Thursday, June 6, marks the 80-year anniversary of D-Day, the day of the greatest military invasion in modern history.
Codenamed “Operation Overlord,” D-Day (June 6, 1944) began at 6:30 am when an Allied force of 156,000 troops made up of primarily Americans, Britons, and Canadians landed on five beaches stretching 50 miles along a heavily fortified coast in Normandy, France. French, Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Greek, New Zealander, Norwegian, Rhodesian, and Polish soldiers also participated.
The sands of those five beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword would soon be red with blood as the German machine gunners, infantry and light artillery attempted to defend Adolf Hitler’s “Sea Wall.”
On most of the beaches, the Allied assault went pretty much as planned. However, at Omaha Beach, units of the American 1st Infantry Division faced stiff resistance from German infantry units dug in along the heights above them.
Listen to President Roosevelt’s radio broadcast of June 6, 1944, when he asked all Americans to pray with him.
German Preparations
Hitler had instructed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, his one-time Afrika Corps commander, to prepare for an invasion in the fall of 1943. Rommel pushed his men to build fortifications and
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