 6, 1944. Allied land, air and sea forces worked together, storming five beaches in Normandy, France, against the Germans. According to the National World War II Museum, “The invasion force included 7,000 ships and landing craft manned by over 195,000 naval personnel from eight allied countries. Almost 133,000 troops from England, Canada and the United States landed on D-Day. Casualties from the three countries during the landing numbered 10,300.” These veterans offer memories of that day. KENNETH CORDRY, SEDALIA, MO. “We were shipped to...

Survivors of a sunken troop transport wade ashore on Omaha Beach D-Day isn't one of those dates most Americans remember easily. It's not associated with bank holidays, BBQs, parades or other high profile celebrations. There's no Hallmark cards and socially mandated gifts for spouses and lovers associated with the day. It's not even a date in history that is marked with any specific, large scale memorials or tributes. Most occasions, it slips quietly by, virtually unnoticed, save for a few token stories.... like this one... and brief mentions in between the tabloid news we're spoon fed and hyped up on...

It's no mystery why images of shocking, unremitting violence spring to mind when one hears the deceptively simple term, "D-Day." We've all seen -- in black-and-white photos, movies, old news reels -- what happened on the beaches of Normandy as the Allies unleashed an historic assault against German defenses on June 6, 1944. But in rare, color photos taken before and after the invasion, LIFE photographer Frank Scherschel captured countless other, lesser-known scenes from the run-up to the onslaught and the heady weeks after: American troops training in small English towns; the French countryside, implausibly lush after the spectral landscape...

Trivia Alert! What were the codename of the 5 D-Day beaches? Extra Credit What country landed on what beach?

D-DAY - A Spiritual Analogy On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied soldiers clambered aboard heaving landing craft and braved six-foot swells, waves of machine gun fire, and more than 6 million mines to claim a stretch of sand at a place called Normandy. Their mission was to carve out an Allied foothold on the edge of Nazi-occupied Europe for the army of more than one million that would follow them in the summer of 1944. This army would burst forth from the beachhead, rolling across Europe into the heart of Germany, liberating millions, toppling a genocidal regime and ending a...

A Great and Terrible DayD-Day showed the greatness of the American people. “Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.� — Gen. Dwight D. EisenhowerFour days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler committed one of the most monumental blunders in history. Rushing back to Berlin from his Prussian headquarters on December 11, he went before the Reichstag and, in a short 334-word speech, declared war on the United States. In this single act of suicidal hubris he sealed the fate of the Third Reich. Despite still being locked in a brutal war...

Sixty-seven years ago, free men of America, Great Britain, Canada, and Poland-in-exile stormed the shores of Normandy into the teeth of Adolf Hitler’s Fortress Europe. The losses at Omaha Beach especially were astounding; over 4400 Allied servicemen died in the assault, and 7500 more were wounded or went missing. Americans made up almost two-thirds of the overall casualties (over 6600). The German casualty figures were never known, but estimates range from 4000 to 9000. But that was just the first day of the Battle of Normandy. By the time Normandy was secured, over 425,000 casualties had been inflicted on both...

D-Day remembered http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIqdcHbc8I

Column 1 A Pure Miracle NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 - Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and artillery fire, and the occasional startling blast of a mine geysering brown sand into the air. That plus a gigantic and pitiful litter of wreckage along miles of...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIqdcHbc8I&feature=player_embedded#at=149

D-Day history D-Day: It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitler's dream of Nazi domination. Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men. After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied Forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run, and crawl to the cliffs. Many of the first young men (most not yet 20 years old)...

Colleville Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, looking north towards the English Channel and the southern coast of England. 9,387 American fighting men—representing only about 1/3 of all Americans killed fighting in Normandy in the summer of 1944—are interred here at Colleville. Among them is Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., who was the only General officer to land on any of the Normandy beaches on D-Day (Utah Beach), and whose weak heart finally quit on July 12, five weeks after D-Day. His brother, Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, a pilot who was killed in France in WW1 in July, 1918, was reinterred to Colleville...

Name by name, gravestone by gravestone, Emily Pin searched for a Northampton soldier's resting place at the Normandy American Cemetery. On a bluff above Omaha Beach, the Cathedral High School junior walked along row after row of white crosses and stars of David, burial sites for 9,387 soldiers killed in the June 6, 1944 D-Day landing and weeks of ensuing combat. Each marker summed up a young life lost - name, rank, unit, home state, date of death. Each row stretched to the horizon.

