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    The Lesson of D-Day

    By oleeb on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 4:44pm |

    It's important to remember what occured on D-Day, as it is to remember all the bravery, courage and fortitude it took to fight in World War II to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.  But let us not get too wrapped up in the sentimentality and worhsiping of the sacrifices made to the point where we forget that what occured on D-Day was an inhuman slaughter of young men who were ground up like hamburger attempting to establish a landing point for the great invasion of France.

    Young Americans and the young men of our allies have never displayed a lack of courage, fearlessness, determination to fight for the lands they love or to selflessly give their lives on behalf of their country.  What happened on D-Day demonstrates this.  My point here is to remind people that modern warfare is mass murder.  For those who may not have seen it in a while, I urge you to watch Saving Private Ryan again.  What is most evident in that movie, for me, is how outmoded are the old romantic concepts of gallantry, bravery, skill in warfare and so on in an age of mechanized slaughter.  When those teenagers were mowed down by machine guns as the doors of their amphibious vehicles opened up it was nothing but murder and they never had a chance.  That movie, while certainly paying homage to what happened then, is also the best representation I have seen on film of what the carnage of war is really all about and how inhuman and ghastly a business it really is.  There is nothing romantic or desirable about any of it.  Any veteran who has been through it will tell you so.  I ahve spoken over the years to men who have fought in World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq and they are universal in their assessment of what a genuine horror show war really is.

    Having read endless volumes on World War II and other wars, having seen countless documentaries about that war and other modern wars and having read and seen the testimony of so many men who fought in World War II and our other modern wars the lesson is clear: war must come to an end.  It is a senseless, horrific activity that produces little or no good under the best of circumstances.  The weapons now employed on the battlefield completely negate most skill and reduce a soldier's chances to mere luck as can be seen so very poignantly in Saving Private Ryan.  The weapons we have invented are utterly merciless and provide no second chances. we have industrialized the battlefield to the point where it is simply shocking in every respect.

    After the carnage of World War II was over, the mass of people around the world, having seen atrocities, destruction, death unimaginable and an endless amount of pain and suffering were united in their determination to put an end to warfare and to use international law and to develop a worldwide body of laws that would provide for alternative means of settling the disputes of nations so we would never again have to endure the kind of slaughter World War II brought upon us all.  The US, despite it's laudable leading role for decades in the attempt to build and strengthen the rule of international law and morality, has been at war more than any other nation since then and we have been in a state of emergency almost constantly since the end of World War II.  This experience over time has twisted and warped our country and hurt our republic, not to mention our economy.  During the Cold War there could be some justification for our obscene outlays for the military.  But since that time, especially since the beginning of our imperial and clearly illegal invasion of Iraq, there has been no such excuse.  All of the young Americans who have died in that effort have died fighting a fight that needn't have been fought.  The hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's have lost their lives too in a fight that should never have been fought.  And the war we are fighting which had some initial genuine justification has now become a pointless, endless process of destabilization and destruction that is perilously bleeding over into Pakistan.

    Presently, as we remember the tragic slaughter in Normandy of the thousands who never got to grow old, the United States is escalating the war in Afghanistan and gearing up to fight an expanding conflict in Pakistan.  The withdawal of our troops from Iraq will likely not happen within the next decade if our leaders have their way--despite the official position that we are drawing the troop level down to "only" 50,000 troops by sometime next year.  There seems to be no real exit strategy from these wars that are only breeding more hatred, instability, and future violence in the middle east and south asia. 

    We need to remember on this anniversary of D-Day that none of the major wars we have fought since World War II have concluded with "victory" but instead they have concluded in either stalemate or defeat for US forces.  And all this stalemate and defeat has come at great financial and human cost to our country and the countries in which we have fought.  There is absolutely no reason to believe that the imperial wars we are now engaged in will end in "victory" either.  We are not fighting armies as we did in World War II.  We have no defined enemy, but each day our imperial forces continue killing Iraqis and Afghanis and Pakistanis in their own land we breed enemies and hatred for our country and our people.  Far too many Americans among the elite and amongst the common people seem to think about war as little more than a strategic contest in the same way one would a major sports event.  But that is a luxury for those who are not near the death, destruction, and chaos of war.

