“D-Day” is a generic military term. It refers to the day on which an attack or operation is to begin. In the popular consciousness, however, there is only one D-Day, and it occurred 75 years ago today, on June 6, 1944.
The broad historical details are well known: A year of planning, and then an unnerving 24-hour delay. An invasion armada the likes of which the world had never seen. A sky filled with warplanes and paratroopers. More than 150,000 Allied troops storming the beaches of Normandy known by their code names — Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah and, bloodiest of all, Omaha — with a million more standing ready in England for the long-awaited liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe to begin.
Casualty figures remain uncertain. John Long, director of education at the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, noted that record-keeping wasn’t a priority for the commanders that day. “Their mission was to win a world war against Hitler,” Long said, “not to keep records that would satisfy peacetime researchers 75 years later.” Nevertheless, exhaustive study by the foundation has put the Allied death toll at 4,414 for the 24-hour period of June 6, 1944. Of those, 2,501 were Americans and 1,913 were from British, Canadian and other Allied forces. Thousands more were wounded, captured or went missing. German casualties are estimated at between 4,000 and 9,000.
It took weeks of vicious fighting, and many more wounded and killed — including some 3,000 French civilians — for the Allied troops to accomplish their day-one objectives, but the expeditionary force had gained a solid foothold. By July 4, a million Allied troops, tens of thousands of military vehicles and hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies had come ashore. By the end of August, German forces were in full retreat across France and being routed on the Eastern Front by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. In January, Hitler’s desperate counteroffensive in Belgium’s Ardennes region — the brutal Battle of the Bulge — would slow the Allied advance, but the Nazis were spent. Unconditional surrender — and the end of the war in Europe — would come on May 7, 1945.
D-Day was the turning point of the Second World War, and arguably the pivot point of the 20th century. In 2014, President Barack Obama called it “democracy’s beachhead.” It freed an entire continent, set the stage for the United States to become a global superpower and laid the groundwork for the Cold War, which defined geopolitics for the next 50 years. Countless books and dramatizations — including 1962’s The Longest Day, the 2001 TV miniseries Band of Brothers, and Saving Private Ryan, the searing 1998 Academy Award-winning film — have told the story of the landings and the battles that followed. In 1984, during his visit to Normandy on the 40th anniversary, President Ronald Reagan recalled getting a letter from the proud daughter of a D-Day veteran. “We will always remember,” he promised her.
But will we? Are books and movies and presidential visits enough to keep our national memory of the heroism and sacrifice of June 6, 1944, alive for another 75 years? Or will D-Day recede into the mists of time to become some kind of dusty metaphor for an important day, much as the Battle of Marathon is remembered more for inspiring a 26-mile foot race than for giving birth to western culture, or as the Battle of Waterloo became shorthand for defeat, or worse, an ABBA song?
Sadly, there are fates worse than being forgotten. In August 2017, a group of Americans gathered for a protest in Charlottesville, Va. Many of them were about the same age as the troops who landed in Normandy. They carried flaming torches and waved symbols of hate. Sweaty and wild-eyed, they chanted slogans. Nazi slogans. They raised their hands in the Nazi salute. One of them murdered a woman by driving his car into a crowd.
Here the sacrifice of D-Day was not just forgotten. It was desecrated.
The Greatest Generation is fading into history at a rate of 350 people each day, and this year’s anniversary is likely to be the last for many D-Day veterans. An 18-year-old private who splashed ashore on Omaha Beach would be in his early 90s now, and only a handful of D-Day veterans are expected to attend the ceremonies in Normandy.
Those who do will likely visit the American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, an immaculately maintained, 172-acre memorial to the nearly 10,000 Americans buried there. Perched on a bluff above a now-placid Omaha Beach, the site is solemn and sacred, lovely and sad. With its chapel, sculptures and interpretive features, it is a fitting tribute to those who gave their lives to free the world from the shackles of evil.
The hope is that the passage of time will not dim the glory of their deeds.
In the end, that is up to us.