Never trust the Official Story
Even D-Day buffs probably hadn't heard about this shockingly lethal training debacle in the lead-up to the Normandy invasions:
The shocking double tragedy of a D-Day rehearsal exercise 75 years ago this weekend has been remembered in a new book.I very much doubt Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if the American people had been permitted to know about his very costly error in judgment. Apparently the U.S. military still has not admitted the live-fire incident, although it did come clean about the E-boat attacks in 1954.
More than 1,200 Allied soldiers were killed over two days off Slapton Sands in Devon, a disaster that was kept hidden by the authorities for decades.
On April 27, 1944 over 400 of them were slaughtered by the friendly fire of shells bursts on the beach due to a timing error. The following day nine German E-boats passing through Lyme Bay stumbled upon the exercise and opened fire on the mock-invasion fleet, killing 749 men.
Scores of bodies washed up on to the beach in harrowing scenes that would be replicated six weeks later on the beaches of Normandy.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted his men to be battle-hardened ahead of D-Day so he insisted on live ammunition being used during the trial run. But a calamitous error with timings meant some of the landing craft arrived at the wrong time where they came under heavy artillery fire. The tragic mishap meant a wave of servicemen taking part in the rehearsal were killed on the stony beach.
76 Comments:
The United States was definitely on the wrong side in WW2 in Europe.
I knew about it at least a decade ago. It is part of my argument on why I was wrong to support the Iraq war. The US no longer is willing to accept the causality rates that are required to seriously win a war, especially an occupying action. WW2 casualty rates were high enough that this faded into statistical noise. Losing over a 1000 men in 2 days would cause use to leave the entire theater of war these days.
Fascinating - this is the first I've heard of either incident. My grandfather was to go ashore on D-Day with the rest of his Canadian regiment, but got sick with pneumonia instead, which may have been just as well.
He never spoke of his wartime experiences, and has now passed. History like this helps me to understand more of the conditions he and his fellow soldiers had to endure.
There should be a VD law there someplace. Something like "governments never tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth on any event".
This is a lot like "Rebel Yell," by S.C. Gwynne. In it, one would learn that Stonewall Jackson was not, in fact, a racist. (e.g., Jackson did not like slavery and even created a Sunday school for the children of slaves.) But, hey, let's tear down statues to his memory, because reasons!
It's amazing that biographers and those that study historic events dedicated to their craft have to get to the nitty-gritty of these things. I sure as sh*t didn't learn these things in my indoctrination centers---sorry, I mean schools.
The excellent series Foyle's War has an episode specifically devoted to the British/American coverup of the E-boat attack..Apparently, some Royal Navy ships were supposed to provide cover for the exercise, but didn't bother to show up...
I'm starting to think pothead rasta layabouts have the right idea
I have a book on the subject, which I think is called something like the Forgotten Dead. I file it away in my mind with things like the Indianapolis sinking and the West Loch fire. But Slapton is less known with bigger casualties. Sometimes I'm out of touch with just how secret some historical events remain. The idea that almost as many men died on D-Day in a training exercise shortly before is hard for people to wrap their minds around.
They take advantage, those powers that be. There was good reason to keep it secret before D-Day and after D-Day they had morale to consider. But then just never telling anyone? That takes audacious stubbornness.
I'd like to think Eisenhower would have been disqualified from the presidency for what he did to Geerman POWs and civilians after the war. But I guess they were just the enemy and no one cared.
david irving wrote about this in his book the war between the generals, inside the allied high command. 1981 I think it is. David Irving has a number of well researched books on ww2 and a few youtube vids that are very insightful on the leaders of both sides.
The deaths due to E-boats can be blamed on the Royal Navy. And Friendly Fire deaths occur in all wars. Marshall and Ike were NOT the great military Giants they've been made out to be, but its hard to blame them for these mishaps. You can blame Ike for the absurd "Siegfried Line November Offensive" and ensuing Battle of Bulge which cost the lives of 20,000 USA Troops.
