The Art of Manliness - #514： Remembering D-Day 75 Years Later

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast this week marks

00:00:11.500 the 75th anniversary of the d-day landings at normandy this amphibious allied effort comprised

00:00:16.140 a joint effort between british canadian and american troops operation overlord was massive

00:00:20.500 in scope and required effectively launching 12 000 planes and 7 000 vessels landing 24 000

00:00:25.960 paratroopers into enemy territory and transporting 160 000 troops across the english channel onto over

00:00:31.440 50 miles of beaches to commemorate this epic operation i talked to historian alex kershaw

00:00:36.200 about his latest book the first wave d-day warriors who led the way to victory in world war ii we begin

00:00:41.240 our conversation with the context of the invasion and how the plans for began years before 1944

00:00:45.800 alex then walks us through the pre-dawn missions that paved the way for the larger invasion in the

00:00:50.100 morning and how perilously close the first missions came to failing along the way he tells the stories

00:00:54.460 of individual men who took part in the sweeping operation including frank lilliman the first

00:00:58.560 paratrooper to land in normandy theodore roosevelt jr a 56 year old general and son of president

00:01:03.160 theodore roosevelt lord love it scottish commando who brought along his personal bagpiper to pipe the

00:01:08.060 british commandos ashore on d-day alex and i discussed why only four medals of honor and one victoria

00:01:12.680 cross were awarded on d-day despite the high number of heroic acts performed that day by ordinary men

00:01:17.460 placed in extraordinary circumstances we end our conversation discussing the legacy of d-day

00:01:21.480 three-fourths of a century later after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:26.260 slash d-day alex joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:29.820 all right alex kershaw welcome back to the show great to be with you so we had you on last time to

00:01:47.900 talk about your book the liberator the 45th infantry division in world war ii particularly

00:01:52.180 felix sparks you got a new book out the first wave the d-day warriors who led the way to victory in

00:01:58.760 world war ii so you've written lots of books about world war ii why do you think now was the time to

00:02:05.160 write a book about about like one of the most famous invasions battles of that war now well the 75th

00:02:11.680 anniversary of d-day is coming up next week on the 6th of june and there are so few guys left alive

00:02:18.480 who landed that day in the greatest invasion in modern history i wanted to celebrate them while

00:02:25.020 there's some alive and i also wanted to write a book that reminds people of the enormous heroism

00:02:30.720 and importance of that day and how many are still alive veterans of that that invasion well we know that

00:02:37.980 there's less than five percent of the world war ii generation alive today so put it this way

00:02:44.700 for the 70th anniversary of d-day there were more than 300 american veterans went back to normandy

00:02:52.540 and i've been told that this year on june the 6th there'll be maybe 30 so just in the last five years

00:03:01.440 we've we have 10 of the number that were there five years ago so we're really looking at a very

00:03:09.360 fast decline of that entire generation the very few guys left alive today that saw any action on d-day

00:03:16.060 well d-day you know people we know that that battle well because it's so ingrained in the popular

00:03:22.260 culture here in america thanks to movies like saving private ryan where you know spielberg made this

00:03:27.240 very visceral reenactment of world war ii but i i know as i was reading this book i learned things

00:03:34.340 about d-day that i had no clue about before we get into the details of d-day can you give folks

00:03:41.840 some background so we can understand the context of the importance of this invasion so like what was

00:03:47.280 the state of the war in early 1944 sure early 1944 actually people have to remember that d-day june the 6th

00:03:56.120 1944 was not the first major invasion that americans had been involved in in the european theater

00:04:03.680 so i can answer your question by giving you a few other dates november 1942 was the first time americans

00:04:10.260 saw combat they invaded north africa then july 1943 americans were involved in the invasion of sicily

00:04:17.720 actually that was a larger invasion than d-day in terms of number of men over 200 000 allied

00:04:24.040 troops in sicily in july 1943 september 1943 we nearly come very very close to disaster at salerno

00:04:31.600 mainland italy and then january 1944 we invade the the italian main mainland at anzio and also get our

00:04:41.680 noses very blooded by the germans so there actually been four amphibious invasions in europe before d-day

00:04:49.360 june the 6th 1944 europe was um nazi occupied so france most of italy the netherlands western

00:04:58.260 europe was under the nazi jackboot over 10 million europeans western europeans had either been killed

00:05:05.680 or were in concentration camps europe had suffered for in some cases over four years from nazi oppression

00:05:13.680 and so the d-day invasion was something that the americans had wanted to launch since 1942 and

00:05:20.940 finally in june of 1944 we invaded northwestern europe and the significance of of that invasion

00:05:27.260 of d-day june the 6th was that we began to liberate northwestern europe and it marked the beginning the

00:05:33.140 successful completion of the battle of normandy in june and july of 1944 marked the beginning of the

00:05:39.820 end of nazi rule over western europe it was the beginning of the it was the liberation of western