A local legend many called a hero for his World War II efforts died at the age of 91 yesterday. World War II veteran and Silver Star recipient Leonard G. 'Bud' Lomell died of natural causes in Toms River March 1. “He was a great friend of all of us and a hero of D-Day, a person of great character,’’ said Freeholder Director Joseph H. Vicari. “Bud was a very kind man, we miss him,’’ said Freeholder Gerry P. Little, recalling how Lomell served in the Second Ranger Battalion, charged with silencing German shore batteries during the D-Day invasion. He...

Nobody can miss the point like a well-paid, federally subsidized scholar. Here are ten who tried and failed again in 2010: 1. An academic who believes that Social Security is sound; 2. Professors who still believe that the woes that afflict higher education can be solved through federal intervention; 3. A BC sociologist who sees the major problem in the Middle East as—Israel; 4. A Central Florida political scientist who can’t believe people would think President Clinton was left-wing; 5. A Berkeley prof bemoaning phantom budget cuts; 6. A Yale economist who compares global warming skeptics to Hitler-appeasing Neville Chamberlain;...

The undercover British officer crept silently through the bushes, his tartan kilt a bizarre form of dress for a man who did not want to be conspicuous. Then he stopped to take in the awesome might of the enemy. Through the gloom, he could make out the 15,000 battle-scarred men and 200 machines of the cruellest and most feared of all the SS forces in war-torn France in the summer of 1944. Parked up for the night, their tanks, half-tracks and heavy guns stretched as far as his eyes could see. How could he and the tiny band of amateurish...

Becket man, 91, receives France's highest honor for service in WWII By Derek Gentile, Berkshire Eagle Staff, 10/22/2010 BECKET -- At a solemn and at times moving ceremony on Thursday at Town Hall, Wesley J. Souliere, former second lieutenant, 104th Infantry, 26th Division, Yankee Division, was awarded France's highest accolade, the French Legion of Honor, in recognition of his "eminent service to the Republic of France" during World War II. "It brings me a great pleasure to decorate you with the Legion of Honor as a token of our eternal gratitude," said Hamon Gregory, deputy counsel of the French Consulate...

November 2nd is our D-Day. It marks the start – not the end – of a soon to be long protracted war. The goal? To take this country back to its founding principle – that government derives its power from the people and therefore is subservient to them. To win, we must pound into dust the victories in the past for federal tyranny set upon this nation by a Supreme Court and ruling class whose bastardization of the Commerce Clause, Supremacy Clause, and General Welfare Clause has set upon us an untamed beast that devours liberty at every turn, under...

Bill Millin, who died on August 17 aged 88, was personal piper to Lord Lovat on D-Day and piped the invasion forces on to the shores of France; unarmed apart from the ceremonial dagger in his stocking, he played unflinchingly as men fell all around him.

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There has been a lot of anger over the inclusion of a statue of Joseph Stalin, Russia's murderous WWII dictator, in our National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.As a result of that anger a petition has been started to remove the Stalin celebration from the National D-Day Memorial. Thousands of Americans feel that including a statue celebrating the life of this monster is the wrong way to go about memorializing Russia's sacrifice during WWII and they want the statue pulled down. Others, though, say that if we pull down the statue we are whitewashing history. After all, they say, we...

Should a bust of mass-murderer Joseph Stalin stand right beside American heroes at the National D-Day Memorial? For most Americans the answer is simply “no.” However, a prestigious $50,000 bust of Stalin now stands at the newly inaugurated National D-Day Memorial located in Bedford, Virginia, in the very place where the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of American heroes is honored. Mind-boggling, isn’t it? In the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lee Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, points out that “Since the fall of the Soviet Union, statues of Joseph Stalin have been torn down all over Europe.”...

This Sunday past was the anniversary of D-Day, an event so important to recall. If many do not recall (including our President from whom no statement can be found at this time of writing), it is because our culture and its leaders have failed to truly learn. They have failed to broadly inculcate the lessons of that great global conflict -- one that led to such massive death and culminated in such compelling victory over tyrannical evil.

