Some years back, during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the legacy media were making a big deal of tallying the numbers of American service members killed and wounded in that affair. Not to minimize those numbers, of course; we feel for, mourn, and honor every service member who gives his life for America, especially those who fell making the other guys die for their country. But on occasion, a little perspective is in order.
Case in point: My parents, both of the Greatest Generation, were alive then, and I was sitting in their house visiting when the news came out that the Iraq war casualty toll had hit 3,000. Mom and Dad - Dad, being a WW2 veteran himself - traded a look. Dad, a man of few words, only said, "We lost that many in one morning at Normandy."
Dad was right, of course; over 4,000 Allied servicemen fell taking those critical beaches, those first steps on the road to Berlin. And it happened 81 years ago today.
D-Day was the name given to the June 6, 1944, invasion of the beaches at Normandy in northern France by troops from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries during World War II. France at the time was occupied by the armies of Nazi Germany, and the amphibious assault—codenamed Operation Overlord—landed some 156,000 Allied soldiers on the beaches of Normandy by the end of the day.
Despite their success, some 4,000 Allied troops were killed by German soldiers defending the beaches. At the time, the D-Day invasion was the largest naval, air and land operation in history, and within a few days about 326,000 troops, more than 50,000 vehicles and some 100,000 tons of equipment had landed. By August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and in spring of 1945 the Allies had defeated the Germans. Historians often refer to D-Day as the beginning of the end of World War II.
Mom had a memory of that day, too, albeit indirectly. She recalled having seen a newsreel film with an American general who came ashore later in the day, walking among the fallen with tears in his eyes, too choked up to say anything other than, "Brave men. Brave, brave men."
These brave men came from small farms in the Midwest and urban neighborhoods from Brooklyn to San Francisco. These brave men came from the high plains of Kansas, the deserts of Arizona, and swamps of Florida, and pine forests of Minnesota, and, yes, the backcountry of Alaska. There were boys in their teens and men in their thirties who had rushed to join up. They were tough, they were determined, they had courage and willpower that would pass into legend and outlast them, outlast all of them, outlast all of us.
Today, these men would be described by the soft, pampered classes of the American left and academia (but I repeat myself) as "sexist." Their masculine attributes that beat Hitler would be described as "toxic." They certainly were toxic to the Germans, and it was because of those attributes, along with, of course, America's industrial might, that they won - that we all won.
There will always be a need for brave, determined, courageous men. That's one of the lasting lessons of this day, June 6th - of D-Day, the beaches of Normandy, of the men who fought and died there.
See Also: Essex Files: Honoring a Hero on Memorial Day
Essex Files: The Last March of the Greatest Generation
Earlier in World War 2, Winston Churchill had famously remarked, "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." But D-Day was the beginning of the end. With the Soviet Union driving on Germany from the east and the Americans, British, French, and other allies from the west, the Third Reich's days were numbered. And it was good old-fashioned manly courage and determination, part of what too many think of as "toxic masculinity" today, that pulled it off.
In closing, listen to General Eisenhower's message to the troops; it bears consideration, even today.
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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