Sixty-four years ago today, Allied forces landed on the beaches in France. Thousands of American soldiers died on June 6, 1944, so that millions of Europeans could live in freedom. Let's take a moment to remember the many who sacrificed their lives to defeat Nazism.
Michael T. Snyder, a retired teacher and historian who lives in Pottstown, writes about the impact of D-Day on the Pottstown area in this wonderful op-ed piece published in The Mercury.
Remembering D-Day veterans with gratitude
Today is the 64th anniversary of D-Day, a pivotal and historic moment in World War II. On this day in 1944, the United States and her allies opened a second front in the war in Europe by invading German-occupied France. The landing onto a 50-mile stretch of beach in Normandy, was the largest and most complex operation in military history.
During the effort, 156,000 Allied troops came ashore. To ferry them and their equipment across the English Channel and provide fire power for the landing required 6,939 vessels. Air support came from 11,590 planes that flew countless sorties.
About 73,000 American troops landed on D-Day, including men from the Pottstown area. One of them, Boyertown resident Robert Miller, was one the thousands of paratroopers dropped behind German lines on the night of June 5 and the early morning hours of June 6.
Miller’s parachute caught in the branches of a tree, leaving him helplessly dangling above the ground. He was still hanging there when German soldiers found him and shot him dead.
Larry Proitte of Pottstown and Frank Evans of Linfield were in the 1st Infantry Division, the "Big Red One," that landed on Omaha Beach. Proitte who joined the Army in 1940, survived D-Day but was later wounded twice in Germany. Evans quarterbacked the Pottstown High School football team his junior year, but quit school to join the Army. He also survived the landing on June 6 but was killed the next day.
Paul Perz of New Hanover Township was working at Flagg’s when he was drafted in 1943.
Attached to the engineers, Perz landed on June 6. On June 26 his parents learned Perz was "seriously wounded." Happily, he survived.
Lawrence Antrim of Pottstown joined the Rangers because he "wanted to be in a unit that would guarantee him action against the enemy." Antrim was in the right unit, but he didn’t last long. He was wounded on June 6.
By the end of the day, the Allies had captured most of their objectives and had driven a few miles inland. D-Day was success, but at a price. Total casualties were about 10,000, with 6,600 of them American.
According to 1944 editions of The Mercury, Pottstown residents greeted the news of the invasion with a "feeling of solemnity and relief." Many went to church; others prayed. One local resident said she "could not hold back the tears."
Everyone knew D-Day was the beginning of the end. Following this historic military operation, the Allies still had 11 months of hard fighting, with more than 2,000 men from this area involved, until Germany surrendered.
In the final analysis, D-Day was a masterpiece of planning by the generals. But it was the soldiers fighting on the ground that day that made it a success. And it was the fighting of the men who later joined them that made victory possible.
These things happened a long time ago, but some of those fighting men are still living among us. Let’s remember them with gratitude today.
1 comment:
i notice you make note that you are a conservative so was my father ,but he said thaton omaha beach no one had any politics other than staying alive ,he was attached to the u.s. army as a support gunner under general raymond o barton ,he made it twelve days in till he was shot by a sniper in the woods leading to sainte mere eglise he was sent back to england where he stayed in a army hospital for 18 months ,he was later awarded the purple heart silver start bronze star w/oak leaf clusters ,i say this because they were the real heroes in my opinion when this war is over the politicians should be made to march in front of the veterens
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