OPINION

Beveridge: After eight decades, looking back on D-Day

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Reid K. Beveridge is a retired Army National Guard brigadier general and commanded the 261st Signal Brigade at the time of his retirement in 2000. He was also editor of National Guard magazine in Washington, D.C., from 1981-96. He resides near Georgetown.

Eighty years ago Thursday, we had a “good” war. So, this week, in the midst of setbacks in Ukraine’s war to survive and Israel’s war to neutralize an existential threat to its continued existence, President Joe Biden heads to France to commemorate D-Day.

Today’s young people probably don’t even know what D-Day was. It may or may not be taught in high school or college history courses. The book and the film, “The Longest Day,” are out of print or out of fashion.

Forty years ago this week, I was privileged to travel to the 40th D-Day anniversary with my boss, a decorated World War II veteran. On the long flight from Washington, D.C., to London, he described a little of what it was like to be mobilized with his Nebraska National Guard unit in 1940 and then train for four years to prepare for the European part of World War II.

Keep in mind that many Army and Marine units had been fighting for more than two years in the South Pacific before the June 6, 1944, invasion of France, aka “D-Day.” And we also had been fighting in North Africa and Italy for more than a year. The operation in North Africa had not gone well at the beginning. The invasion itself was fine, but the lack of readiness of some Army units had been exposed at Kasserine Pass, when German Gen. Erwin Rommel had easily defeated U.S. forces due to both poor equipment — particularly the M3 tank — and the poor performance of the Army troops.

This situation was rectified in due course, when the corps commander was relieved and replaced with then-Maj. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. Some of this is accurately portrayed in the famous film, “Patton.” Suffice it to say, U.S. forces improved and, along with the British coming from Egypt in the east, Rommel was defeated before the Allies invaded first Sicily and then Italy.

As we note the anniversary of D-Day, it also is well to remember that the Allies — the United States, Great Britain, Canada and the rest of the British Empire — didn’t win the war. It is often forgotten or ignored here, but much of the credit for World War II belongs to Russia. In one of the stupidest strategic decisions in history, Adolf Hitler invaded Russia in 1940, shortly after he had defeated France in 40 days.

In the various “Big Three” conferences beginning in 1943, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin had pressured President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill for a “western” front. He didn’t consider the operation in Italy a western front. So, the invasion of France was conceived and nicknamed “Operation Overlord.” As he had been in North Africa, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was put in command, much to the annoyance of Churchill.

D-Day turned out to be a massive operation. It also validated the famous quote from Napoleon Bonaparte a century-and-a-half earlier: “Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.” As any senior commander quickly learns, you can only do so much before logistics determines most everything.

Our visit to the invasion beaches in 1984 — and then later, with my wife — were a revelation of a sort. As one who started out as an infantry officer, one glance at Omaha Beach told me everything I needed to know about the difficulties the 1st Infantry Division and the 29th Infantry Division had that day.

The beach is very wide at low tide. The Germans had put a lot of vehicle-defeating barriers in the surf. But far worse were the bluffs just off the beach, nearly cliffs. It was from that high ground that a German Panzer division rained down deadly fire on the arriving U.S. troops, pinning them in the sand for most of the day.

Other units on other beaches had an easier time securing lodgment. The U.S. 4th Infantry Division arrived at Utah Beach to the east. The British and Canadian units landed at Juno and Gold beaches to the west.

The Allies had done one thing well. The deception plan had fooled the Germans into believing that the operation on the Normandy beaches was a diversion and that the main invasion would come near Calais, opposite Britain’s Dover — the shortest crossing of the English Channel. It did not. Further, the Germans had erroneously concluded that Patton would be in command of the main invasion because he was the best general.

Rommel, who had been put in charge of defending the Atlantic coast for the Germans, is famously quoted as saying that, unless the Allies could be defeated on the beaches and thrown back into the sea, the war was lost. It was with some difficulty that the Allies gained much ground after D-Day. My boss, who walked across Omaha Beach a month later, said he was stunned to find the 29th Division only a couple miles inland, bogged down in the hedgerow country that is rural Normandy.

That hedgerow country, where farm fields are surrounded by thick hedges, also was a revelation to a former infantry officer. It was that you couldn’t see the enemy 50 yards in front of you and then, having fought all day, gained only 50 or 100 yards, while taking serious casualties.

What followed a month or so later was the St. Lo (a city) breakout, when Patton’s 3rd Army made its famous turn and threw the German army back into central France. V-E Day came 11 months after D-Day but not before the Russians had reached Germany and captured Berlin.

Forty years ago, many D-Day veterans made it to the ceremony, when President Ronald Reagan made his famous speech. All are dead now.

These days, some say that World War II was the last good war. That may have been because it lasted less than four years (in U.S. participation, longer for the British). We Americans don’t like forever wars.

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