D-Day was unnecessary. The war,for Germany, was over before empty suit* Ike committed American men to the meat grinder that was D-Day.
* From Carroll Quigley's assessment of Eisenhower in Tragedy and Hope.
OVERLORD: The Unnecessary Invasion
By
William F. Moore
Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
The massive allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 was not necessary for the military defeat of Germany. The German Army had already been destroyed on the eastern front, and the German war industry was being devastated by the combined bombing offensive. According to Trumbull Higgins,
When the British were finally compelled by their Allies to invade France in 1944, it was an invasion essentially undertaken in the self-interest of the West, the terrible risk of the collapse of the Soviet Union having long since passed. At this date the Red Army no longer needed more than Western supplies with which to occupy eastern Europe. (4:283)
The Normandy invasion was simply too late to be of meaningful assistance to the Russians. In fact, Stalin had conceded that is was no longer necessary.
Furthermore, many capable allied strategists knew that OVERLORD was no longer required and recommended against it. Why were these recommendations not heeded, especially since they would have resulted in greatly reduced British and American casualties? Two considerations cannot be ignored. First was the sheer momentum behind the OVERLORD planning. American planners had placed all their European "eggs" in this basket, they had been advocating OVERLORD against the British for over two years, and they were unwilling to concede to the British position in late 1943. Secondly, American leaders, including Roosevelt, felt that unless American forces took a significant (albeit late) share in defeating the German Army, the Russians would be entirely uncooperative in the post-war world and probably would
dear lord, they were lying to us even back then.
Firing heavy guns ahead of an exercise without eyes on the beach? That is downright idiotic. What radio system were they using? Tomato cans and string?
Totally OT. Very good and not too long.
A 34 min sympathetic lecture on Putin, maybe for the neocon Russian haters in your lives?
"How to Think About Putin’s Russia” - Christopher Caldwell
https://youtu.be/CuY8hTWDqYw
Eisenhower ran actual death camps that murdered a million German POW's by slow starvation. Many were boys. Civilians that attempted to throw food over the boundary fences in pity were told they would be shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAgLaF6Wd8c
That's a new one to me. You know that tight feeling that you get in your chest when you have fukked up bad. I can't even begin to imagine what it must of felt like for the officers involved in this massacre of thier own men. I've always wondered what it must of been like to order, or participate in the firebombing of Dresden and tokyo. Just thinking about the women and cute kids burning up freaks me out. Not sure Ike showed bad judgement to use live ammo. Sounds like he was let down by middle management.
Add this to the tragedy at Dieppe where Winston Dunghill knew that the Germans knew the Canadians were coming, and we're talking about a biblical scale of incompetence, paid for with the blood and souls of thousands and thousands of brave men. Excuse me while I throw up.
Similar casualties to the Raid on Dieppe. Honestly, it doesn't seem like a big deal given the context.
I find it shocking a patrol of German E-boats could make it more-or-less undetected into Lyme Bay by early 1944 in daylight.
human sacrifice?
I saw a documentary on this about a year ago. It was an interesting piece of mostly unknown history.
@11
The Soviets would have crushed Germany without D-Day, sure. The problem is "what would the Soviets have done with all of continental Europe under their boot heel". On top of that, consider the consequences if the Soviets end up with ALL of the Nazi engineers and scientists instead of the US getting a big chunk of them from Operation Paperclip. What would a Soviet Union that had nuclear ballistic missiles while the US was stuck with bombers do? How would the Cold War play out without the Fulda Gap + NATO to keep them at bay?
Nevermind that the Soviets had been begging the rest of the allies to open up a second front for years. But yes, the Normandy landings were about ending the war sooner and on better terms for the rest of the allies than being absolutely necessary to end the war.
HMS Azalea, pictured, was part of the training exercise and spotted nine German E-boats approaching, but a radio error prevented allied forces from intercepting the attacking vessels before the could open fire killing 749 men.