    So, now 65 years after the massive invastion of Hitler's Fortress Europe began we need to remember that sacrifice and the courage of the thousands upon thousands of young people who did what they had to do.  We need to remember those who tragically lost their lives or were wounded.  We need to remember those who were blessed and lucky enough to survive that awful conflict.  But we need also and most importantly to give meaning to all those sacrifices by remembering just exactly what war is---mass murder---and by pledging oursleves to do all we can to stop the wars currently being fought and to prevent war in the future. 

    I refer people to the excellent Andy Rooney commentary I linked to on Memorial Day that addresses this point far better than I can: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/26/60minutes/rooney/main697964.shtml  

    You should click on the link to the brief but excellent commentary of this World War II vet, but the bottom line of his commentary was:

    "Remembering doesn't do the remembered any good, of course. It's for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don't find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives. "

     

    Amen Andy!

    Comments

    Oleeb, when I studied Art History, one thing I learned was that WWI with it's machines of slaughter really changed the face of warfare.

    That's what Dada was all about. The nonsense and futility of it.


    by Bwakfat (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 6:17pm

    Fine post Oleeb,thank you.Private Ryan though so hard to watch is one of my favorite movies. I dread watching it but but do so anyway to remind me how unromantic war really is.Not your typical Hollywood war movie, nearly every major character looses their life in battle,which is more true to what really happens in war.It captures the stare, that far away look in the eyes typical to combat veterans who have had death fill their every sense. Their eyes have seen death,their nostrils filled with the smell of blood,smoke and death, their ears with the ringing of combat and the cries and groans of the wounded and dying. The stare is a looking away to another place called home and hope. The Captain said it sort of this way, "Fubar, yes this mission to save private Ryan may be fubar, but if it somehow earns some of us the right to go home to our wives and our gardens, the lives we had before we were thrown into this damn war,then it will be worth it and Im for it." Home and family, any politician who craves more than that needs to spend a few days on the front line filling his senses with death, then life might mean something to him. Money and power can not bring back a son or daughter, the husband or wife, the father or mother, untimely cut down by the blade of war.
    In "The Unforgiven" Eastwoods character says to the greenhorn kid who is romanticizing about being a killer, "Kid, there's nothin good about killin, when you kill a man you take everything he has and all that he would ever have." We should throw away our childish romantic ideas about war and see it for what it really is,killing, and all that means.
    In the movie Josie Whales when the tinhorn salesman offers to sell Chief George some some snakeoil cure all tonic, Chief George asks,"Whats in it? the salesman is taken aback and says,"well I dont know ,I dont make it I just sell it" Chief George replys, "Then you drink it!" Those who are barkers for war are the tinhorn snakeoil salesmen pushing it as a cure all tonic but they don't know what is really in the black tonic of war, they just sell it. Oleeb, like Chief George we should say to them, "Then You drink it." Thanks for the reminder of D Day Oleeb and those who died there.I was going to write a post about it but you have done it so well.I hope you dont mind if I hold on to your coat tail and ride along with these thoughts in reply


    by DonDi (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 7:25pm

    I get so angry and become so full of despair sometimes. I just retire into never never land.

    It may be just me. But I think we are in Iraq just to give money to defense contractors. I think that is why we are there.

    No sense to me whatsoever.

    Yeah, a fascist organization got us into it. And there is a good argument to 'leave safely' I suppose. But we keep paying our hessians.

    I remember watching the ruskies fight in Afghanistan, a country I can barely spell. And thinking a, boy the ruskies are sure throwing away good resources on NOTHING.

