PhotosNormandie is a collaborative collection of more than 3,000
royalty-free photos from World War II's Battle of Normandy and its aftermath. (Photos date from June 6 to late August 1944). The main link goes to the photostream. You can also peruse
sets, which include 2700+ images from the
US and
Canadian National Archives.
posted by zarq
on Mar 19, 2013 -
12 comments
"[It's] all the more staggering when you realize that more people were killed in the rehearsal for the landing at Utah beach than were killed in the actual landing at Utah beach."
Operation Tiger, the disastrous secret rehearsal for D-Day, marks its 68th anniversary today.
posted by Spike
on Apr 28, 2012 -
21 comments
H1t3r pwnd UK, USA! A gunnery has been discovered, buried beneath a metre of iron-rich
Normandy soil. It was likely part of a ruse on the part of the Axis forces: a fake gunnery was also built, less conspicuously, and
it took the abuse. It was forgotten -- or the memory at least buried by the locals and those who fought there -- until recently. Now it appears to explain some puzzles about
Bloody Omaha [
pic].
posted by five fresh fish
on Feb 7, 2006 -
49 comments
Mont St. Michel on the Normandy coast of France is a 12th century gothic abbey purched at the top of a tiny fortified village built around a small mountain; what's most unique about the location is that due to the very gentle incline of the coast, the mountain is located on salt marsh flats at
low tide, but becomes an
isolated island in the sea at high tide, accessible only by a raised road (added in the 1950s). It's also one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. While there are no shortage of photos of it online,
this gallery had some of the most beautiful ones I'd ever seen. For those who can't make it to France,
here's a quick guide to recreating the experience in miniature.
warning - last link is from geocities, good for first six visitors only
posted by jonson
on Jul 21, 2003 -
28 comments
I just read an article about a
one-man off-Broadway play based on the war reporting of Ernie Pyle. Meanwhile, the
IU School of Journalism is reprinting three dozen of his dispatches. It is interesting that Pyle, perhaps the original embedded reporter managed to
report honestly about the horrors of war in spite of perhaps a more sweeping censorship department that read everything coming from the front. Pyle's
description of Normandy (previously discussed) is a classic contrasting a beautiful day on the beach, the human and material wreckage, and even empathy for German prisoners of war. And then there was
some black humor of surviving near misses that could have come out of
Catch 22 or
Slaugherhouse 5. His unfinished final dispatch reads like poetry:
"Dead men by mass production--in one country after another--month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer.
"Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous.
"Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them."
posted by KirkJobSluder
on May 6, 2003 -
8 comments
D-Day was 57 years ago yesterday. It was 16 years before
an article in the Atlantic finally provided Americans an unvarnished account of the carnage that was Omaha Beach that day. I'm in awe of what these 19-year-olds went through.
posted by luser
on Jun 7, 2001 -
1 comment
It's D-Day Someone at work shared this Ernie Pyle column published just 10 days after the 1944 invasion of Normandy. It put a lump in my throat. Maybe it'll do the same for you. Excerpt: "I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France.
It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn't know they were in the water, for they were dead."
posted by GaelFC
on Jun 6, 2001 -
14 comments