I'm a civilian but this explanation sounds like bull. I know it's old hat to blame radio operators in official stories.
I also don't know how he came to this information but my dad who is from a formerly Axis occupied country told me years ago about the friendly fire and that the Germans may have been there. Now I'm wondering what other Ally "secrets" people from Axis lands know of that Allies found out much later. Frankly, I don't know how to handle this.
Patton didn't like Ike and I don't blame him.
Not surprised, really, just frustrated and maddened. My father's division landed on Utah Beach, which makes me more thankful that he was in a second echelon division, not the initial assault.
The time delay was getting the classifying authority to downgrade. Probably had to go from Top Secret-Codeword, to Top Secret, then Secret, and finally Unclassified; probably 25-35 years to make sure that methods and materials were protected. Look at the photos released in the 60s and 70s, and you see things like radar dishes whited out - the ships and material were still in use or in reserve forces. Then add the official embarrassment factor on top, and downgrade or declassification was kept slow. If the (British) Official Secrets Act was part of this, that would be 70 years then consider declassifying.
I remember reading a story once about the invention of a machine that could film the past. The created a movie about the Roman Empire using the footage, and had to actually refilm some scenes differently using modern day actors because their actual true footage conflicted too much with what history said had happened.
I believe much of what we think we know about history differs from the actual facts either by addition or omission. I hope in heaven we can view the past of the world because I'd dearly love to have so many questions and mysteries answered....
@10- Friendly fire happens, yes, and maybe the Germans popping up was not Ike's fault. But casualties of this magnitude are highly unusual, and it at least should go down as one of the great boners in American and British military history.
But the real story is that they kept it quiet for decades. Which I might admire for its chutzpah if it were not so evil.
@18- Dieppe was an offensive operation at least. Slapton was a "Hey, let's mess around. Whoa, that was a mistake...Oops, we forgot this was a warzone...Keep this between you and me, huh?"
A flower class corvette would be wholly inadequate to take on torpedo boats, they were the poor man's ASW tub and I believe converted small merchantmen, or at least built on small merchant hulls. Were there any German casualties?
@16 My father-in-law participated in the Dresden raid and it haunted him until the day he died. He told me that the bombardiers were told Dresden was legit target due to huge German troops and weapons manufacturing presence. He said they deliberately trapped people by fire bombing the center of the city first and then when firefighters rushed in, they lit the outside perimeter up to encircle as many as possible with a hellish ring of fire. Upon returning home, he tried to drink himself to death, but after being hospitalized near death, he gave it up for politics, which he excelled at, because after so many bombing missions over Germany nothing ever rattled him again.
He also turned his back on God, whom he blamed for allowing the carnage. On his death bead,in delirium,he relived every minute of the terror of inferno hurricanes from 10 thousand feet.
I knew quite a few of his old bombardier buddies. They told some gut wrenching tales, but none I knew were proud of what they'd done.
I've read a lot of military history, and the Slapton Sands debacle is well known. Anthony Beevor mentions it in his D Day book, and Rick Atkinson discusses it is his prologue to his final European War volume "The Guns at Last Light." (the entire Atkinson series is highly recommended).
Charles MacDonald, who fought in Europe and was the US Military Historian (and author of "Time for Trumpets" THE book on the Battle of the Bulge) also wrote about it. In the context of D-Day and the Normandy campaign it was, alas, just a bump in the road.
However, the whole thing led to a major freak out, not because guys died, but because guys who KNEW about the invasion died, and their bodies took a while to be recovered and they had to be sure they weren't captured.
Keep in mind that Eisenhower's forte was as an adminstrator, organizer,and diplomat not so much a strategist or tactical planner.
We had some great Generals -- Collins and Patton come to mind -- but others were not very bright, like Bradley. Patton should have been made head of the European Armies, not Monty, but there were allies to think about and, besides, even back them political correctness was the norm. Can't slap shell shocked solders, like Patton did, and get away with it.
