“Where they fall, there is no one to take note of and report.”
June 6, 2015 8:55 AM   Subscribe

First Wave at Omaha Beach On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded occupied France. S. L. A. Marshall Nov. 1, 1960 [The Atlantic]
When he was promoted to officer rank at eighteen, S. L. A. Marshall was the youngest shavetail in the United States Army during World War I. He rejoined the Army in 1942, became a combat historian with the rank of colonel; and the notes he made at the time of the Normandy landing are the source of this heroic reminder. Readers will remember his frank and ennobling book about Korea, The River and the Gauntlet, which was the result of still a third tour of duty.
posted by Fizz (24 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
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goddamn..
posted by bird internet at 9:14 AM on June 6, 2015


My Uncle Bill was in the first wave at Utah beach. He never talked about it, to any of us.

For all of those young men: thanks.
posted by easily confused at 9:34 AM on June 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


Thanks for posting this.
posted by clavdivs at 9:48 AM on June 6, 2015


I'm not a big fan of jingoistic patriotism. But this isn't that. It is a harrowing account of battle and it is unpleasant but also worth remembering. If only so that we can hopefully avoid such a future world war. It is not long but long-ish and well worth taking the time to read.
posted by Fizz at 9:51 AM on June 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


Everytime I read one of these accounts my mind is blown. How anyone had the fortitude to continue forward as everyone around them was cut down is beyond me. My wife's grandfather served in the pacific in WW II and earned a silver star as well as a handful of other decorations yet he never spoke to anyone about his experience at war.
posted by photoslob at 10:05 AM on June 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


S.L.A. Marshall: great writer, lying statistician. I can appreciate the first while deprecating the last. His more than 30 books are still worth reading as long as you remember he was a bit of a fabulist.
posted by seasparrow at 10:08 AM on June 6, 2015 [5 favorites]


I wonder how Normandy is taught in Germany.
posted by rhizome at 10:21 AM on June 6, 2015


My Uncle Bill was in the first wave at Utah beach. He never talked about it, to any of us.

My Uncle Harold was a SSG in the 2nd Battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division (at least, he was when he came back.) It wasn't until I was close to 30 that I realized that this mean he was part of the 16th Regimental Combat Team. The 16th RCT, along with the 116th RCT, landed at Omaha beach.

He never talked about it. When I asked him, he said "I was there, but I need to leave it there." I never asked him again. He was a good man, and I miss him to this day -- I didn't get along with many of my downstate relatives, but Uncle Harold, I would move the planet for. If there were more people like him, we'd live in a better world.

When he passed away, I found his shadow box. He'd been there the whole way, Kasserine Pass to the end of the Europe War, then rest and refit, waiting for the orders to ship to Japan and get ready for Olympic, the Invasion, the big one. The orders that never came.

The medal on top was a Silver Star. There were two Purple Hearts.
posted by eriko at 10:29 AM on June 6, 2015 [25 favorites]


D-day is portrayed in American mythology as the epic battle against Nazi Germany, but it was really a battle to save Western Europe from falling under Soviet influence. Stalin got his Western front only after the Red Army had done all the dying and had broken the back of the German war machine and this offensive was only to deny him the prize of communist Europe. It was treachery, but in the most noble cause. Without D-day there would never have been a West Germany and the world would look very different today.
posted by three blind mice at 11:02 AM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Fallen 9000
posted by growabrain at 11:06 AM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I wonder how Normandy is taught in Germany.

I wonder how WWII is taught in Germany.
posted by fatbird at 11:07 AM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


D-day is portrayed in American mythology as the epic battle against Nazi Germany

Pretty sure this is how 99% of the Americans (and British, Canadians, Free French, etc) actually felt about it while it was happening. Also the vast majority of Soviets desperately wanted to see more going on in the west to take the pressure off of them, what with so many dying and all.

We shouldn't be blind to the deny-the-Soviets strategy at the endgame, but we also shouldn't act like everyone knew a Soviet victory was a foregone conclusion at the time. Or, as John Green has put it, when people in the past tell us why they did a thing, we should do them the favor of believing them.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:20 AM on June 6, 2015 [10 favorites]


My grandfather was another who would never talk about his experiences in the war.

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posted by sarcasticah at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2015


I wonder how WWII is taught in Germany.

This has been a hot topic of discussion on Reddit for years, and there are some interesting answers in the linked threads - e.g.:

It is taught openly and honestly. At my school, we went on a school trip to Auschwitz, to learn history outside the classroom. The tour began with a 20 minute documentary film about the liberation of the camp, then the guide shows you the exhibits in some of the remaining prison blocks, as well as the gas chamber and the crematorium. It's a lot to deal with, as a 10 year old.

A lot of my peers weren't ready for the immense shame and guilt we felt, however we were told that it was not our fault directly, and that as a country, we were working on making a better name for ourselves. We were also told that it we will forever be branded with these horrific events whenever we tell people where we are from, and having lived in London for the last 10 years, I still have to read a situation carefully before telling someone where I am from. Purely because I know what the first response is going to be.

. . . we are still very self conscious of our image and deeply saddened by the affiliation of our patriotism with the Nazis. This also means that most Germans will know a lot of Nazi jokes, as this was a way to desensitise yourself to the negativity as a child.

posted by ryanshepard at 11:24 AM on June 6, 2015 [5 favorites]


Thousands of Americans were spilled onto Omaha Beach.

Carl Sandburg, "A Million Young Workmen" (1915)

A million young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson … and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:30 AM on June 6, 2015 [11 favorites]


A lot of my peers weren't ready for the immense shame and guilt we felt, however we were told that it was not our fault directly...

