Published June 6, 2024
President Joe Biden ventured to France for the 80th commemoration of the D-Day landings during World War II. It was the opening of this critical second front on the European continent that proved to be the death knell for Nazi Germany (via CBS News):
President Biden and key U.S. allies were in Normandy Thursday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the U.S.-led allied forces’ D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France. The brazen air and sea invasion would mark the beginning of the end of World War II, leading to the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German forces in Europe less than a year later.
Mr. Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were together to mark the most significant victory of the Western allies in the war, as well as the largest seaborne invasion in history. Mr. Biden is in France through the weekend for D-Day anniversary commemorations and plans to meet with leaders of key allies during his visit.
“What the allies did here 80 years ago, far surpassed anything we could have done on our own,” Mr. Biden said in remarks Thursday. “Together, we won the war.”
The president of the United States should attend these ceremonies, though issues about Biden’s age and mental health reared its ugly head during the event.
When Biden arrived yesterday, he was totally gassed—a lid was called virtually when Air Force One touched down in Europe. Second, on stage today, Biden appeared to have a brain malfunction. Whatever this was, it was awkward:
Also, did Joe fall asleep?
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SOURCE: www.townhall.com
RELATED: As Lonely as a Man Can Get’: The True Story of D-Day, as Told by Paratroopers
The men who leaped from planes into the world’s greatest battle tell their harrowing story, in their own words.
Paratroopers sit aboard a Douglas C-47 plane prior to the Allied invasion of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. | U.S. National Archives
Published June 6, 2024
English Channel to fight Hitler’s Third Reich in Fortress Europe, U.S. and British paratroopers painted their faces black, shaved their heads, handed letters to loved ones out the windows of their planes and took to the sky. Some would never again feel the ground beneath their feet. Some would drown in the flooded fields below them. One would have his cigarettes shot out of his pants mid-air. But all of them, together, would triumph in perhaps the greatest undertaking in all of human history, defeating fascism in Europe and changing the world forever.
Now, as President Joe Biden marks the 80th anniversary with ceremonies in Normandy, D-Day is slipping from memory into history; the living survivors have dwindled to just a few thousand worldwide.
I’ve spent the last two years compiling thousands of oral histories, memoirs, official reports, news articles, TV and radio clips, contemporaneous letters, and more, for a new book, When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day, that ultimately pulls together the voices of nearly 700 participants in that monumental world event.
This excerpt, based on dozens of archival sources, traces the first hours of the Operation Overlord liberation of Normandy. While history recognizes D-Day as beginning on June 6, 1944, the invasion truly started the previous night, as thousands of C-47 Dakota plane engines roared to life, ready to carry 13,348 paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions over Normandy shortly after midnight.