    The movie/propaganda system during the '40's and all the way thru to today, usually play with heroism. And God forbid we denigrate our troops. I do not wish to do that.

    Thank you for this post.


    by dickday (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 10:20pm

    Yes there's nothing glorious, romantic, or hallowed about war and there never has been. Modern warfare is an even more dirty, vicious business because of the impersonal nature of the massive killing power we've developed. But the object has always been, if possible, to get the drop on your enemy in battle, ambush him, preferably in force when and where he doesn't expect it, at his most vulnerable point, and then murder as many of his men as you can. Break his line at a minimum, and at maximum break his will. You shoot them in the back as they flee from their positions, if and when they regroup you bomb them, shell them, bring any amount of ordinance down on their heads as you have available again to shred into pieces as many of their humans as you can before they reform a line to shoot back at you. If they are very disciplined and very proficient at warfare like the Wehrmacht, the Imperial Japanese and the Southern Confederate forces you burn their cities, you tear up the railroad tracks, you convince them they not only cannot succeed, but their people face utter annihilation if they do not unconditionally surrender.

    The US military has mastered modern mechanized warfare so well, now abetted by technology that goes well beyond human senses, that enemies like the Taliban don't even bother fighting on our terms. It might have been different if Bush and Cheney let the military surround and annihilate them in 2001 instead of just pushing them back into Pakistan but we'll never know now.

    There were men who were incredibly brave on D-Day. Private Ryan didn't get it right, the Rangers didn't "lead the way" at Omaha Beach, they landed in the third wave. The Rangers main objective, large cannons on a cliff overlooking the beach were moved inland days before the invasion. But from other units one by one, or in small groups US soldiers climbed the paths up the bluffs, getting blown to bits by landmines, or ambushed by hidden machine gunners so that others who followed knew where the enemy hid and what faced them.

    But for most of them what was their choice as the big flat doors of their Higgens boats swung down? They couldn't remain in that kill box as the machine gunners who were supposed to be dismembered by air bombardment and naval cannon fire half an hour before shot directly down into, from a football field away their own little hell. They had to escape into the water, onto the beach, and behind the only cover they could find, the 3' high sea wall across that awful beach. As what was left of the men of the 29th Division, untested in combat til then, huddled behind that wall as mortars rained down on them, what were their options? Run back across that killing ground, the beach, into the water? Raise their hands in surrender? Jump the wall and run screaming in a futile banzai attack into fields of fire the Nazis spent years perfecting for that morning?

    There wasn't any choice really. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They realized they were probably dead men, whether it was in the next second where they lay curled in the fetal position, in 5 minutes 5 yards ahead crawling over a dune in front of them, half an hour later as the last thing they saw climbing up the path were their limbs flying away, blown off from a landmine, or a German machine gunner shooting at them as they rounded that blind corner.

    You can be the smartest human on the planet, the captain of the football team, the fastest athlete, the best trained soldier soldier who ever lived. None of that would save you in that situation. The odds of surviving no matter what you do are tiny.


    by markg8 (not verified) on Sat, 06/06/2009 - 11:59pm

    Nice post, oleeb.

    In addition to, "Saving Private Ryan", I recommend viewing the "Americanization of Emily", featuring James Garner, Julie Andrews, and James Coburn to anyone who has not yet done so. It features an excellent script by Paddy Chayefsky, and a D-Day scene. It is a semi-comic treatment of War and Armies, but I think that's done mostly to convey the absurdity of both. Well worth viewing.


    by new10 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 12:42am

    So what do you do in that situation? You can die right there or you can move the war up that hill a bit. When the odds are that bad the best you can hope for is that your death will point out a mined path or a machine gun nest for the soldiers who come after you.

    If you read the history books they cite some of the guys who did that kind of thing. Waldron's Torpedo 8 squadron who futilely tried to sink the Japanese aircraft carriers alone in their slow obsolete Devastators at Midway. The Soviet gunners who discovered Tiger tanks could be destroyed with a well placed shot from behind. The hedgerows of Normandy where time and time again the Nazis only exposed themselves when they could inflict the maximum number of casualties. The mountain gorges of Afghanistan where the locals have always used those tactics.

