EDITORIAL: A sacred day in America's memory
Jun. 6—Today has us thinking.
Ask Americans to name the deadliest day in our history, and June 6 is one of those that rises to the top of the list. As does Dec. 7. As does 9/11.
But no, the bloodiest day in American history was Sept. 17, 1862, in a Maryland cornfield, near a simple country church along a dirt farm lane so eroded and worn that it was known as the sunken road.
That the bloodiest day in our history occurred at our own hands has us thinking: We are at our worst, our weakest, when we allow ourselves to be divided, when we turn on each other.
Today — June 6 — signals the opposite. We are at our best, our most heroic, when we are united, counting on each other.
Everything about the opening of the second front on June 6, 1944, was colossal: 150,000 men jumped from Skytrains and climbed out of Higgins boats. The invasion that morning involved more than 10,400 planes — fighters, troop transports, bombers and gliders — and between 6,000 and 7,000 ships, the majority of them troop carriers.
For all that, the most colossal thing about D-Day was the consequence.
"For Germany, the defeat was monumental," wrote the historian Rick Atkinson in his trilogy on the war in Europe, "comparable to Stalingrad, Tunis and the recent debacle in White Russia. Fritz Bayerlein, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division and (Field Marshal Erwin) Rommel's erstwhile chief of staff, later concluded that among history's memorable battlefield drubbings, including Cannae and Tannenberg, none 'can approach the battle of annihilation in France in 1944 in the magnitude of planning, the logic of execution, the collaboration of sea, air and ground forces.'"
Less well known but not to be overlooked is the fact that at the same time — the summer of 1944 — the United States had organized a second armada with thousands of ships and 300,000 men, nearly half of them assault troops. And were it not for Overlord — the invasion of France — this second invasion force, with 15 aircraft carriers, would have been the largest and most sophisticated ever assembled, according to naval historian Ian Toll. Its destination was the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian), in the Pacific, where more invasions, more heroism and more sacrifice, should also be remembered.
Toll wrote: "That two such colossal assaults could be launched against fortified enemy shores, in the same month and at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass, was a supreme demonstration of American military-industrial hegemony."
That was America, when we were united, 79 years ago.
D-Day should remain a sacred day in American memory because of the sacrifices required by that generation but also because it signals to future generations what America can accomplish when, despite our disagreements, we choose to be united as a people rather than allow ourselves to become divided.