00:05:46.400 europe it was the beginning of the restoration of peace and democracy and human rights and

00:05:51.240 civilization to a place that had been in immense darkness for several years so they'd been planning

00:05:57.780 something like this since for two years i mean at this point in the war like were the allies

00:06:02.460 were they did they feel like they were winning that they were making progress and this or like that

00:06:06.700 this was the thing they had to win if they were going to win the war this was the this was the

00:06:11.260 major job that this was what the americans had been pressing for from 1942 onwards they had two wars

00:06:19.140 to win remember the americans in the pacific and in europe and it had been agreed that they would

00:06:24.880 finish off the nazi regime or try to finish off the nazi regime before they would deal with the fascist

00:06:31.480 militarist government of imperial japan so there was a lot of anxiety and a lot of pressure in

00:06:38.640 washington placed on eisenhower and others to get the job done in europe so that the americans could

00:06:44.880 turn to the pacific and that's why the americans were impatient for this invasion they had wanted it to

00:06:52.060 actually occur in 1943 but we wouldn't have been well enough prepared and that would have inevitably led to

00:06:58.500 disaster so yes the june 1944 invasion was really really about finishing finishing the job but there

00:07:07.160 was no confidence real confidence 100 confidence that the d-day invasion of june the 6th would

00:07:14.340 would absolutely work far from it uh most senior planners and generals were very anxious indeed well

00:07:21.080 let's talk about some of the senior planners and generals like the architects behind that so you

00:07:24.520 mentioned eisenhower he was one who else was involved in planning d-day mostly montgomery in fact the overlord

00:07:31.240 plan was not montgomery's original idea but montgomery was in charge of it and adapted the overlord plan he

00:07:40.220 added the beach of which we now know as utah there were there were two american beaches on d-day

00:07:46.140 omaha and utah montgomery added that beach he widened the front he increased the forces substantially

00:07:52.900 made key adjustments to the plan but i should say that churchill eisenhower montgomery was actually

00:08:00.880 fairly confident but not a hundred percent confident that the plan would work but from the politicians

00:08:06.100 right down to many generals there was a lot of nervousness a lot of uncertainty about whether

00:08:11.620 this huge invasion would actually pay off and so for those who aren't familiar montgomery was the

00:08:18.240 british senior officer during yeah he was overall commander of ground forces allied forces on the

00:08:24.400 ground on d-day so he was the he was numero uno in terms of commanding the battle on d-day eisenhower was

00:08:32.260 allied supreme commander as soon as he gave the decision to go on the 5th of june 1944 it was

00:08:38.440 montgomery who had overall control of the allied forces and how did these guys keep such a large invasion

00:08:45.680 secret from the nazis or did the nazis know that something was coming eventually they just didn't

00:08:51.180 know where or something yeah you're exactly right they knew that we were going to invade they didn't

00:08:56.160 know where or when exactly rommel who was in charge of the german forces in normandy erwin rommel the great

00:09:03.700 german general he knew that it would be maybe the spring or the summer he wasn't sure whether it would be

00:09:08.900 normandy or the pad de calais which is closest to england so we had a very effective deception

00:09:15.040 campaign and the aim of that campaign was basically to make to keep the germans guessing as long as they 0.53

00:09:21.280 divided their forces as long as they weren't sure exactly where we were coming and as long as they

00:09:26.340 didn't know when we would enjoy the element of surprise and we did so we typically commemorate the

00:09:32.460 invasion of normandy on june 6th but as you said earlier the that the story of normandy begins even

00:09:38.360 earlier than that i mean you could say it begins 1942 but you start your book june 5th with eisenhower

00:09:45.120 pacing his office chain smoking like he typically did throughout the war trying to figure out if he was

00:09:51.960 going to do this thing or not i mean how close was eisenhower to calling the whole thing off he wouldn't

00:09:58.600 have called the whole thing off what he would have done was to delay the invasion yet again because

00:10:04.400 what had happened was the invasion was supposed to happen supposed to go ahead on the 5th of june but

00:10:10.380 on the 4th of june because of the terrible weather conditions he had delayed it 24 hours to the 6th of

00:10:17.360 june he'd been told by his chief meteorologist that there was an 18-hour window beginning on the 5th of

00:10:25.580 june and going into the afternoon of the 6th of june when the conditions in the english channel would be

00:10:31.480 still rough but they wouldn't be disastrous and so the big decision he had was whether he was going to

00:10:37.660 believe that weather forecast and whether he was going to actually launch the invasion on the 6th or

00:10:43.820 wait another couple of weeks for the next possible window of opportunity and about 4 30 in the morning

00:10:50.580 on the 5th of june he paced back and forth in southwark house near portsmouth in front of his

00:10:56.700 overlord commanders and he finally decided that yes he would pull the trigger and he would take

00:11:02.060 advantage and he would believe the meteorological report even though conditions would be rough the

