[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 57 (Thursday, April 29, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E707-E708]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         RECOGNIZING THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF OPERATION OVERLORD

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 29, 2004

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing 
legislation to recognize and commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 
Allied landing at Normandy during World War II. I am pleased that the 
ranking member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, Mr. Evans, has 
joined me as an original cosponsor of this measure. I urge all of my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this resolution.
  The well-known phrase ``freedom is not free'' perhaps never meant as 
much as it did on June 6, 1944. Over 6,500 American troops suffered 
casualties on that day. Our allies also suffered great numbers of 
killed and wounded. Many more observed horrible images that were burned 
into their memories for the rest of their lives. Sadly, this was the 
beginning of a campaign that would cost the lives of thousands of 
Americans in order to end the ``Thousand Year Reich'' hundreds of years 
prematurely. There are many concentration camp prisoners--and their 
descendants--alive today because of the price paid by thousands of 
young men.
  One of the reasons I feel strongly that Congress should debate and 
pass legislation such as this is that there are fewer and fewer 
original participants in the event, and our collective societal memory 
can become skewed and distorted. As the interval of time lengthens 
between our current understanding of a historical event, and when the 
event originally took place, its significance can sometimes become 
blurred or almost lost.
  Many of us look back upon the Normandy Invasion at D-Day, June 6, 
1944, and think of it as the beginning of Europe's liberation from the 
clutches of one of the most evil systems of government ever devised by 
mankind. In many ways, this understanding is correct. But sometimes I 
feel as if too many historical observers minimize the fact that the 
Allied victory at Normandy, and the subsequent liberation of Europe 
from Nazi and Fascist tyranny, was not inevitable. Many historians 
today are so obsessed with finding and identifying ``fundamental 
historical trends'' and isolating various factors and causes that they 
often overlook that much of history occurs by chance and by the sheer 
human will of key individuals.
  On June 6, 1944, failure was possible. In fact, when you pause and 
consider the magnitude and scale of such an enormously complicated 
military operation waged by multiple nations, it sometimes seems 
amazing that the operation ever succeeded.
  After all, roughly two years earlier, several thousand Canadian and 
British troops launched an amphibious raid near the town of Dieppe, and 
this operation proved to be a complete disaster. Some of the highest 
casualty rates of the entire war were suffered during the operation. As 
a result of this military debacle, there were over 1,000 allied 
soldiers killed, and 2,000 prisoners taken by the Germans. The Allied 
raid failed because troops were inadequately prepared and lacked 
experience in battle, the plan was poorly conceived, overly complex, 
and lacked sufficient fire support from aircraft and artillery.

  As planning for Operation Overlord was underway, Winston Churchill 
injected much needed caution and urged careful planning. Stalin was 
putting heavy pressure on Roosevelt and Churchill to move quickly and 
launch an invasion in 1943 to relieve the enormous pressure on the 
Soviets along the Eastern Front. Churchill worried that a 1943 invasion 
would fail, and feared that the beaches of France could end up ``choked 
with the bodies of the flower of American and British manhood.''
  Fortunately, the Allies learned the bitter lessons of the 1942 Dieppe 
landing, and put these hard-won lessons to good use during the Normandy 
invasion. But there was nothing historically inevitable about the 
success of Operation Overlord.
  The famed historian Stephen Ambrose put the significance of this 
operation in perspective:

       You can't exaggerate it. You can't overstate it. [D-Day] 
     was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on 
     which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in 
     this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it 
     going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the 
     democracies going to prevail? If we would have failed on 
     Omaha Beach and on the other beaches on the 6th of June in 
     1944, the struggle for Europe would have been a struggle 
     between Hitler and Stalin, and we would have been out of it.

  It is also worth noting that General Dwight D. Eisenhower himself was 
not completely confident of victory. Prior to the launch of the great 
amphibious assault, he scribbled a brief note about what he would say 
to the press in the event that the invasion failed, and put it in his 
wallet. He later added it to his diary. The note read as follows:

       ``Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to 
     gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. 
     My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon 
     the best information available. The troops, the air and the 
     Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If 
     any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.

