mfurfur:
The following are snapshots from my father's war diary. June 3 entry: "getting ready for the bigest invasion in history"
mfurfur:
June 5th: still bad weather; operation will proceed; Roosevelt spoke to the troops by radio. "I have a huge lump in my throat again. Underway at midnight"
mfurfur:
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings.
mfurfur:
D-Day at Juno Beach; Jim is one on the right. These black and white pictures are what he saw on D-Day.
mfurfur:
They landed at Courseulles du Mer, which was part of Juno Beach for the invasion. Their cargo was equipment and staff for General Montgomery.
mfurfur:
Before the transport ships could land, destroyers, cruisers, and battleships pounded the coast to destroy German big guns and defensive sites.
mfurfur:
Obstacles hidden at high tide and many mines had to be removed before the transport ships could land.
mfurfur:
They could see pillboxes buried in the sides of the dunes on shore - wish this had been taken with a telephoto lens so we could see them too.
mfurfur:
In the upper left of the photo, there is a line of German prisoners being loaded onto another ship.
mfurfur:
This shows some of the wreckage on the beach in front of his ship after all the landings; some of the smaller vessels might have been carrying troops to shore.
mfurfur:
June 8th: beached at 1 AM; huge pill boxes, lines of prisoners; after unloading, they finally got underway at 4PM and passed many more ships. At 11:45 PM, they were rammed midship by a British freighter, but they managed to head to port and drydock......
mfurfur:
Then, on June 8, LST-378 was rammed by a British freighter and almost cut in half. Fortunately, they were able to sail to dry dock where they spent much of the rest of the war.
mfurfur:
Through fog and rain they managed to make their way to the Isle of across the English channel, a distance of about 130 miles.
mfurfur:
From our trip, this is one of the plaques at Pointe du Hoc where there were large German guns and an observation bunker so Germans could watch for attacking ships.
mfurfur:
The areas where the German guns, bunkers, barracks, ordinance, and supplies were located had been repeatedly bombed for days before the invasion; bomb craters have been left as they were.