    The memories of these dead last a generation or so in the increasingly dusty history books. Unless of course they're passed down from generation to generation in bitter remembrance like Quinn's disgust with the Campbell clan who helped slaughter his ancestors in their beds at behest of the English king centuries ago. I know the later helps nothing, I'm not sure venerating the former helps either.



    by markg8 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 1:15am

    I am old enough to remember D-Day. Twas just a kid, just learning how to read, with some of my early reading material being contemporary Newspaper accounts of D-Day, Radio Reports and a collection of maps. Some kids in those days specialized in collecting pictures of planes and tanks and the like -- my speciality was maps.

    Most D-Day annaversaries these days I get out an old shoe-box of letters that I have inherited, written by my then next door neighbor who went into Omaha Beach on D-Day, H-Hour +2, with the 16th Infantry, 2nd Battalion, Headquarters Company. He was a Private, Headquarters clerk -- the guy who once he had shot his way into France typed up the orders and casuality lists all the way from Omaha Beach to the German/Czech border. He had been the Organizer of one of the first teacher's unions in the US, and was a High School English Teacher, and the year before he was drafted had been "Teacher of the Year" in Ohio. So since he wrote much of it down -- and I inherited it -- perhaps it might be useful to allow his impressions to speak.

    There are few "heroics" in his writing, the essence of his view is what in World War II speak he calls "my outfit" -- meaning at different times his small world of his own company, the radio guys with other Battalion companies who reported in, -- in those first days his report writing regarding intelligence gained from the German Prisoners held for later transport by his HQ company, and his impressions of them. Because he could speak French -- and a bit of German, he had a particular value to his "outfit" -- and the essence of his D-Day and the days beyond were all tied up in that essential group. They fought to survive as an "outfit" -- to keep each other going less in a long march to Berlin -- more just to take the next village, cross the next river, or safely cross a swamp. Three nights after D-Day when his outfit was still less than a mile from the beach, my neighbor sits under his shelter half, counting shell bursts. (He was probably sitting a few yards from where Obama spoke today). He observes the ratio of German to American shells (they have different sounds) is about 50 to 1, that American Shells seem to be more carefully targeted in patterns, German shells much less so. This leads him into a discussion of forward observers, and the networks for achieving targeting precision. His outfit had been successful in taking out German artillery forward observers at great cost from a French Village Church -- and he weighs the value of the tactics employed. Later that week he get's seconded by the outfit to talk with the local farmer, in whose fields they are camped, when the farmer shows up with roast chicken for the outfit. This leads into stories about what he was learning about the German Occupation, the tale of the nasty qualities of those observers killed in the church tower, the outfit's collection of chocolate bars to offer the farmer in exchange for roast chicken. These are the little stories -- the experiences of a small outfit that found itself selected to take Omaha Beach, and then wait for further orders.

    Not all the men on Omaha were kids, teenagers. My correspondant was in his 30's, a college grad, a teacher and a labor organizer. He was also a socialist, a correspondant for political journals on the left who were in a way the leftie bloggers of the day, adept at reading deeper political implications into where they were in that war. They had all held anti-war positions in the late 30's, positions that unraveled in the face of the political choices of 1940 and 41. Even in clearing a postage stamp sized bridgehead on the coast of France, at least some in those outfits were speculating in political terms -- what would happen when the shooting ceased? My correspondant wrote about how beaten down he found the French, even the socialists that he sought out. The occupation had beaten the stuffing out of them -- they cannot conceive of future politics.