00:11:07.840 invasion stood a fairly good chance of success but even then as you said earlier eisenhower and other

00:11:15.260 generals leaders weren't 100 sure it was going to be a success there were some experts who estimated that

00:11:20.480 the casualties of operation overlord could reach as high as 70 percent eisenhower wrote a letter that

00:11:26.020 was to be released if the operation failed in which he took full responsibility for the failure

00:11:30.560 yeah i mean he you know no one was 100 confident you know that this is a very very difficult uh this

00:11:37.400 has never been attempted before on this scale there were for example over 700 000 items on the uh

00:11:44.360 items used during the invasion i mean the scale of it was mind-boggling it was eisenhower himself said

00:11:51.700 that it was you know he was almost more afraid of the scale of the operation and managing it and

00:11:56.480 orchestrating it than he was actually of the the reality of carrying it out so bradley the american

00:12:03.400 general who would be very much involved on in terms of the invasion of omaha beach and later on in

00:12:09.800 normandy he said that um the d-day invasion was hit was great opportunity and also a great risk to him

00:12:17.460 he said that nazism might yet prevail and that if the invasion failed then the allies probably would 0.82

00:12:24.680 never have gone again they would have that they would have taken an awful long time if ever to marshal

00:12:30.340 such a force again and nazi europe may have remained nazi europe we might not have liberated that part of

00:12:36.720 western europe wow so let's talk about some of the first people to land in france when the invasion

00:12:43.700 began and you follow this one group of americans who were american paratroopers who i mean it was

00:12:50.520 basically like it was early it was like like 12 o'clock in the morning on june 6 they were paratrooping

00:12:56.380 in uh there was a guy named there frank lilliman was one of the men like he was the first paratrooper

00:13:01.140 land in france what was those early groups role in the invasion frank lilliman was in command of the

00:13:08.300 american pathfinder unit that jumped into normandy at 12 15 a.m they were the very first 18 guys he was

00:13:15.580 their leader and they were the very first guys to see combat on very first americans i should say to

00:13:21.480 see combat on d-day and their job was to set up radars and very bright lights to guide in the main

00:13:30.120 sky train of screaming eagles so six and a half thousand guys in the 101st airborne division needed

00:13:37.640 to be guided and directed the planes carrying them needed to be guided and directed to the drop zones

00:13:43.180 in normandy and frank lilliman and his team of pathfinders arrived first to set up those guiding lights

00:13:50.400 and radars the main body of 101st airborne troops arrived around 12 50 a.m lilliman had about half an

00:13:59.640 hour with his men to set up the lights and the beacons and the main force of six and a half thousand

00:14:04.600 troops from the 101st airborne that came in around 40 minutes later and so there was like very little

00:14:10.760 margin for error very little no exactly had lilliman not set up those lights in drop zone a

00:14:16.400 then the the first c-47s the first dakotas flying all the way across the english channel wouldn't

00:14:22.920 have known where to drop their drop their men as it turned out the airborne operation on d-day was

00:14:29.180 very highly disorganized there's a lot of chaos and it succeeded but there was an awful lot of chaos

00:14:35.540 some guys were dropped 30 miles away from where they were supposed to land in fact lilliman was dropped

00:14:41.040 about a mile away from where he was supposed to be dropped it's very difficult to drop some

00:14:45.680 thousands of troops in darkness under heavy enemy fire and land them in exactly the right place it was

00:14:52.760 always going to be somewhat disorganized there were very high risks involved but uh thank goodness the

00:14:59.440 allied airborne operation worked although it was very very chaotic and a lot of guys lost their lost their

00:15:05.220 lives well i mean you see a lot of improvisation going on lilliman dropped he's far away and he's had to

00:15:10.620 look around he's like where can i put this thing and he had to decide on the decide on the fly oh i

00:15:14.880 could put it in this i guess as a church tower he ended up putting it in yeah the um you know what's

00:15:19.320 interesting about lilliman was that uh he uh that was his first day of combat and that most of the guys

00:15:25.040 in the 101st airborne had never seen combat before the 82nd airborne was it was a veteran unit it had it

00:15:31.720 been tested already but the vast majority of americans and in fact canadians all the canadians had never

00:15:38.760 seen combat before so you know two out of three americans on on d-day had never had a gunfight at

00:15:45.260 them in anger so they were really were being tested in the most extreme circumstances for the very first

00:15:50.920 time so another individual you followed and these this very early part of the invasion was major john

00:15:57.640 howard he was a british army officer tell us about his role in the invasion john howard was the commander

00:16:03.820 of the oxen bucks they were an elite unit and they were tasked with seizing two critical bridges that

00:16:10.920 had to be held to in case the germans counterattacked and those were bridges that one was called pegasus

00:16:17.620 bridge across the khan canal and there was another bridge nearby across the orne river and they landed

00:16:24.440 in three gliders horse gliders made from wood and canvas crash landed at 90 miles per hour