The military debacles during the war -- and there were many!! -- were of course kept under wraps because the government had well-oiled censorshop procedures. Patton getting an armoned column to spring his son-in-law from prison camp -- CNN would go apeshit over that today.
And then there were the personal issues that would be all over TMZ today -- Patton having an affair in Paris with his step niece, Eisenhower's affair with his driver, Marlene Dietrich sleeping around with Patton, Gavin, and other high ranking American officers.
Fuck ups and fucking -- along with maiming, death, and destruction -- were the norm. Remember, 50-70,000 French civilians died as we cut our way through France in 1944. Oh well. They were just in the way.
The USAF has NO REASON WHATSOEVER to lie about WW2.
@22. and yet, the Soviet Union still got the bomb and matched US tech for tech in the next two wars....some great sacrifice.
I wonder if live-fire exercise was common in WWII. I remember my grandfather telling me about when he was training for the Army having live fire while crawling through concertina strewn fields. The guys would line up and fire over the heads of the guys crawling and their COs would be yelling at them to fire lower repeatedly. He said people did get hit. I can't recall if this was stateside or after he deployed to eastern Germany/Poland.
The Lost Generation sacrificed the Greatest,who in turn gave up the Boomers to the Vietnam farce for the preservation of globohomonism and muh metling pot. And now, Boomers and Gen X give up the Millennials and Gen Zs to to the MENA meat market for the preservation of Israel. Man as, Karl Denninger posits,is not a learning animal. I have to agree.
Was The Greatest Generation Really The Weakest Generation?
The military is a large bureaucracy and it's behavior is best understood in that light. You might hope that competence, mission success and saving lives are the priorities but, in reality, they are often farther down the list than anyone wishes to acknowledge.
Wars are often won by those making fewer grave errors rather than by any particular brilliance. Winners usually go out of their way to embellish the accomplishments and bury the mistakes.
Catastrophes such as this one and Dieppe are probably attributable to Winston Churchill being snakebit after his own amphibious invasion fiasco at Gallipoli in WWI, and wanting as many dress rehearsals as possible. I don't know why he couldn't just ask Chester Nimitz, since the United States had by this time a fairly well-developed set of strategies for amphibious invasions in the Pacific.
Reminds me of the Dieppe Raid.
@Blunt Force, reminds you a bit of what the higher ups did to Ender and his crew in Emder's Game, I bet. Sorry to hear about your FIL. He didn't consent to that. I want to address the following,
He told me that the bombardiers were told Dresden was legit target due to huge German troops and weapons manufacturing presence.
As you know, Dresden was where 200,000 refugees went for safety. The 3-day campaign was brutal. Russians in tanks were there to mow down those refugees outside Dresden. My oma who was one such refugee hid in a ditch to avoid the tanks. She saw a caravan and its mule ran over, a whole family killed. Also a woman sucked into the inferno. She said it was the loudest thing she ever heard and that the fire sounded like a sustained wail.
I even had nightmares for years about inferno before I knew about the firebombing or that my maternal oma was there. Apparently these things get encoded on the maternal line.
Your FIL could not have known what the mission specs were until it was already underway. Being ethnically from that side of the world I want to let anyone know who served Ally interests on the Eastern front that there is no hard feelings now for Allies. Those who had hard feelings are long dead and there's no point holding a grudge against those who had no choice.
My keen interest in military history is focused on what they call the "fog of war"....the utter confusion and chaos that surrounds military operations (and the disconnect that follows wartime propaganda and the fake history afterward).
The screw-ups leading up to D-Day and after the invasion could probably fill a bookcase. Most people are rendered completely confused when told how badly the D-Day operation was conducted. Hollywood considers it a great victory.