    I have over 200 letters that carry the story from training for the invasion in Ireland and England all the way to the Czech/German border -- and more such letters from other politically aware friends from the same political set who were in other war theatres. During those years my mother served as the secretary -- everyone wrote to her, and she pounded out carbon copies on a portable Royal Typewriter, eight carbons at a go. Some follow an officer in the Pacific supplying islands with men, equipment, and supplies, and taking off the wounded, others follow the only person to become famous out of the gang, Irving Howe, as he tends a communications shack in the Aleutians, where he saw no combat other than an ongoing ideological battle with Dashell Hammett over the evils of Stalinism. They played it out on a base radio hookup, and Howe's descriptions of it all were a continuning saga that got transcribed and sent over to France, Belgium and eventually Germany on tissue thin carbon paper. These guys argue novels -- dispose of old politics, arrive at new political postures as they fight the war in all sorts of places, they decry the waste of it all, but they have few doubts as to the war's necessity. They see the day to day events from simply the perspective of their outfit, the political conversations in those outfits, but they were also focused on ending what had brought them to battle stations. They had all started as anti-war in the late 30's, but events had changed them.


    by Sara (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 2:37am

    Good post, Oleeb. I think it's right to question our perception of war. But I wonder if there is a concrete correlation between then and now.

    I have spent much of the past two weeks in the emergency room or ICU of the county hospital (you know, the kind that treats the uninsured poor- overcrowded, messy, chaotic). While I could probably write a blistering diatribe on health care right now, I don’t have it in me. But Saving Private Ryan just happened to be on last night as my son was in surgery (which went well, thank God).

    Though I couldn’t really watch it last night, it is an amazing movie. I often think of the scene where the Adam Goldberg character is killed with his own bayonet. Movies are a passion of mine, and I have seen thousands of gangster, crime and noir films, thrillers, historical epics, Peckinpah westerns, war and anti-war films, but that’s one of the most haunting death scenes I’ve ever seen. It is realistic, up close and personal. It bleeds the futility and fatalism, the existential frame of war, which is death. Death is its ways and means. Death is its end.

    That said, I think Saving Private Ryan is still a romantic portrayal of war. Perhaps all art must be, in that it is a glorified representation of reality, but also there is something or someone missing from the picture here. While, Ryan’s and other bereaved families are shown at the beginning and end, the civilians caught in the war are not. Yes, there were hundreds of thousands of brave men fighting for what they believed in and there are brave men and women fighting today in the M.E. But the destruction, the death and pain and suffering, is heaped on civilians, the poor families that are trapped. They are not brave warriors. The man or woman who has lost a home or limb or child or family may “soldier on” but can’t hide the pain, can’t be made whole and can't "go home" again.

    As I said, I’ve been sitting in waiting rooms, like so many do everyday; standing vigil, waiting for a positive turn, and watching others suffer right along with those they love. I’ve heard the instinctive wail over a loved one lost. In the hospital, everyone is almost naturally caring of others with forced but sincere smiles, pleasantries and kind words, concern and helpfulness, empathy; a community bonded by suffering.

    But the suffering is pretty constant. Except that there are doctors and nurses with medicines and machines trying to save lives, the hospital at times seems a war zone in miniature (particularly, one of our oh-so-modern 21st century wars that take place in the middle of cities using remote controlled bombers or night-vision Apache helicopters that destroy with a short blast from a blinking eye). But the wounds and pain and death are real, and while a film may offer a profound facsimile, as does SPR, and may speak to the heart, it doesn’t approach the magnitude of death and destruction in any war. And it doesn't relate to the madness of misery among populations not between armies; the years and decades of suffering from war.


    by Don Key (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 4:09am

    Thanks Sara. Great reading your impressions of those letters.
    Maybe you should concider publishing them online or in a book. Your neighbor it seems was in a unique position to observe and comment on the events both in the place/time and his personal views and talents.


    by fpie (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 8:17am

    If anyone is interested.