00:16:29.920 and amazingly the lead pilot's a guy called jim walwick in howard's glider managed to put the

00:16:36.700 nose down of that glider crash landing at 90 miles per hour only about 30 40 yards from pegasus bridge

00:16:43.720 they landed at 12 15 a.m and they had taken pegasus bridge by 12 25 in just 10 minutes and then they

00:16:52.200 sent out the first success signal of d-day which was a code a series of code words ham and jam

00:16:59.100 ham for one bridge jam for the other bridge and that went out that that signal was sent out at

00:17:05.040 12 25 a.m and was the first successful operation completed on d-day the first allied soldier we

00:17:13.100 believed to be killed on d-day was a guy called lieutenant den brotherage who was a very close

00:17:17.920 friend of major john howard again all of these guys were seeing combat for the first time so you had

00:17:24.260 this initial paratrooper invasion part of the attack but you also had the invasion coming from

00:17:30.820 the sea and you begin that part of the story with the u.s army 8th infantry regiment i believe and one

00:17:38.300 of the division's acting commanders was theodore roosevelt jr tell us about this is teddy roosevelt's

00:17:46.320 son yeah i mean you know you've got the you've got the most rugged butch macho president in u.s

00:17:51.500 history and his son is on a a landing craft and he begged to go in with the first wave and actually

00:17:57.640 landed with the first wave with the 8th infantry regiment of the 4th division at utah he's 56 years

00:18:04.280 old so he was the oldest general officer on d-day he had a bad heart arthritis and huffed and puffed his

00:18:11.320 way across utah beach using a walking stick so uh he was so well connected given his name and his

00:18:18.160 heritage that basically the u.s army agreed when he begged them to go in with his men in the first

00:18:24.500 wave but it was extraordinary i mean he was you know to have that guy who was so old and uh and so

00:18:30.500 senior risk his life in the first wave was was amazing was he a career military officer yes he was

00:18:37.260 yeah he uh he he fought all the way through world war ii he was uh actually seen action first of all

00:18:43.000 with the the big red one the first division he'd been in north africa and then it had fought in um the

00:18:49.280 sicilian campaign with the big red one that was the first division and his son actually on d-day on june

00:18:57.520 the 6th 1944 you have roosevelt at 56 years old he's got a son who's also involved in the landings and

00:19:05.060 his son was with the big red one on omaha beach so father and son both seeing action but on separate

00:19:12.040 beaches on d-day we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the

00:19:17.540 show so you have this early morning part of the invasion happened like right at round 12 one o'clock

00:19:24.340 in the morning then you had another wave of american paratroopers jump out who were the men that you

00:19:29.680 follow from this group that jumped out later on in the morning i mean the early morning talking about

00:19:33.880 like three or four o'clock in the morning well i mentioned several characters within the airborne

00:19:38.060 operation both american and british we had the 101st airborne and the 82nd airborne on the far

00:19:45.000 western flank of the 50 mile front and then the sixth airborne were on the far eastern flank and i take

00:19:51.840 characters from all of the allied nations but one guy in particular i really admired was general

00:19:58.200 jim gavin and he was the assistant division commander for the 82nd airborne and um he said

00:20:05.100 that when he jumped when he landed early in the morning on june the 6th 1944 there were hardly any

00:20:11.440 men that he could find to to put together into a combat unit and in fact he spent the first couple of

00:20:18.280 hours on the ground in normandy watching a couple of his men fish out equipment from a flooded field

00:20:24.800 because a lot of fields where the airborne landed had been flooded by the germans and they 1.00

00:20:30.220 you know tragically some guys landed with very heavy packs in just three or four foot of water and

00:20:36.280 drowned because that's all it would take so there's an enormous amount of chaos and gavin said that

00:20:41.100 you know it took at least a couple of hours before they even had any equipment to fight with

00:20:44.500 maxwell taylor the uh division commander for the 101st airborne he said that never had so many being

00:20:51.680 commanded by uh so few that he had a single private this is a division commander had a single private

00:20:58.220 under his command for the first 45 minutes of d-day so that just goes to show you how badly dispersed and

00:21:05.980 how chaotic the initial operations were for the airborne divisions well i mean how did they keep it

00:21:11.500 together despite all that on the ground confusion well you know it took a you know they had the special

00:21:16.340 clickers that you know the the click clack of the the special metal snappers they had you those are

00:21:22.100 the famous scenes from the longest day when it's click click and then you're supposed to answer with

00:21:26.400 a click click and there was a lot of chaos and confusion a lot of fear but uh you know you've got

00:21:31.640 over 12 000 americans being dropped into one area of normandy and sooner or later they found each other

00:21:39.000 and form small groups and then those small groups became bigger groups but it was 48 hours it was

00:21:45.500 literally two days before the 101st airborne and the 82nd airborne had real organization and structure

