"The Longest Day"

The movie “The Longest Day,” (based on Cornelius Ryan’s 1959 book by the same title) came out in 1962. The black and white film won two Academy Awards and was nominated for three others.  A colorized VHS version was released in 1994, the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings at Normandy.  Today, June 6, 2019,  marks the 75th anniversary of that landing.  I was only a one-year-old when Operation Overlord took place.

It is difficult to grasp the enormity of the event.  Five thousand landing and assault craft, 289 escorts, 277 minesweepers, and 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel that day.  By the end of June 1944 nearly 875,000 men had disembarked at Normandy.  I read somewhere that 85% of the troops in the landing and assault craft had never been in combat before that moment.  Allied casualties on that first day (D-Day) were at least 10,000, while the Germans lost 4,000 to 9,000 men.  Civilian casualties were estimated at 3,000.  It was indeed the “longest day” and it remains the largest seaborne invasion in history.  I pray there will never be another long day like D-Day ever again!

D-Day was just the beginning, not the end, of the Allied assault to liberate German-occupied France and eventually western Europe from Nazi control. It took six more days, after June 6th, just to gain control of the five beachheads included in the massive operation plan.  It took almost another year (May 8, 1945) before Germany’s unconditional surrender and the end of the war in Europe.  The war in the Pacific did not end until August of that year.

All of my life, from my birth till now, there has been war: WW II, the Korean Conflict, the Viet Nam war and currently the enduring conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and countless others. Will wars never cease? 

On this 75th anniversary of the horror that was D-Day, I hope the world will avoid glorifying war today. Let us only honor those who were forced to endure them and remember all who lost their lives because of war.  Perhaps in honoring them and remembering them and the tremendous cost of D-Day, we will come to our senses and sing together:

I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield

Down by the riverside

I’m gonna study, study war no more.

….

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load

Down by the riverside

I ain’t gonna study war no more.