  When the words of this note were first revealed to the American 
public, I thought how wise President Franklin Roosevelt was to pick a 
man of such character and humility as Dwight Eisenhower to lead the 
single most important military operation in American history.
  Here was a man who was asked to oversee and execute the most 
complicated military plan ever devised, one in which so many things 
could have gone wrong that you could have blamed hundreds of different 
variables had it not succeeded.
  A great invasion force stood off the Normandy coast of France as dawn 
broke on June 6, 1944: in all, there were 9 battleships,

[[Page E708]]

23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, and 71 large landing craft of various 
descriptions, as well as troop transports, mine sweepers, and 
merchantmen. Combined, these forces constituted nearly 5,000 ships of 
every type, the largest armada ever assembled. Allied Air Forces flew 
11,000 sorties to provide air cover, bomb beach-head fortifications, 
and most importantly, pin down the armored Panzer tank reserves that 
the Germans had available to counterattack and drive any Allied 
beachhead back into the sea.

  Eisenhower had reasonable faith in his war plan, to be sure. He did 
not recklessly cast over 150,000 Allied soldiers into harm's way 
without taking every possible precaution to ensure success. But he was 
fully cognizant of just how badly things could go awry even if 
everything he could control went perfectly and on schedule. He was 
fully prepared to shoulder the entire blame himself if the outcome did 
not go well.
  And there was much to be worried about. As the day of the invasion 
approached, the weather in the English Channel became stormy. The U.S. 
Army Center of Military History (CMH) reports that heavy winds, a five-
foot swell at sea, and lowering skies caused General Eisenhower to 
postpone the assault from June 5 to June 6. Weather conditions remained 
poor, but when weather forecasters predicted the winds would abate and 
the cloud cover would rise enough on the scheduled day of the attack to 
permit aerial support, Eisenhower reluctantly gave the command.
  Eisenhower also understood the awesome and heavy burden of leadership 
that comes with knowingly sending thousands of men to a place where 
many would not return home alive or uninjured. Planners had expected 
casualties of up to 80 percent among the airborne forces and glider 
troops. Eisenhower, knowing full well what was likely to face these 
airborne troops, traveled to an air base at Newbury, England to bid 
farewell to the members of the 101st Airborne Division before their tow 
planes and gliders carried them off to battle. The U.S. Army Center of 
Military History reports that a newspaper man who accompanied 
Eisenhower later told friends he had seen tears in the general's eyes.
  Eisenhower's love and fear for his men was grounded in reality. Fewer 
than half of the gliders assigned to the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division 
ever reached their assigned landing zones on D-Day. Those that missed 
their targets either became stuck in hedgerows, struck German obstacles 
constructed specifically to counter glider troops, or were mired in 
swampy terrain. By midmorning of June 6, 1944, 4,000 men of the 82nd 
were unaccounted for, along with 60 percent of the equipment they had 
carried into battle.
  Several of the beach landings went relatively smoothly and according 
to plan. But at the beach landing code-named OMAHA, many things seemed 
to go wrong all at once for the primarily American force. Naval and 
aerial bombardment of enemy mortar and artillery positions had failed 
to inflict substantial damage. As American infantry tried to take the 
beaches, they were pounded mercilessly by the German defenders. Allied 
rocket ships tried to bring additional indirect fire support, but they 
were launched at the outer limits of their effective range. When 
missiles fell short, they often hit Allied troops on the beach.
  The high winds and strong currents blew many of the landing craft off 
course, making it difficult to coordinate artillery support and leaving 
troops miles from their objective with useless maps. And where the 
Allied forces had appropriate maps, they didn't have the necessary 
radios with which to call in for fire support, reinforcements, or to 
coordinate their attacks. A lot of radios had gone to the bottom with 
their ships and landing craft. Many of those who landed were seasick or 
weary from the journey through choppy waters. Nearly half of the 
amphibious tanks accompanying the invaders sank, swamped by the high 
waves their design couldn't accommodate. Wreckage at the water's edge 
piled up and landing craft became hopelessly entangled in barbed wire 
and uncleared beach obstacles placed by the German defenders. Arriving 
at the battlefield during a rising tide, many landing craft became 
stuck on sandbars that were 50 to 100 yards from the waterline. Enemy 
machine guns, firing from heavily fortified bunkers, mowed down rank 
after rank of U.S. troops who had to wade to shore with fifty, eighty, 
or sometimes a hundred pounds of equipment through water that was often 
neck deep.

