June 06, 2009
D-Day Anniversary 2009
Sixty-five years ago, Allied forces landed in Normandy, France to start the final liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Last year, Donald Sensing imagined the implications for history if the Allied landing had failed.
The specter of defeat on June 6, 1944 was overwhelmingly dreadful. The Allies had no other plans. There was no Plan B in case the landings were repulsed.There are many "pivot" days in human history, when the course of human events swung in a new direction because of discrete actions. It is hard to find another moment in all history when so much rested on an outcome of one day as rested on the success of the Allies' landings on Normandy. In military history, no other day in American history compares.
A Houston-area veteran went back this week to be inducted into France’s Legion of Honor to commemorate the battle’s anniversary.
Decades passed before Houston’s Clyde Combs told his children he was part of the massive D-Day invasion when Allied troops fought past Nazi mines and machine guns to storm France’s beaches and march on to liberate Europe.Neither did he mention he was aboard a superfast attack craft on June 6, 1944, and helped protect the west flank of invading forces as they established a beachhead, fished dead sailors out of the sea, and hunted for German soldiers fleeing in the darkness.
The 84-year-old former Navy PT boat crewman didn’t tell, he said, because he didn’t think anyone cared.
“It wasn’t considered a big deal,” said Combs, who still has a full head of hair and is probably lean enough to climb into his Cracker Jack uniform. “You were in the war, and you made it back and whatever,” he said. “No, I didn’t discuss it.”
Ronald Reagan spoke of their courage and sacrifice in 1984, and understood why they did what they did.
You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.Posted by Alan at June 6, 2009 10:53 AMThe men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.