Despite weather forecasts of thunderstorms, the skies were clear and beautiful Sunday afternoon for our Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA) rally against the Ground Zero mega-mosque, but not as beautiful as the patriotic crowd who came out to stand for freedom against this insulting manifestation of Islamic supremacism. It was a real cross-section of humanity: every race, creed, color and religion were out in all their glory. My SIOA colleague, bestselling author and Islam expert Robert Spencer, and I were expecting 500 people to attend our rally. Imagine our wonder when close to 5,000 showed up. Other estimates ranged...

It’s too bad Barack Obama missed the anniversary today. The White House website has nothing posted today on the 66th Anniversary of the D-Day landing. The president had other things on his mind.
He was attending his second party this week...

Some of the best reporting to come out of Normandy in the aftermath of the D-day landings. Even across the gap of years, his words are incredibly powerful. Column 1 A Pure Miracle NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 12, 1944 - Due to a last-minute alteration in the arrangements, I didn’t arrive on the beachhead until the morning after D-day, after our first wave of assault troops had hit the shore. By the time we got here the beaches had been taken and the fighting had moved a couple of miles inland. All that remained on the beach was some sniping and...

Sunday, June 06, 2010 REMEMBERING D-DAY + 66 YEARS All things worth having come at a price. Freedom is certainly worth having and the Allied Nations paid dearly for it sixty-six years ago. Take a moment to consider the scene pictured above.Many of the GIs you see wading through the water didn't live but a few moments after that picture was taken. All of them had to be sick with fear; their minds racing with thoughts of loved ones back home and of the job ahead of them. Everything we have and hold dear today was bought and paid for...

On June 6, 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France. America lost 2,499 of its finest men that day. (Enterprise News) It’s too bad Barack Obama missed the anniversary today. The White House website has nothing posted today on the 66th Anniversary of the D-Day landing. The president had other things on his mind. He was attending his second party this week, tonight at the Ford Theatre. According to the Ford’s Theatre website, the event tonight is described as follows: Ford’s Theatre Society will host its...

Last week, during Memorial Day weekend, we had fun telling of our favorite WWII movies .On this solemn day, what are you're favorite D-Day movies?

Sixty-six years ago, today June 6, 1944, the Allies stormed the beach at Normandy to free Europe from Axis control. Today, Gov. Palin wrote about the Anniversary in a brief Facebook Note, including an excerpt of speech from President Reagan who spoke at the 40th anniversary of D-Day. Today, on the 66th Anniversary of D-Day, let’s remember the courage and sacrifice of our Greatest Generation whose actions helped liberate a continent. I’d like to share with you excerpts from President Reagan’s beautiful speech on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day honoring the Rangers who took the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc

The speech, delivered as only Ronald Reagan could, was given on June 6, 1984, the 40th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. President Reagan was standing at Point du Hoc with the surviving Rangers who defied certain death and scaled those cliffs, defeating the Germans. It’s rather bittersweet, that as we remember this great triumph of good over evil, that we must also remember that we lost Ronald Reagan on June 5, 2004. Listening to this great speech, we remember why he is so missed. There will no doubt be any number of WWII flicks on television honoring those who fought...

26 years ago TODAY! "These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war."

Today, 66 years ago, our brave soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, risking life for liberty, in a day that has come to be known as D-Day. Since I am confident that our current President isn't capable of saying any words to commemorate this sacrifice unless he is reading it from a teleprompter, I feel compelled to present the recorded remarks of a real national leader, President Ronald Reagan. This is a video of those remarks by President Ronald Reagan on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day, spoken on June 06, 1984 in Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France. Thank you,...

Eisenhower arrived in London with less than five months until D-day. That is one month less than I had as Finance Director of a private college to lead the management team in preparing the annual operating and capital budgets. His experience occurred in another world I can never adequately imagine. A popular historical portrayal describes General Dwight Eisenhower managing a political/military alliance, but reminds us he never lead troops in combat. However, his leadership sustained many unprecedented initiatives for successful Normandy landings. The air assault examples the frightful uncertainties of many critical hazards run on this “Day of Days”. The...

When D-Day occurred on June 6, 1944, the Arizona Daily Star had the news in the paper of the same date thanks to time differences. The news of the invasion came over the wire, and a two-page extra was printed. The main headline couldn't fail to attract attention: ALLIES LAND IN FRANCE. Other headlines called it the greatest military action in history. All of the headlines had a winning tone to them including "Allied paratroopers strike first blow at Axis vitals" and "Berlin acknowledges deep penetrations by glider-borne troops." Much of the news came from the Germans: The Germans said...