    On D-Day I jumped into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne. Below is my call to C-SPAN's Washington Journal commenting on some of my experiences.


    http://c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/06/06/WJE/A/19524/John+McManus+Author+The+Americans+at+DDay+The+Americans+at+Normandy.aspx


    by JohnW1141 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 10:25am

    John, thank you for your courage and service. I had a blood uncle, an in-law uncle, and a father-in-law, all deceased now, from that same "greatest generation". There were three common characteristics about these men which I couldn't help notice, even when I was a kid. They didn't much complain, they were generous, and they were "anchors" - emotionally stabilizing elements - within each of their extended families. I dearly miss them.


    by new10 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 2:43pm

    new10,

    thanks for the kind comment.

    By the way, I forgot to mention that if you go to that C-SPAN site, move the control button next to the on off switch to the 45.18 time mark, this is where I come on; John from Philadelphia.


    by JohnW1141 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 3:19pm

    John,
    What New10 said. Two of the most generous, gentle and common-sense people I have known suffered silently from memories of the war throughout their lives. They did what they had to do and never complained about it but also thought as someone says here that they were fighting so that their sons wouldn't have to. Yours is an amazing story and gives a sense of the horror of combat. Thanks for your service.


    by Don Key (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 4:32pm

    Thank you for your comments Dondi!


    by oleeb (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 4:41pm

    As always John... thank you!


    by oleeb (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 4:46pm

    Though the post is not on the recent list or anything any longer, I would like to ask your opinion on something John. Given your experience, what you experienced in the war, and in your long life, has this country been worthy of the sacrifices made by people like yourself and of all those who didn't make it home? Have we become a better nation in the intervening years? Have we done what we ought to have done since the nd of WWII to make the kind of world we wanted to see? I'd be most interested in any thoughts you'd care to offer.


    by oleeb (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 7:54pm

    oleeb,

    in a word; No.

    A caveat; I'm only a high school grad with a trade school degree attained after the war so this may be somewhat superficial.

    The immediate years after the war were good, 1945 to 50, but then we got involved in Korea. God, it seemed like we just got out of one war and we're back in another for reasons that were not convincing.

    Still, a viable middle class was being born and it expanded until Reagan. Think about the Levittowns being built. Unions were strong, all boats seemed to rise. We seemed to be on a certain road, prosperity for all. Reagan took us off that road. War and greed became acceptable and the country started to become divided into camps, and as conservative talk radio took off, the divisivness grew.

    Until Reagan there were unwritten laws governing workers and management, such as no replacement workers when your workers went on strike, no stealing people's pensions. Reagan put the sharks in the water and they have been growing in numbers ever since. Today they permeate our buusiness community, ala ENRON, etc. and it shows.

    Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq. Measured by the reasons for WWII which one was justified? What was the justification for the invasion of Panama?

    Overthrowing democratically elected governments, which started with Iran back in the 50s, but became strandard practice as time went on.

    Between 1946 and 1950 you could travel anywhere in the world and people would greet you with big smiles and admiring words. Being an "American" meant something grand all over the world.
    Consider how I was greeted in the cities and towns we liberated in France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, just as others were treated in other places in Europe; we were greeted as friends and liberators, we had nothing to fear from the inhabitants; look at how our troops have been greeted since.

    When I look around today at what's happened I'm saddened. Dick Durbin had it right when he said in the Senate "The banks own this place." Where were the opposition party and the so called "Journalists" during the eight years of the Bush/Cheney reign?

    Madeleine Albright said to Colin Powell; What's the use of having this powerful military if we don't use it?" (paraphrase) Christ, save me from Madeleine.

    When I look at our country today, its foreign and domestic condition, what we have become, I think to myself;

    Today's America is not what I signed up for.

    Sorry for the rant, I seem to be all over the place.


    by JohnW1141 (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 9:01pm

    Oleeb,

    I should add that although the Vietnam war was divisive, apart from the demonstrators, both sides didn't make it personal the way it is today. Though the debate often got heated I don't remember the ad hominum attacks the way you see them today.


    by JohnW1141 (not verified) on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 10:04am

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