“At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we, all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.”
—Stephen Ambrose, historian and author of D-Day
“I don’t feel that I’m any kind of hero. To me, the work had to be done. I was asked to do it. So I did.”
—PFC Joe Lesniewski, D-Day parachutist with 101st Airborne
“We’ll start the war from right here.”
—Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the former president, who landed with his troops in the wrong place on Utah Beach
If there is one word that would forever characterize the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944—the day forever known as D-Day—that word would be colossal. From the water or through the air, 7,000 naval vessels and over 800 aircraft would spirit 160,000 soldiers onto the beaches, cliffs, and countryside of Nazified France. And that was on the first day. As the Allied onslaught unfolded, the Nazis knew what was at stake—nothing less than their ideological fever dream and iron grip on power. And so, Hitler’s savage military minions crafted an unforgiving hellscape of gunfire, mortar fire, and bombs to repel what was deemed to be the Allies’ last chance to penetrate Fortress Europe.
After two-and-a-half years of war (for the Americans, at least), with campaigns in North Africa and Italy, Scandinavia and the Balkans, D-Day unleashed the greatest amphibious invasion in the history of the world. The mercurial Soviet leader Joseph Stalin still fumed that the second front took so long while his reeling Soviet Union received the pitiless brunt of the Nazi war machine (of note, four out of five Nazis killed in the Second World War were killed by the Russians, while 27 million Russians perished in the process). British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had long but unsuccessfully lobbied for a Mediterranean front that would simultaneously penetrate the “soft underbelly of Europe” and cut off Stalin’s forces from advancing perilously westward where they would refuse to relinquish their newly devoured territory. On D-Day, Churchill himself grumbled bitterly when he was forbidden to land with the troops. And it was on December 7, 1943 that President Franklin Roosevelt made his best decision pertaining to this “day of days”—he appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander, a post charged with the planning and execution of the invasion, dubbed Operation Overlord. Ike, as the General was affectionately known, was a master of logistics but, notwithstanding his tireless lobbying, had no true field experience. Nevertheless, his earlier work involved visiting countless Allied war cemeteries from the Great War. Ike knew exactly what was at stake.
But, really, how “colossal” was this invasion?
It wasn’t simply a matter of size and scope. D-Day was colossal in its ramifications. It embodied nothing less than the hopes for the rescue of Christian civilization from the clutches of the darkest barbarism.
Early in the war, French Premier Paul Reynaud described the totalitarian terror that was descending upon Nazified Europe. “It [will] be the Middle Ages again, but not illuminated by the mercy of Christ.”
Winston Churchill warned,
If Germany defeated either ally or both, she would give no mercy; we should be reduced to the status of vassals and slaves forever. It would be far better that the civilization of Western Europe with all of its achievements should come to a tragic but splendid end than that the two great democracies should linger on, stripped of all that made life worth living.
And Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel recalled a fellow prisoner insisting,
Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve. . . . I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
During this period of European horror, God had been expelled, governments had been overthrown, and peoples had been incinerated.
It was clear the fight would be difficult. President Franklin Roosevelt offered a clear-eyed prayer via radio address:
Lead [our soldiers] straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest—until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.
And General Eisenhower issued his Order of the Day, reminding all soldiers, “Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.”
Today is the eighty-first anniversary of the D-Day invasion. And at every level, it was colossal. But, today, when I consider it, I think less about the array of bombers, the mass of gliders, or the fleet of Higgins boats. Instead, I think about that one soldier strapped with an eighty-pound pack, leaping from the iron floor of the Higgins boat, running, sweating, and ducking with breakneck speed, his heart erupting out of his chest and his strained breathing deep in his ear. As the mortars upend the earth and the bullets whiz by his head, I marvel, “How does he run forward?” Because what was truly colossal about D-Day wasn’t simply the vastness of the operation or the enormity of the evil to be overcome. No. It was also the courage of the everyday soldier and the devotion to duty that led him to run forward, always forward. As a result of that courage and devotion, D-Day claimed the lives of 4,414 soldiers and wounded over 5,000.
In his essay, “A Defense of Rash Vows,” G. K. Chesterton laments the tendency to skirt heroic commitment, or at least to afford oneself an escape hatch in case things get difficult. But anything heroic is, by its nature, difficult. D-Day proves to us that rash vows are not only admirable but indispensable. We will land. We will fight. We will win. On D-Day, this is what the soldiers were told (and what they told themselves) again and again. As Chesterton wrote, “All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbor announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.”
D-Day was colossal because its heroes were colossal.
May we, likewise, answer the call to greatness whenever it may come.
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
Amen.