D-Day - 6 June 1944
Jun. 6th, 2013 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pathology_docOn this day 69 years ago, the Western Allies began the Normandy landings, and reopened the Western Front in Europe in World War 2.
It was a margin call because of the weather, and the planners foresaw the possibility that it would not work. Had it failed, the consequences for the Allies might have been disastrous.
Fortunately for all concerned (except Nazi Germany, of course), it did not fail - though in some places it came dangerously close.
It was the ultimate vindication of a man not usually seen as a forward military thinker - in fact, much the opposite. He wrote these words in 1916, just days after the first tank battle in history:
"In view of the successes obtained by the tanks, I suggested that he should carry out experiments with special flat bottomed boats for running ashore and landing a line of tanks on the beach, with the object of breaking through wire and capturing Enemy's defences."
That man was none other than Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. It is a pity he did not live to see his idea come to its ultimate fruition, against the same enemy he had first faced twenty years before.
It was a margin call because of the weather, and the planners foresaw the possibility that it would not work. Had it failed, the consequences for the Allies might have been disastrous.
Fortunately for all concerned (except Nazi Germany, of course), it did not fail - though in some places it came dangerously close.
It was the ultimate vindication of a man not usually seen as a forward military thinker - in fact, much the opposite. He wrote these words in 1916, just days after the first tank battle in history:
"In view of the successes obtained by the tanks, I suggested that he should carry out experiments with special flat bottomed boats for running ashore and landing a line of tanks on the beach, with the object of breaking through wire and capturing Enemy's defences."
That man was none other than Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. It is a pity he did not live to see his idea come to its ultimate fruition, against the same enemy he had first faced twenty years before.