00:21:52.320 and where there was clear command throughout both divisions all right so also early the dawn part of

00:21:58.540 the day that's when the amphibious assault begins i mean can you describe what that was like well it

00:22:04.840 depending where you were if you were on utah with roosevelt and the fourth division it was a very

00:22:10.560 successful operation out of almost 30 000 americans landed on utah beach less than 200 were casualties

00:22:18.020 so the largest number of guys killed on utah were killed by mines on the beach and the dunes just in

00:22:25.040 land omaha it was a very very different story indeed over 900 americans killed over two and a half

00:22:31.820 thousand american casualties carnage and confusion and chaos and slaughter if you look at the first

00:22:37.960 20 minutes of the film simming private ryan that recreates what it was like in a couple of sectors on

00:22:44.300 that beach early on on on d-day those landing in the first wave in the deadliest sector of omaha beach

00:22:51.160 which is shown in simming private ryan that was company a of the 116th infantry regiment of the

00:22:57.140 29th division and out of one national guard unit of 180 guys landing in the first wave we believe

00:23:04.380 that 102 were killed and many more were wounded so it was a slaughterhouse in certain sectors of

00:23:10.640 omaha beach it was very very bloody indeed and in fact we didn't take control of that of that entire

00:23:16.940 five and a half miles six miles of beach until around midday even though we landed at 6 30 6 32 a.m

00:23:23.060 in the morning it was a very very fierce combat it was very touch and go midday on on june the 6th

00:23:30.580 1944 omar bradley out at sea is looking at omaha beach and receiving terrible reports of of men being

00:23:38.540 butchered like hogs that was one report and was seriously considering withdrawing troops off omaha

00:23:43.580 beach because it was such a disaster we we really really really were in serious trouble there in the

00:23:49.880 early hours of dealing and were they expecting that or were they expecting this to be like a cakewalk

00:23:54.760 a lot of guys have been told that the beach would have been very heavily bombed there'd be craters to

00:24:00.800 seek shelter in and that the german defenses would have been destroyed and that the main thing they

00:24:06.360 should worry about is when they got inland the germans would counter-attack so you have to imagine being

00:24:11.660 in the first wave one guy i follow is a guy called john spaulding who's a platoon commander with the

00:24:16.160 big red one he landed at easy red sector at around 6 32 a.m on june the 6th 1944 you have to imagine

00:24:23.080 what it was like for him when he dared glance over the side of that landing craft coming in

00:24:27.560 in very rough seas and he sees that everything that he's been told would happen hasn't happened

00:24:33.400 the defeat the beach defenses haven't been destroyed the german machine gun emplacements and strong

00:24:41.120 points haven't been touched and he knew three or four hundred yards from omaha beach coming in in

00:24:47.360 the first wave that he was basically walking you know approaching a death trap and that's exactly

00:24:52.140 what it turned out to be uh his unit e company of the 16th infantry regiment suffered over 50 casualties

00:24:58.360 on d-day that's more than half of the guys with him were killed or wounded well let's talk about the

00:25:03.900 british part of the allied invasion one character that stood out to me was simon fraser lord love it

00:25:11.120 tell us about this guy because he led this group but he also had a pipeman named like just follow

00:25:17.980 him around everywhere well i i love lord love it he was 34 years old he had two and a half thousand

00:25:23.080 british commandos under his control about 177 of those guys were actually frenchmen the keeper

00:25:29.940 commando but he'd only been in combat two days previously during the entire war but those two days

00:25:37.600 had seen really spectacularly successful commando raids so by the time he landed on june the 6th 1944

00:25:45.220 at sword beach with the first wave of commandos he was a legend among his troops he was an oxford graduate

00:25:51.420 an ac very ruthless scottish highland chief and um he had the only guy among the allied forces the

00:26:01.920 over 150 000 guys coming from the sea the only guy who wore a kilt and played the pipes was a guy called

00:26:09.000 bill millen a fellow scotsman and incredibly when they landed love it went first and millen was a few

00:26:16.600 yards behind him and millen was playing the pipes and love it kept saying to millen keep playing the

00:26:21.320 pipes and he played the pipes all that day i i saw i found a really amazing oral history with bill

00:26:27.800 millen who survived the war love it was very badly wounded about a week later millen survived the war

00:26:33.600 and he said that when he came in on d-day love it told him to play the pipes and he was wearing his

00:26:39.520 kilt and he watched love it go first because he wanted love it to test the water to see whether it was

00:26:44.480 going to be up to his neck or up to his waist and lo and behold it was only up to love its waist

00:26:48.720 and millen wasn't wearing anything underneath his kilt like a true scotsman you know you're not

00:26:54.000 supposed to wear underwear if you're a true scot under your kilt and he said that the water was

00:26:58.800 extremely cold indeed and his private parts were very small indeed after he'd been in the water for

00:27:05.760 a while but then incredibly he waded ashore and he walked up and down this uh this beach under