  According to some estimates, barely one-third of the first wave of 
attackers ever reached dry land. Few heavy weapons made it to shore in 
the first wave at OMAHA making it extremely difficult to take out the 
mortars, machine gun emplacements, and artillery batteries that were 
raining death upon Allied forces. Some were killed the moment the 
landing doors dropped, as was so poignantly captured during the 
memorable film, ``Saving Private Ryan.'' Those who were wounded and 
unable to move sometimes drowned as the tide moved in. Making matters 
worse, the force opposing them were seasoned German veterans from the 
352nd Infantry Division.
  Only sheer bravery and the monumental effort of human will posed 
against impossible odds carried the day at OMAHA beach. About 2,500 men 
were killed or wounded at OMAHA alone.
  By the end of the day, the total tally of dead and injured topped 
9,000. The American share was about 6,500. Among the American airborne 
divisions, about 2,500 became casualties. Canadian forces experienced 
about 1,100 casualties and another 3,000 British soldiers were killed 
or wounded. Approximately one-third of the casualties were killed in 
action.
  At roughly 10 p.m., June 6, 1944, Eastern Standard Time, President 
Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast a radio address to the nation, and led 
a prayer for the many thousands of soldiers committed irrevocably to 
battle that day:

       Last night when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I 
     knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our 
     Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater 
     operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.
       And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in 
     prayer:
       Almighty God: our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have 
     set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our 
     Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free 
     a suffering humanity.
       Lead them 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. . . .
       Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive 
     them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom. . . .
       With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces 
     of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and 
     racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and 
     with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a 
     sure peace--a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy 
     men. And a peace that will let all men live in freedom, 
     reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be 
     done, Almighty God. Amen.

  Incredibly, the high casualties suffered were less than Allied 
planners had actually expected. There were many who feared that Hitler 
would order the use of chemical weapons to prevent the Allies from 
gaining a toehold on the European mainland. According to the U.S. Army 
Center of Military History, Eisenhower's chief surgeon, Maj. Gen. 
Albert W. Kenner, and the Chief Surgeon of the U.S. Army's European 
Theater of Operations, Maj. Gen. Paul R. Hawley (who later served with 
distinction as the chief medical officer of the VA), had prepared their 
staffs to process at least 12,000 killed and wounded in the First U.S. 
Army Division alone.
  Despite the losses, and the unspeakable hardships endured by so many, 
the invasion succeeded. More than 100,000 men and 10,000 vehicles had 
come ashore that day, the first of millions who would hammer the final 
nails into Nazi Germany's coffin.
  The skilled German Commander of Army Group B, Field Marshall Erwin 
Rommel, was quoted before the battle as saying ``If we do not succeed 
in our mission to close the seas to the Allies, or in the first 48 
hours, to throw them back, their invasion will be successful. . . . In 
the absence of strategic reserves and due to the total inadequacy of 
our navy and of our air force we will have lost the war.'' Rommel's 
assessment was ultimately to be proven right. Less than one year later, 
Nazi Germany would be beset on both sides by victorious Allied armies 
and surrendered.
  Mr. Speaker, our nation must never forget or take for granted the 
sacrifices that were made to liberate Europe and put an end to Nazi 
tyranny. We must never turn our backs on the veterans who scaled the 
cliffs of Normandy against overwhelming odds.
  As long as I have the privilege of serving as Chairman of the House 
Veterans' Affairs Committee, I will make it my highest priority to 
ensure that those who risked everything for the sake of our freedom, 
are honored and served appropriately by the Department of Veterans 
Affairs.

                          ____________________