The British were still apprehensive about amphibious invasion due to the the Gallipoli debacle in WWI. They tried it in Norway in 1940 and lost their hinnie. They tried it again at Dieppe in a raid in 1942 with French Canadians and few escaped. The Americans were big on amphibious assault. They landed in North Afrika in 1942, Sicily in 1943 (with the British), and Italy immediately afterward. The Italian campaign was the British substitute for the D-Day invasion proposed by the Americans since 1942. Likewise, the British opposed the American invasion of the south of France in 1944 after D-Day through the Rhone river valley, in favor of more effort in Italy or a landing in the Balkans.
The British expected the Americans to provide the muscle, while they directed the war in Europe. The entire history of the war was a slow transition from the British to the American management of the war.
Eisenhower was running an alliance and was very likely picked because they knew he was a go along get along guy. Competent enough and all that, but not chosen for his tactical brilliance. George Washington, by the way, was the same thing. Both Washington and Ike had the ability to hold things together, and that is likely why both of them were chosen to lead. Not too surprising that they made successful politicians, they were semi politicians already.
And in agreement with previous comments, militaries screw up a lot. That is why when a well run one comes along they so easily dominate.
Years ago, I worked with a boomer during a holiday stint at the post office. His father was a WWII vet who served in Germany. His father said that he didn't know how they won after they made so many mistakes.
This incident has been known for a long time, at least 25 years.
Concur that Eisenhower was not a military genius. Patton in 1943 realized Ike had Presidential aspirations...and by mid 1945, both Patton and Bradley were barely on speaking terms with Eisenhower. They were both convinced that Eisenhower was too deferential to the British, too willing to keep pouring resources into Montgomery's failed attacks when the Americans were gaining ground...to say nothing of Patton's Third Army. They were drilling for Prague FAST.
Why was the US at war with Germany (outside the retarded alliances and treaties, how many times were those ignored prior?), and what did we gain from World War II seventy five years later? The USA had a good 50 year run as the only remaining industrial power. Was that worth it? The British empire fell apart and became a socialist migrant haven. Germany was tortured for 50 years, and lost its ability to have any culture until it was given a reprieve only to be invaded by migrants. France is basically unchanged, outside the loss of a large portion of its healthy male population. Eastern Europe was reset back to the Stone Age and has now mostly worked its way out of civil wars and enemy occupation. Russia lost practically half its population and became the official enemy of the west. Italy is in the same boat as France. Spain has been lagging since the 1600s. Africa’s population was artificially boosted without increasing resource access, and has been Mad Max since S.Africa decided to kill itself. Poland got whipped so many times its now entirely made of cultural scar tissue and callouses. The Middle East was the same old sand box as usual until the west installed Israel as the new reason to use the sandbox as a litter box. Basically only Israel and Zionism benefitted from WWII. America had a short term injection of economic and military dominance that is rapidly coming to a close.
>>Why was the US at war with Germany...
I just finished reading Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. While I don't agree with everything, Patrick Buchanan makes an excellent case that a lot of stupid diplomacy triggered both WWI and WWII, that the wars did little more than damage the European powers, and that there is at least a chance that both wars could have been avoided.
@44 KG
"Why was the US at war with Germany (outside the retarded alliances and treaties, how many times were those ignored prior?), ..."
The Pearl Harbor attack was on Sunday and on Thursday, Adolph Hitler declared war on the US. Later that same day, the US declared war on Germany.
@41: "His father said that he didn't know how they won after they made so many mistakes."
The allies made many mistakes, alright, they just made fewer mistakes than Germany did.
@40- I'm awfully sick of WWII movies and Churchill movies in particular, but there was one recently starring Brian Cox as apprehensive on the eve of D-Day lest Gallipoli be repeated. He wants to revive his "soft underbelly" idea. Everyone ignores him. Eisenhower yells at him, I think.
There was nary a mention of Dieppe or Slapton Sands. Just Gallipoli. Is it even that well-known? Outside of people who saw the Mel Gibson movie, that is. I find the general public is aware of nearly zero facts about WWI.
@41- Eisenhower is a suspicious duck. There were probably enough "go along to get along" guys Ike jumped over to become supreme commander. He hadn't been an active commander, I don't think, until after he was Assistant Chief of Staff under Marshall, another suspicious character. I think it was "connections" that put Ike on the fast track.
