World War II veterans and other visitors will gather in Normandy today to mark the 78th anniversary of the Normandy landings – also known as D-Day – to pay tribute to the nearly 160,000 troops from Britain, the US, Canada and elsewhere who landed there in the largest amphibious military operation in history.
D-Day - Never Forget.
On June 6, 1944, now known as the "longest day", 156,000 Allied troops landed in France. It remains the largest amphibious assault in history, claiming the lives of an estimated 4,400 troops on the first day alone pic.twitter.com/Rrx240B0Mb
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 6, 2019
The D-Day anniversary, after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic restricted or deterred visitors, has special resonance for another reason this year – once again war rages in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Also read: D-Day: The politics involved in how war should be memorialised and remembered
Let’s take a closer look at D-Day and why the West and Russia have in recent years been at odds over its importance in World War II:
What happened on D-Day?
Operation Overlord began with Allied troops landing on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.
D-Day: What happened?@AFP map of operations during the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 pic.twitter.com/HWejd9H54f — AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 6, 2019
On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.
Soviet troops, meanwhile, were not involved in the invasion of Normandy though Russians were among the ranks of the Allied soldiers.
As per Russia Beyond, one Georgiy Chaplin, a Russian emigre, who served as a Major in the British army became a hero of this operation.
The website describes Chaplin’s ‘finest hour’ thus:
“The 120th company landed on the Jig beaches, within the Gold sector, but was soon cut from the main forces. Demonstrating outstanding courage, Chaplin bravely led his soldiers on a breakthrough, thanks to which they not only reached their brothers-in-arms, but also completely crushed the German unit that stood in their path. For this act he was awarded the Order of the British Empire.”
Chaplin was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel after the war. He worked as a teacher at the Royal Pioneer Corps military school, but died of an angina attack in 1950 at age of 63.
Divide between West and Russia
While the West has glorified D-Day as the first step to freeing France and western Europe from Nazi German occupation, Russia has taken an altogether different view, claiming it was an important event but that it did not have a ‘decisive impact’ on the ultimate outcome of the war.
Russia has for long claimed that the West has downplayed the Soviet Union’s contributions to defeating fascism during World War II.
Moscow, which had been fighting German forces in the east for almost three years by the time of D-Day, and gradually pushing them back from early 1943, had been urging Britain’s Winston Churchill to open a second front as far back as August 1942.
The shadow of the World War II continues to loom large in the Russian psyche.
The Soviet Union lost over 25 million lives in what it calls the Great Patriotic War, and Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has taken to marking victory in the war with a massive annual military parade on Red Square.
‘Allied effort should not be exaggerated’
In 2019, as the 75th anniversary of D-Day was being celebrated, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, said, “It should of course not be exaggerated. And especially not at the same time as diminishing the Soviet Union’s titanic efforts, without which this victory simply would not have happened.”
“As historians note, the Normandy landing did not have a decisive impact on the outcome of World War Two and the Great Patriotic War. It had already been pre-determined as a result of the Red Army’s victories, mainly at Stalingrad (in late 1942) and Kursk (in mid-1943),” Zakharova told reporters.
Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov chimed in: "Our detractors seek to diminish the role of the Soviet Union in World War II and portray it if not as the main culprit of the war, then at least as an aggressor, along with Nazi Germany.”
What do experts say?
Experts say both the West and Russia make good points.
As David Brennan writes in Newsweek: "While the western nations fought on the beaches, through the treacherous Normandy hedgerows and into the towns and cities of France, troops of the Soviet Union were battling across Eastern and Central Europe."
"By the time Allied troops came ashore in June 1944 the Russians had already fought three years of devastating war on the Eastern Front, taking and inflicting appalling casualties. The enormous and pivotal battles of Stalingrad and Kursk had been fought and won, and the Axis retreat towards Germany was well underway."
As Charles Maynes writing in TheWorld.org blames the perception divide of World War II between the West and Russia on the legacy of the Cold War: “Perhaps it's a legacy of the Cold War being waged through the classroom. Americans grow up hearing little of Russia's sacrifices in the war — about the key battles on the eastern front and the 20 million Soviet lives lost. Similarly, Russians know little about D-Day, Pearl Harbor, and the war in the Pacific. As Winston Churchill famously said, "History is written by the victors. It's true. And, in this case, there just happen to be several of them.”
Veterans remember
Several thousand people were expected Monday at a ceremony later at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in the French town of Colleville-sur-Mer. Amid the dozens of US veterans expected to attend was Ray Wallace, 97, a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
On D-Day, his plane was hit and caught fire, forcing him to jump earlier than expected. He landed 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first French village to be liberated from Nazi occupation.
“We all got a little scared then. And then whenever the guy dropped us out, we were away from where the rest of the group was. That was scary,” Wallace told The Associated Press.
Less than a month later, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was ultimately liberated after 10 months and returned to the US. Still, Wallace thinks he was lucky.
“I remember the good friends that I lost there. So, it’s a little emotional,” he said, with sadness in his voice. “I guess you can say I’m proud of what I did but I didn’t do that much.”
Peter Smoothy, 97, served in the British Royal Navy and landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
“The first thing I remember are the poor lads who didn’t come back ... It’s a long time ago now, nearly 80 years ... And here we are still living,” he told The Associated Press. “We’re thinking about all these poor lads who didn’t get off the beach that day, their last day, but they’re always in our minds.”
US D-Day veteran Charles Shay expressed thoughts for his comrades who fell that day. “I have never forgotten them and I know that their spirits are here,” he told The Associated Press.
The 98-year-old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island, Maine, took part in a sage-burning ceremony near the beach in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.
Shay, who now lives in Normandy, was a 19-year-old US Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.
He said he was sad to see war in Europe once again, so many years later.
“Ukraine is a very sad situation. I feel sorry for the people there and I don’t know why this war had to come, but I think the human beings like to, I think they like to fight. I don’t know,” he said.
“In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we’d bring peace to the world. But it’s not possible.”
With inputs from agencies
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