00:27:11.760 you know very intense fire three times playing the pipes under love its orders so extraordinary

00:27:18.920 extraordinary courage extraordinary kind of eccentric british attitude towards combat yeah was that just

00:27:25.200 like a romantic like he was like like a romantic thing like yeah you couldn't make it up really i

00:27:29.180 mean it was sort of you know really swashbuckling arrogant british style in combat and and how did that

00:27:35.160 group of british soldiers do at sword how did they fare well the commandos came in uh just after

00:27:41.740 a british unit called the east yorks and the east yorks were very very much chewed up they had a lot

00:27:48.000 of suffered a lot of casualties but the commandos got across the breach pretty quickly and then

00:27:52.960 pushed inland that's uh some units from the commandos took the the town of westerham but

00:27:59.280 lovett's job was to get ashore and then link up with john howard and the oxen bucks at pegasus bridge

00:28:04.980 and reinforce those uh those glider troops that had come in at 12 15 a.m and in fact that link up

00:28:12.020 occurred around midday on june the 6th and it's a very famous scene where john howard is waiting very

00:28:19.240 impatiently very anxiously for the commandos to turn up and reinforce him because he's under a great

00:28:24.980 strain and then suddenly one of his men hears the this very weird sound and he can't believe what can't

00:28:31.560 leave his ears and uh he says to a friend of his a mate of his like are those bagpipes is that is that

00:28:37.340 the sound of a bagpipe and then sure enough coming down the road marching in towards pegasus bridge

00:28:43.260 comes bill millen and lord lovett just ahead of him and the british commandos who made that very

00:28:48.540 successful and crucial link up between the oxen bucks and the glider forces and the airborne forces

00:28:54.440 and the seaborne forces so when those linkups occurred for the british on the eastern flank and

00:29:00.740 then for the americans linking up with the fourth division and the 101st airborne they occurred around

00:29:05.900 the same time late morning of june the 6th that was a very important moment during the invasion

00:29:10.680 because what you had is the guys dropped in from the air were now united and working beside the guys

00:29:18.240 that came in from the sea and that was that was a very important moment because it meant that we were

00:29:22.080 united on the ground air for airborne forces and seaborne forces could fight together what was the

00:29:29.280 initial german response to the invasion they were very they were very shocked i mean there's some

00:29:33.920 famous scenes in books and movies where you know the germans shelled and then they they wake up 1.00

00:29:39.680 literally and they look out at their pillboxes and they see this invasion armada on this of the size

00:29:45.040 that occurred on on d-day so they were stunned imagine being a german yokel that you you know you're in

00:29:50.720 the best part place you could possibly be as a german during world war ii it wasn't stalingrad it wasn't

00:29:55.840 in anzio you were having a very nice time indeed in a rural bliss in normandy you knew something might

00:30:03.440 happen one day but then one day then on june the 6th you wake up and you see it's enormous armada and

00:30:09.840 then you see this landing craft coming towards you so they were shocked a lot of them stunned they were

00:30:14.240 not not many of them were crap troops their heart really wasn't in it for a lot of them some of them

00:30:19.360 were polish and and russian conscripts they not the vast majority were not prepared to fight to

00:30:25.520 the very last breath so they were they were shocked and the um and if you go further up the command

00:30:32.400 chain rommel erwin rommel who was a commander of german forces in normandy he wasn't actually in

00:30:37.840 normandy that day he was back in in germany uh celebrating his wife's birthday so he heard about

00:30:44.480 the invasion when he was several hundred miles away hitler himself was woken late that morning

00:30:50.880 he had a habit of going to bed very late and was woken and he didn't believe that this was the main

00:30:56.080 invasion he thought it was a diversionary operation and that he he thought that the main invasion would

00:31:01.520 still come across the pad de calais that's the shortest part of the the english channel between

00:31:06.720 england and france near calais you know two or three hundred miles from where we actually landed on

00:31:11.120 d-day so hitler actually thought that this was just a diversionary tactic and he was happy he said

00:31:16.080 well you know we can't we can't kill the enemy while they're in england we now now that they've 0.99

00:31:20.400 arrived in france we could start to destroy them you know he was a complete crazy madman madman uh 0.98

00:31:26.000 always was but by that stage of the war was really insane uh and he he was happy he was seen smiling 0.97

00:31:32.400 because you know he'd been waiting for this invasion and finally it had begun but even a couple of

00:31:38.720 weeks after d-day even in late june of 1944 hitler still wasn't convinced that all of these guys that

00:31:45.360 we landed in in normandy that they were the main invasion force he thought that that was that that

00:31:50.560 would come later that that we still hadn't thrown everything we had across the english channel at the

00:31:56.720 pad de calais were the germans able able to regroup at all after the invasion absolutely yes they they

00:32:03.200 they didn't have enough panzer divisions tank divisions in uh close to the norman invasion