On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied soldiers clambered aboard heaving landing craft and braved six-foot swells, waves of machine gun fire, and more than 6 million mines to claim a stretch of sand at a place called Normandy. Their mission was to carve out an Allied foothold on the edge of Nazi-occupied Europe for the army of more than one million that would follow them in the summer of 1944. This army would burst forth from the beachhead, rolling across Europe into the heart of Germany, liberating millions, toppling a genocidal regime and ending a nightmare along the way. But...

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Brig. Gen. Rex McMillian watched proudly Friday from a scrubby bluff as hundreds of Marines in seafaring tanks hit the Southern California beach in perfect unison with support helicopters buzzing overhead. It had been nearly 10 years since his Marines last trained in such a large-scale beach invasion exercise with the Navy. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq taking troops to landlocked regions, many of the Marines had never been on a ship — let alone stormed a beach — until the "Dawn Blitz" exercise, the largest of its kind on the West Coast since...

A grateful Frenchman.

As we look back to that day 66 years ago, we should reflect on the qualities that allowed us to achieve victory over tyranny. And we should do our best to rebuild those qualities, now that we need them again. But if we need a reminder of what those qualities are, we need only look at our multi-racial, multi-ethnic armed forces. They are role models for us all. On D-Day, soldiers didn’t wonder whether the man next to them was a “real” Latino or a “real” whatever. They already knew he was a real American. Nothing else mattered then. It...

Leadership: Our commander in chief was to miss the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to go on vacation. Other presidents have missed it, but never at wartime. All presidents deserve a vacation, and no president is ever off the clock. But we are at war, and Memorial Day at Arlington has special significance even in peacetime. Those who defend President Obama's decision to take time off were not so understanding whenever President George W. Bush spent time at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Obama was to be in his old Chicago-area stomping grounds, and those who attacked Bush for taking...

Standing on the very spot on the northern coast of France where Allied soldiers had stormed ashore to liberate Europe from the yoke of Nazi tyranny, President Ronald Reagan spoke these words to an audience of D-Day veterans and world leaders. They were gathered at the site of the U.S. Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc. Following this speech, the President unveiled memorial plaques to the 2nd and 5th U.S. Army Ranger Battalions. The President and Mrs. Reagan then greeted each of the veterans. Other Allied countries represented at the ceremony by their heads of state and government were: Queen...

Pictures of Normandy 1944 side by side with today.THIS IS A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION.

Our magnificent Navy SEALS will be arraigned tomorrow for the alleged crime of giving a fat lip to a savage barbarian. The same savage barbarian who massacred Blackwater employees engaged in the mission of delivering catering supplies. The slaughter was not sufficient to impress Allah; Ahmed Abed went for extra credit by burning their bodies and hanging them from a bridge for a special pro- Allah photo op. Arraignment is a hearing in which defendants enter their pleas. The attorney for one of our SEALS told Fox News this morning that he had received nothing from the prosecuting attorneys that...

Amazing collection of photos taken during the WW2 and nowadays. The WW2 photos were taken during the invasion of Normandy on and after D-Day.

Some reviewers have called "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg's World War II film about D-Day and the search for a soldier, one of the greatest war movies. Military historian Antony Beevor begs to differ. Not only is it not the greatest war movie, it's not even the best cinematic depiction of D-Day, says Beevor, author of the newly published "D-Day: The Battle for Normandy" (Viking). He admires the famed Omaha Beach opening -- "Probably the most realistic battle sequence ever filmed," he said -- but described the rest of "Saving Private Ryan" as "ghastly." "It's sort of a 'Dirty Dozen'...

Thirty years ago, a young Frenchman walking in Normandy came across an American soldier's rusted dog tag among the rocks at Nacqueville, west of the port of Cherbourg. The name read: "Addison W. Arthurs." Etienne Desquesnes, now 46, wanted to return it to the owner or his family. But who was Addison Arthurs? Mr. Desquesnes wrote to the U.S. embassy in Paris but never got an answer. He finally has one now, and just in time for Veterans Day, thanks to some Internet sleuthing by his friend, Bertrand Goucovitch, 49, an amateur D-Day historian, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After a...