In college, I went to hear a historian speak on a completely unrelated topic, but he was a Holocaust survivor, and naturally that became a big part of the Q&A. He said that whenever he goes to Germany and his experiences come up, younger people always apologize and show obvious guilt. His reaction was always to tell them not to apologize. They hadn't even been born yet. This wasn't on them. Memory is important, but he said "collective guilt" was not a good thing.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:36 AM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


The Fallen of World War II (18 minutes) -- An animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second World War and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts. It tries to put a number of events in WWII in perspective, in terms of lives lost by country.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:10 PM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


D-day is portrayed in American mythology as the epic battle against Nazi Germany, but it was really a battle to save Western Europe from falling under Soviet influence. Stalin got his Western front only after the Red Army had done all the dying and had broken the back of the German war machine and this offensive was only to deny him the prize of communist Europe. It was treachery, but in the most noble cause.

This is rank revisionism.

No one can deny that the Soviets did most of the killing necessary for victory in Europe. However, planning for a second front was underway in one form or another from the moment the Soviets entered the war (before there even was a second front, really, since the British knew you'd have to get troops on the ground eventually in order to beat the Nazis). In June and July 1941 this was simply British analysis of the possibility of raids on the west coast or Norway, followed by the glum conclusion that it couldn't be done in any way that would matter. The Allies started attack planning in 1942, looking to land in '42 or '43, but shortages of men and transport scuttled any hope of it (the Germans still had more than enough divisions in the west at that time to crush what could be brought to bear, and the Allies had not yet attained air superiority there). They only went in '44 because the Americans did a lot of pushing to make sure it happened, because Churchill and many (not all) of the British were more interested in periphery stuff in Italy, Mediterranean islands, and the Balkans. If there was this consensus that the west was really racing against time to preempt the Soviets, the British wouldn't have been faffing about so much in side campaigns so late in the day.

The western Allies weren't naive: there was a definite awareness that Soviet hegemony would be a bad thing, something clearly not in western interests. But to say that the invasion, as it finally occurred, was planned back in '42, '43, and early '44 in order to rob the Soviets of what was already then perceived as a certain Soviet victory and conquest of all Europe is just wrong. So is an alternate notion that they simply waited until the time was right, and then went: the decision for '44 was made in May 1943 (before Kursk had even happened, let alone the Germans being thrown back beyond the old Soviet borders), and you don't simply improvise the largest amphibious invasion in history and throw it out there whenever things seem opportune.

Without D-day there would never have been a West Germany and the world would look very different today.

This, however, is almost certainly true.
posted by Palindromedary at 12:15 PM on June 6, 2015 [25 favorites]


We were in Cologne in the summer and went round the museum of the Gestapo/NS- documentation centre, which is filled with huge amounts of well researched and sensitively told stories about horrible things. We finished by going down into the basement cells where a big party of German school kids was touring. They looked bored out of their minds, pretty much as any bunch of kids would be when dragged around a museum on a school trip. I wonder how fed up you must get to be constantly given a guilt trip because the great grandfather you never met was up for being a shit on behalf of the great great grandfather you never met.
posted by biffa at 1:10 PM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've been watching a bunch of WWII documentaries lately, and I just feel so awful for all those kids who had to run straight into machine gun fire. I just can't even fathom it, even though WWII is one of the few cases where yes, it really did have to be done.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 1:45 PM on June 6, 2015


My uncle Alvin was one of the kids in the invasion force, got half his right hand shot off and almost bled out lying on the beech. And like the others mentioned here, never ever talked about it. My dad, who was five years younger, was training to be on the invasion force of Japan on VJ day.
posted by octothorpe at 6:10 PM on June 6, 2015 [1 favorite]


Palindromedary: " The Allies started attack planning in 1942, looking to land in '42 or '43, but shortages of men and transport scuttled any hope of it (the Germans still had more than enough divisions in the west at that time to crush what could be brought to bear, and the Allies had not yet attained air superiority there). "

It should be mentioned that some Allied probing efforts were made in that time period, notably the disastrous Dieppe Raid.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:57 AM on June 10, 2015


I wonder how fed up you must get to be constantly given a guilt trip because the great grandfather you never met was up for being a shit on behalf of the great great grandfather you never met.
posted by biffa at 3:10 PM on June 6

They're off the hook, as far as I am concerned. As are their parents. They've gotten a really bum rap.

They didn't do it. They aren't bad people. The ancestors of some Germans did some really, really bad stuff, based on race and ethnicity. But even if their great-grandfather was an SS psycho, they didn't do it.

The Japanese were every bit as bad, if not worse, yet they didn't get painted with that brush that the Germans did. Even better, with straight face they deny to this day that they did anything of the sort. Comical. Not funny. But comical.

My country -- the US -- some of us have ancestors who did some really, really bad stuff, based on race and ethnicity. Unlike the Germans, who would never dream of flying a Nazi flag, the US has plenty of people who still want to fly its equivalent, and still do fly its equivalent.

I don't feel shame over what my ancestors didn't do -- my people were in Denmark, and in England, and Ireland when the lunacy of slavery came down here in the US. And even if my ancestors did it, I didn't do it. I feel neither guilt nor shame about that.

I do feel both guilt and shame about the killing done in my name in Iraq. I didn't do enough. I marched against it, signed silly oaths, voted in rigged elections. I protested in Crawford. Blah blah blah. I should have lain down in the streets. Chained myself to the white house fence. Something, anything. People were dying under bombs thrown in my name and I did not do enough. That I feel shame about.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:30 PM on July 4, 2015


The untold brutality of D-Day: Antony Beevor on the carnage suffered on the beaches of Normandy
An excerpt of D-Day: The Battle For Normandy by Antony Beevor
posted by dancestoblue at 12:22 AM on July 5, 2015


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