Remember, Eisenhower won the crooked convention in '52, which stole the thunder of the more populist Robert Taft. Then as president he wrung the neck of the McCarthy movement.
DonReynolds wrote:@44 KG
"Why was the US at war with Germany (outside the retarded alliances and treaties, how many times were those ignored prior?), ..."
The Pearl Harbor attack was on Sunday and on Thursday, Adolph Hitler declared war on the US. Later that same day, the US declared war on Germany.
When Woodrow Wilson was over in Europe helping to screw up the armistice settlement with Germany, he pressured Great Britain into dropping their alliance with Japan. That in turn triggered the start of Japanese military adventurism in the Far East, eventually caused two British battle ships to get sunk, the British evacuation of the region, and eventually led to the Pearl Harbor attack.
So why did the United States declare war on Germany? Well, it started with Woodrow Wilson and the termination of a non retarded alliance.
I meant more as in why did the USA end up in a situation in which it was at war with Germany, not why formal declarations were made.
I’ve always had difficulty getting my brother and father to consider that the greatest generation was, based on the results and the true motivations of what happened through 1920’s - 1960’s, the most gullible and naive generation.
"very much doubt Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if the American people had been permitted to know about his very costly error in judgment."
Ike seems to have survived time without much examination of his leadership. Maybe there's a deference to those five stars or the relative placidity of the fifties, but one wonders what other mistakes he made as SAC. Nobody is perfect.
Good luck getting boomers to grasp that d-day was anything other than the greatest American achievement/sacrifice other than the moon landing. As a millennial, I was always curious why my greatest gen ww2 vet Nonno didn’t care to discuss much about the war, and didn’t seem interested in movies/books/media about it. Yet my dad, like many a boomer, basically worshipped the ww2 vets.
I live near-ish to Slapton and visited as a kid in the 80s. There's a Sherman tank preserved as a memorial. I remember my dad back then saying that it was a friendly fire incident. I was under the impression that the E-Boat story was a cover for the friendly fire.
No. Fuck this noise. What manner of fucking PSYCHOS give LIVE AMMO to those shooting at their own troops in a training exercise?
I have to think only truly evil men could allow such things to happen. Accidents? OK. Maybe. LIVE AMMO?
I hope they are burning in Hell.
OK, I'm going to run counter to this thread. Ike was a very good Supreme Allied Commander: he got the heard of cats going in the right direction. He also realized that while he could not WIN the war in a single stroke (unlike Monty), he could LOSE it by one big mistake. Not because of casualties, but because U.S. public support for the war would erode (as it began to do by Dec '44). That is why he always took the least risky choices.
His adamant refusal to let the Normandy invasion get side-tracked by any peripheral efforts was another amazing feat (think of what today's Pentagon would do under such pressure).
And finally, he did a full-dress, live-fire rehearsal for D-Day - despite the known risks. Again, our current risk-averse military will depend on our untested hi-tech and will get our boys slaughtered one of these days in some overly-complex 3rd-world intervention fiasco.
Don't run Ike - or even MacArthur - down without comparing them to the current crop of Pentagon Perfumed Princes.
BTW, Dieppe was absolutely necessary to determine if the current theory of amphibious warfare was correct. It turned out to be completely wrong, but they fixed it by D-Day (the largest single planned event in human history).
Bit OTT, re: which nation was most damaged by world war
It looks like England was damaged the most. Germany is an artificial construction younger than Canada and what's not real cannot be damaged. What's not real also cannot succeed and despite that it became the backbone of the EU. Kind of weird for a fictive loser to be the boiler room of an operation. I gotta dismiss it out of hand because it had a different role. America double-bounced further ahead than previous decades and produced some of the best story telling ever in print, radio, and film in the following decade. USSR dissolved after honestly confronting communism.