00:32:09.600 beaches to really do a lot of damage on d-day itself the 21st panzer division did did inflict some

00:32:16.880 some uh serious casualties on the uh the british and the canadians but uh within three or four days

00:32:23.120 every every panzer division that they could find in france was rolling its way towards towards normandy

00:32:29.600 and in fact the battle of normandy lasted 77 days and by late june early july of 1944 it was a very

00:32:37.680 very bloody affair indeed now i have to stress this that the the allies enjoyed complete air supremacy

00:32:45.840 so any german vehicle that moved in july of 1944 in normandy was going to get hit sooner or later by

00:32:53.120 a p-47 mustang or a mosquito or any an allied fighter plane we really could destroy almost 0.98

00:33:00.880 everything that moved on the ground and we did we could do that on d-day itself so you have a german

00:33:06.080 army that has no air support there's absolutely no air support and yet they fought us to a standstill

00:33:13.440 in normandy in july of 1944 over a million allied soldiers up against around the same number of germans

00:33:20.800 in normandy and we were going absolutely nowhere so that just goes to show how how superb the german

00:33:28.560 forces were how how hard they fought how great their tactics were and how tough it was for us we we had

00:33:35.440 the great advantage and yet we still couldn't move anywhere at what point did the allies realize

00:33:41.200 the invasion would be a success well we we knew at the end of d-day of course at june the 6th that we

00:33:47.600 we successfully landed over 150 000 guys from the sea and i think 23 000 guys from the from the air

00:33:55.520 but we were not sure that whether how long we were going to stay i mean no one knew that what the german

00:34:02.080 reaction would be exactly and and how many forces they would throw at us and whether we could push

00:34:07.280 further inland we'd only gone the furthest penetration on d-day inland was by the canadians it was around

00:34:14.080 eight miles if you looked at omaha beach we only went less than two miles inland we were really

00:34:20.640 really under a lot of pressure by the end of d-day there we it had been a very very difficult fight

00:34:25.360 indeed so we had landed men but the big fight was coming we we knew that um if we could get ashore

00:34:32.720 on d-day the big big challenge would be to push further inland and and take key objectives and we had

00:34:39.680 limited success on d-day two cities in particular car and the town of uh of bayou we were supposed to

00:34:46.080 seize those on d-day car in particular was a crucial objective it was a main road junction we had to take

00:34:54.000 it to be able to press out of normandy and reach paris and it took us another seven weeks we were supposed

00:35:00.240 to take it on june the 6th and it took us another seven weeks to take that city and yet we were in the

00:35:05.120 outskirts of that city on the evening of d-day so that just goes to show you the extent of the

00:35:11.120 german counterattacks and how tough the fighting was after d-day and d-day just set up larger battles i

00:35:17.680 mean this the battle the bulge happened i guess that happened in the winter of that year yes definitely

00:35:22.480 the we the battle of normandy we broke out of normandy in early august of 1944 um so more than seven weeks

00:35:31.200 later more than seven weeks after d-day so we broke out during operation cobra

00:35:37.520 and then the 77 day battle of normandy in which 20 000 americans were killed over 100 000 allied

00:35:45.280 casualties that ended on the 25th of august 1944 with the liberation of paris that's the sort of formal

00:35:52.640 historically accepted end of the battle of normandy but then we had to do a very difficult job which was

00:35:58.160 to then defeat nazi germany in germany and that began in september of 1944 with american forces

00:36:06.160 nearing arkham and then december 1944 there was the battle of the bulge the greatest battle ever fought by

00:36:12.800 the us army over 800 000 americans involved and then it was a bitter long slog right through to victory in

00:36:20.240 europe in uh on the 7th of may 1945 um and it got more and more difficult in terms of combat the longer

00:36:28.960 that war lasted but just one example uh over oh sorry almost 20 000 americans killed in europe alone in

00:36:36.160 january of 1945 which is a the highest number of american fatalities in world war ii in europe higher than

00:36:45.360 higher even than june and july of 1944 during the battle of normandy so one thing i didn't know about

00:36:53.120 d-day that you highlight in this book is that only three american soldiers who took part in the invasion

00:37:00.240 earned the medal of honor and but this way there's but you describe all these super heroic

00:37:06.640 actions that so many soldiers took like why were so few medal of honors given out well you know actually

00:37:12.960 there were four medal of honor recipients american medal of honor recipients on d-day one was actually

00:37:18.320 duro roosevelt jr the the general we talked about earlier on he received the medal of honor actually

00:37:22.880 died tragically of a heart attack on the 12th of july uh he's buried beside his brother in the

00:37:28.720 colville samar graveyard today and then there were three other americans who received the highest award for

00:37:34.720 valor they all belonged to the big red one the first division which landed on

00:37:38.400 omaha beach and of those three guys only one guy came home now there were 153

00:37:46.240 distinguished service crosses awarded to americans for actions on omaha beach there probably should have

