D DAY

"There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny."

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

June 6 dawns,and D-DAY once more returns to Normandy.The tide is low and the sand hard underfoot.There right next to the omaha and utah beaches of France, that had once been crisscrossed with trenches and mud,are intermingled regiments of bones resting filfully in shallow graves beneath the soil.

And there in a whisper just beneath the wind that howled across the terrain....one hears voices...the puzzled voices of boys.....boys no older than 16...those who had a bright life ahead ,ones who had wishes to be fulfilled,who probably wanted to be someone totally different.There were ones who had never known the insides of a woman,who never had children,who had never grown old...SEVEN MILLION voices asking in unision the unanswered question,that was an answer in itself...WHY??

The Battle of Normandy began commencing the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II.The Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, still remains the largest seaborne invasion in History.....
It involved 1,56000 troops crossing the english channel from United Kingdom to Normandy beach in occupied France. The Allied forces which saw combat on June 6 and faced the horrors of Hitler's Atlantic Wall included Canada, parts of free France, United Kindom and the United States Of America. Most of the above countries also provided air and naval support, as did the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Royal Norwegian Navy.

The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks, naval bombardments, an early morning amphibious landing and during the evening the remaining elements of the parachute divisions landed.

THE ATLANTIC WALL:
Standing in the way of the Allies was the English Channel, a crossing which had eluded the Spanish Armada and Napoleon Bonaparte's Navy. Compounding the invasion efforts was the extensive Atlantic Wall, ordered by Hitler in his Directive 51. Believing that any forthcoming landings would be timed for high tide (this caused the landings to be timed for low tide), Rommel had the entire wall fortified with tank top turrets and extensive barbed wire, and laid a million mines to deter landing craft.How ever the fortifications allowed the Germans to literally mow down the troops coming out of the amphibious landing crafts. There are german soldiers who claim to have shot down thousands.

D-Day, had thrilled much of the world-those whose military forces precipitated the battle, as well as those who waited in bondage for their freedom. A psychological stroke of great impact, the invasion fulfilled an Allied promise to return to the Continent and to liberate the people occupied and oppressed by the Third Reich. It challenged the German political domination over much of Europe and signified the probable final act of the war.