While America is yet to finish it's own glasnost, which I believe we're in, both USA and Russia are doing pretty good despite land invasion or sanctions. Hatchet buried for now. That's amazing.
England though? It was broken. Rations for 10 years. India gained independence and Pakistan too. That is something Indians recognize was only possible through Germany breaking England. Now locked in a surveillance pact with USA, England really has become Foucault's panopticon. Theodore Dalrymple does an excellent job dissecting the malaise in England btw, with a focus on medical and cultural forces.
British media also suffered post war. Their version of camp like Dr. Who was morose unlike the silly American type found in Batman.
Pulp sci-fi like Day of the Triffids from 1951 put a stamp on the psyche. It's been put on film twice that I know of, on radio, and printed multiple times. It's a great book, one of my favorites from my favourite author. However, the base theme is family and survival. That is a theme of desperation arrived at through the necessity of hope. You don't come to these themes as a willing participant.
@tublecane In Australia and New Zealand, we have a national holiday on the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing on April 25th, ANZAC Day. I'm quite sure the official story we all learn as children is wrong, but it is impossible to not know about the event if you live here. The near total ignorance applies about everything else to do with WWI however.
@54
"As a millennial, I was always curious why my greatest gen ww2 vet Nonno didn’t care to discuss much about the war, and didn’t seem interested in movies/books/media about it. Yet my dad, like many a boomer, basically worshipped the ww2 vets."
My great Uncle was a Marine in the Pacific. He was involved in the Tarawa invasion, and I believe was the only survivor in his unit. What I know about that is he was pinned down without food for three days at some place in the South Pacific.
His last assignment was Hiroshima clean up in Sept/October. When he came back in late 1945/early 1946, he got married and my great aunt became pregnant. Their daughter was born with spina bifida and lived nine months. They never had any more children.
A few months before he died, there was a documentary on cable about Tarawa. My grandmother-his sister-called him to let him know it was on -and all he could say was "thanks, but going through it once was enough, I'll pass"
When I was younger, I wished he would have told me of his experiences-now I understand my interest in his experiences didn't override his desire to forget them-especially since they very well might have followed him home and taken his child.
Some wounds can't be touched without tearing them open again. They wanted to come home and start living again.
/sigh/
I liked Ike. Any more childhood favorites I need to be disillusioned on?
Mark Twain is still great, right?
I honor their sacrifice, too, in winning the war.
But I'm thinking of Kratman and Carerra as I read, I guess his books taught me well.
As far as Ike is concerned, I've always been reminded of a letter he wrote on June 5, 1944, known as the "In case of failure" letter:
https://www.businessinsider.com/d-day-in-case-of-failure-letter-by-general-eisenhower-2012-6
I first saw a copy, (I doubt it's the original), in the WWII Museum in New Orleans. I've always wondered if Slapton Sands had an influence on that letter.
Um, one other thing, which relates to the "unknown" about WWII:
When one thinks about the PT Boats, they usually think the Pacific theater. I was always intrigued by the battle fought by the German F-Lighters (armored barges), and PT Boats, especially in the Mediterranean. Till not to many years ago, it was almost impossible to find any info on them. Here's a start:
http://www.steelnavy.com/WEMFlakLighter.htm
Makes for a good movie, better than that JFK tripe.
Churchill wanted to see how many times he could reenact Galipoli in one war.
Well, certainly the US is no longer willing to accept *enemy* casualty rates required to win a war. - Traitors like Obama have no problem at all with giving US troops ROE's that are tantamount to suicide.
@39 My father-in-law came from old German stock as well. I'm sure that played a part in the pain of knowingly murdered so many innocents.
That said,speaking on the naivete of the Greatest, near the end of his life, his record keeping for his small logging business fell into disarray, mostly due to his wife having passed, but he wouldn't allow anyone else to "meddle" in his business, so he kept the books himself.
