By now, everyone knows the facts, but
some of them bear repeating. On the night
of June 5, and into the early morning of June
6, 1944, the Allied forces launched what re-
mains to this day the largest amphibious
assault in history, comprised of 160,000 Al-
lied troops, 9,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft.
Overnight, around 24,000 British, American
and Canadian airborne troops were dropped
into Normandy with specific missions. Un-
der heavy enemy fire, and in bad weather
conditions, many of them missed their drop
zones, sometimes by as much as 20 miles.
At around 6:30 a.m., the first of 33,000 sol-
diers landed on five beaches, code-named
Utah, Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold, along
a 50-mile stretch of heavily fortified coast-
line. By the end of the day, nearly 9,000
soldiers were killed or wounded, most of
them at Omaha, but they had established a
beachhead and began the slow process of
pushing Nazi Germany east across Europe
to defeat Hitler.
That's the story from the textbooks. Up
close, it's a little more personal.