00:37:51.040 been more certainly there were several cases of guys who should have received the medal of honor for

00:37:58.320 their valor on omaha beach whose medal recommendations were downgraded so one of the guys that did actually

00:38:05.440 receive the medal one of the three guys that received the medal from the big red one for

00:38:09.920 actions on omaha was a guy called jimmy monteith and he was fatally wounded on on omaha and um incredibly

00:38:18.720 allied supreme commander dwight eisenhower intervened and placed a note in the recommendation file

00:38:26.240 saying that monteith should receive the medal of honor and it shouldn't be downgraded

00:38:31.280 to a dsc there were several cases where guys had medal of honors downgraded to the distinguished service

00:38:37.920 cross and this was done by three-man committees far far away from the the front line they were basically

00:38:44.960 bureaucrats you know downgrading medal of honor recommendations and i think the fear was that there

00:38:51.440 would have been too many guys receiving the medal of honor and that somehow that might have diluted its

00:38:57.600 importance but if you if you look at it and you really understand what happened on omaha beach

00:39:02.720 there should have been dozens of guys received the medal of honor because the actions they performed

00:39:07.600 were absolutely what the medal of honor requires you know they had to show intrepidity great courage

00:39:13.680 and they had to lead others and save other guys lives and that's what exactly they did there were

00:39:18.160 dozens and dozens of guys who died doing that and i believe that it would be a a good thing if in

00:39:25.760 the next few years we actually took those cases of guys who had their their awards downgraded and and

00:39:32.720 and did them some justice is there a movement afoot to do that um i don't know whether it's widespread

00:39:38.160 i certainly know that there are several cases of guys who received the dsc for example dick winters

00:39:44.800 with e company of the 101st airborne the famous commander of easy company of band of brothers fame he

00:39:51.520 received the dsc and a lot of people think that he should have received the medal of honor and there

00:39:56.400 there were there was a movement at one point to have him him have his dsc upgraded to a medal of honor

00:40:03.040 i think you know it's astonishing when you you think that out of all those guys on d-day out of

00:40:09.040 you know more than 50 000 american troops on d-day only four guys received the highest award for

00:40:16.480 for valour well put it this way the british have even more to complain about because we only had

00:40:22.000 one guy one single british guy receive our highest award for valour which was the victoria cross and

00:40:28.800 that seems to me to be astonishing that we only had one out of so many tens of thousands of brits who

00:40:35.920 who was given the highest award was the same thing happening in britain as it was happening in america

00:40:41.440 but bureaucrats were just deciding i don't know it's a very good question you know one of the one

00:40:46.640 of the problems with receiving the victoria cross or the medal of honor is that yeah you have to have

00:40:52.080 eyewitnesses and you had to have you know really sort of firm documented statements from people that saw

00:40:59.280 you carry out the action and the problem problem on omaha in particular was that so many officers were

00:41:05.360 killed so that even though they'd seen extraordinary acts of valour there was no one around afterwards to bear

00:41:11.120 witness to it so you know many veterans have told me over the years that you know there were so many

00:41:17.360 cases of guys that should have received the medal of honor but but no one was alive to report their

00:41:22.560 actions and that the officers that were alive at the time were killed later there was so much confusion

00:41:28.160 and carnage that many many many acts of extreme valour when unnoticed and unreported

00:41:35.120 alex what do you want people to be left feeling and thinking after they finish your book i want

00:41:40.960 people to realize that it was a very tough job indeed that there was no assurance of success on d-day and

00:41:47.040 that you know it really came down to individuals in the end it came down to key key combat leaders young

00:41:53.520 combat leaders many of them untested who carried the day you know we we really did reach certain key

00:42:00.480 critical moments on d-day where if it had not been for certain individuals that invasion would have

00:42:06.480 failed and world history would have been different so massive operation huge hard to get your head

00:42:12.800 around but when it came down to it it came it really really depended for its success on certain

00:42:19.840 individuals and i think when the mission is right when the stakes are very very high when civilization is on

00:42:26.560 the line ordinary people can perform miracles and that really is the takeaway from my book that

00:42:31.840 these extraordinary acts of heroism were performed by ordinary individuals who've never been in combat

00:42:37.680 before well alex where people go to learn more about the book uh you can go to amazon.com or my

00:42:42.800 website alexkershaw.com and barnes and noble any good book star is going to have the book book there

00:42:48.400 right now well alex kershaw thanks for your time it's been a pleasure my pleasure thank you so much

00:42:53.440 my guest today was alex kershaw he is the author of the book the first wave the d-day warriors who

00:42:58.000 led the way to victory in world war ii it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:43:02.160 you can also find out more information about his work at his website alexkershaw.com also check out

00:43:06.720 our show notes at aom.is d-day where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:43:11.760 topic

00:43:16.320 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com

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The Art of Manliness - June 05, 2019

#514： Remembering D-Day 75 Years Later

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