This led to him coming under the thumb of the IRS who literally ass-raped him by seizing control of all his property and assets which prevented him from selling anything to pay the tax lien. Eventually via political contacts, he cleared up the affair,but at an cost way beyond any amount of money he actually owed due to interest on tax debt and penalties. To satisfy the parasites, he had to sell nearly everything he owned.
After it was all over, he was totally bewildered at the actions of his dear old Uncle Sam.
"I can't believe the government did this to me ", he said?
"Why not", I asked.
The answer was quite reveling of the mindset of the Greatest. "Because I fought in the war" came the reply.
And there you have it. Duty, honor,loyalty mean nothing to the people that would have us sacrifice all under the pretense of nation and freedom.
In the end, they who made the sacrifice received neither. We get what we allow and deservedly so.
@54
Eugene Sledge's personal account of war in the Pacific is a must read for any interested in the personal sacrifice and brutality of wresting control of a fortress island from the Japanese death grip.
Many islands were non-strategic and taking them was senseless act of getting men slaughtered for vague reason. Sledge makes this vividly clear in his personal portrait of Pacific horror.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
And for a bit of trivia - S130, the last surviving e-boat, was part of the attack and shared in the sinking of one of the LST's.
@Blunt Force,
Much like the modern employment world, loyalty flows one way. You're expected to be loyal, even as a business owner, and don't receive anything coming your way.
Slight aside you may find interesting, I've noticed that tptb really don't like German or Pomeranian forestry work. You're the third or fourth person I've talked to from a forestry background with capital/property stolen.
Of course German/Celtic/Nordic love of trees continues to the modern day and man alive I bet you know well how much the forestry industry has converged in spite of that.
In the army air corps, more people died in training than died over in Europe fighting the war. They were able to hide those numbers until after the war ended and they found they were still losing thousands of men each year.
My father was a gunnery instructor and he once told me about all of the people (friends of his, other instructors, etc) that died in training accidents. People couldn't wait to get out of training because it was safer in the war zone.
@71- There was a novel called Guard of Honor about an air force base in Florida during the war, written by a man who had been press liaison for "Hap" Arnold. One of the major incidents is a surprise birthday demonstration for a general featuring a flyover and paratrooper jump which ends in disaster when the troopers land in one of the many lakes of Florida and drown. 19 of them, maybe? I don't know whether this is based on a real event, but the novel does recreate the real-life Freeman Field Mutiny. So maybe.
Think of all the moving parts in war, all the men, machinery, and dangerous things they did, stuff like that happens. Especially considering human weakness, like stupidity, inexperience, and drunkenness.
'I very much doubt Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if the American people had been permitted to know about his very costly error in judgment.'
Call me crazy, but after a war in which America suffered 407,300 casualties, I don't think that the American public would have been overly troubled about a tragic wartime accident, even one as deadly as that.
@73
I suspect you are ccorrect. I just had a conversation with an 81 year old relative. She told me that as a bobby-soxer high schooler, her opinion and that of her classmates was that the people that were in government were wise statesmen and the country was lucky to be governed by them. Needless to say that isn't her opinion now.
That period she described was ten years after World War II, where the worship of the state-especially FDR-meant any decision the government made was right. They questioned nothing and any casualty was presumed to be an absolute necessity in the successful prosecution of the war.
Did Ike set a record for the speed he went from major to 4 star General?
We do not wish to imply, however, that this meteoric rise was due entirely to the exercise of Eisenhower's flattering charm on Anne Roosevelt Boettiger, nor even to the personal favoritism of her father which he thereby obtained
https://robertwelchuniversity.org/Politician-Final2.pdf
thanks,
Jerry
:without-prejudice
Did Ike set a record for the speed he went from major to 4 star General?
We do not wish to imply, however, that this meteoric rise was due entirely to the exercise of Eisenhower's flattering charm on Anne Roosevelt Boettiger, nor even to the personal favoritism of her father which he thereby obtained
https://robertwelchuniversity.org/Politician-Final2.pdf
thanks,
Jerry
:without-prejudice
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