on their way to secure the causeways and flanks of the invasion beaches.
What an astounding feat of arms! My hat is off to all of them and to all of you who serve.
Amazing, bravery and determination that most will never comprehend.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/05/dday.lisovicz/index.html
HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) – Decorated D-Day veteran Lenny Lisovicz says the whispers are true.
For 65 years my family had heard whispers that he and 220 men stormed Omaha Beach and that he and his captain later went AWOL in Paris, France.
They heard he returned to combat and fought all the way to Germany and his courage was rewarded with the prestigious Silver Star.
Then – after that sacrifice and loss – he was committed to a hospital.
On the 65th anniversary of D-Day, Uncle Lenny finally talked at length about everything he had seen and done. And he said it was all true.
Nowadays, Uncle Lenny lives a tranquil life. At 91, he is proud of his garden, where he grows corn, tomatoes and grapefruit. He takes in stray cats, attends Mass and sends money regularly to Catholic missionaries.
But his thoughts are never far away from a sliver of sand thousands of miles away. He turned down my offer to visit Normandy.
“I don’t want to see it. I try to rub that out of my mind. It won’t go away,” he said.
But now, he finally agreed to share his memories.
It began with The Longest Day: June 6, 1944. My uncle was a 26-year-old lieutenant with the Army 1st Infantry Division, the famed “Big Red One.” They had been training in England for something big for months.
Then, over the loudspeakers in the barracks came the famous declaration from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower: “You are about to embark on the Great Crusade.”
The Germans were taken by surprise in one of the greatest amphibious invasions of all time, which would mark a turning point of the war in Europe.
Don’t Miss* Horrors of war vivid for D-Day heroes“I just imagined what that enemy observer felt when he looked through that concrete bunker and looked out at that ocean and all he could see was boats, warships,” Lisovicz said.
But the Nazis had a superior position.
“They had you pinpointed. It was just like shootin’ ducks on a pond. Your comrades would get artillery busted. A hand flying here, a leg there, guts laying out on the ground, asking for help and you couldn’t help them. You had to move. You just had to push them aside,” he recalled.
But the Allies couldn’t push their way onto the cliffs until a massive air assault began.
“At times there were so many planes in the sky you couldn’t see the sky… ,” Lisovicz said. “You could see them forming from all directions coming into one pattern. And that’s how we got off the beach, darlin’.”
Their orders were to meet up with the paratroopers, who landed behind enemy lines. My uncle said they found them by smell, because they were all dead.
“They backed them in a corner and machine gunned them down and didn’t have enough decency to cover them,” he said.
That was when an unwritten order came down: “No prisoners. And we didn’t take any.”
It was shortly after this that he decided he had enough. He and the captain went AWOL in Paris. To add insult to injury, they stole the major’s jeep. Their freedom lasted only about a week.
“The MP told us he was going to shoot us for going AWOL. But who cares? You didn’t care anymore,” Lisovicz said. “You were just fed up with war, fed up with killing, just absolutely fed up.”
But they weren’t shot – not by Americans, anyway.
My uncle and the captain went back into combat. The captain was killed by a camouflaged tank. My uncle was now the commanding officer. And the fighting was ferocious as he battled his way into Germany.
He set trip wires for flares in one pivotal battle. At about 3 a.m., the flares went off. The Germans had overrun the outer defenses of the platoon. It was chaos.
The Silver Star says that he “skillfully deployed men and weapons into strategic positions and with accurately directed fire, held the foe at bay until supporting troops arrived and repulsed the attack.”
But there was more.
“When I looked up I seen a man walking up with two of my comrades. It was a German. So I went after him. And got him and brought my men back,” he said.
The Silver Star described it as “extraordinary gallantry and aggressive leadership.”
Only 22 of the 220 men that stormed the beach with him came home alive.
That was the last time my uncle saw combat. He had been hit. He learned about his Silver Star in the hospital.
He wanted to return, but he was shell-shocked.
“It took them a year and a half of my life for them to straighten me out and get back to civilian life,”
Thank you to all who served and to those who are currently serving. May God bless you one and all!
Buckaroo
D-Day Order speech by Dwight Eisenhower
You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41.
The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeat in open battle man to man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground.
Our home fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.
The tide has turned.
The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle.
We will accept nothing less than full victory.
Good luck, and let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
I was just thinking about this. I thought, “I wonder how many old guys are remembering where they were about this time”
It is humbling to think of the brave deeds of the warriors that preceded us.
Bless them all, present and departed.
Although, other presidents have visited and spoke at Normandy. No one, in my opinion gave a better speach than President Reagan.
We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers – at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine-guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could still bear arms.
Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.
These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.
Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your ‘lives fought for life…and left the vivid air signed with your honor’…
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge – and pray God we have not lost it – that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
From;
http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/normandy.cfm
Thank you to all who have served and are currently serving.
My grand father was at Normady. Years ago I went to Washington D.C. with him to one of his reunions when they built the WW2 monument. It was a great experience, great bunch of guys. The monument is incredible too.
My grandfather was wounded during the war and was evac’d to a hospital in England where he had tea with the Queen of England. She was touring the hospital while he was there and had tee with a half dozen or so injured soldiers. We found an old local newspaper with a picture of him during the event.
What an amazing amount of courage. I could only imagine what it must have been like when the door dropped to the boats during the initial landing. Simply amazing. This is the type of courage OUR country was founded on.
We are losing our WWII vets more and more each day. If you get the chance to meet one, please thank them for all they did so that we can continue to live in the greatest country in the world !!! Without them there would be no M4C and all those fun black rifles to shoot. They said it best when they called them our greatest generation !! The civilian soldiers of the USA fought and defeated the most professional army in the world back then.
s.m.
do I know you from another site?
This one is for all US troops and all of their their Allies , past , present & future.
You have probably heard the song before:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vfsIr9HLYY
Never Forget.
Anyone who reads military history should check out Ambrose’s book on D-Day. Fantastic read and it really describes how challenging an operation it was.
Jay
mmmm, not sure. I spend most of my time here. I joined TOS when I first started looking into ar15’s but quickly found M4C and now mainly go there for laughs:D
What other site are you thinking of ?
s.m.
Truly the greatest generation.
Thanks to them we are here today/
God Bless them all.
2Aforum
There is a member with the handle “sandman08” there. 99+9=108, etc.
xxxxx
Nope, not me. I did my basic at sand hill, FT. Benning and have 2 boys both playing baseball so I spend a lot of time " in the sand " hence, the nickname. The 99and9 came from not being able to use just sandman as a name. Funny coincidence though.
s.m.