DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

A friend was born in England in 1941 and now lives in the US. He sent me this on June 6th of this year.

John’s Recollection of D-Day, 6 June 1944

The clearest memory I have of my early childhood occurred on 6 June 1944. This was D-Day - the day the Allies invaded France. I lived in the south of England next to a Spitfire airfield and was three years old. I remember looking into the sky and seeing it full of airplanes. They were flying very low and the noise was terrific. It was a dull day, but it became as dark as dusk when all these machines filled the air. It created a lot of excitement. People ran out of their houses and cheered.
In the twenty-four hours of 6 June the Allies flew over 14,600 sorties from airfields just north of where I lived. Their first objective was to destroy by bombing the enemy’s shore defenses prior to the seaborne assault of the army on the beaches of Normandy. At the same time, 20,000 airborne troops were flown in Dakota C-47 transport aircraft towing gliders. The objective of the airborne landings was to seize key objectives some distance behind the beaches to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches. The flights began at one in the morning and continued all day until nine at night. Having made one drop the aircraft returned to base to pick-up another group of paratroopers, some towing gliders full of artillery equipment. Over 4,000 Allied troops died that first day.
Exactly one week after D-Day, Hitler retaliated by launching an attack on London with V-1 flying bombs. My mother used to tell us that we were safe all the time we could hear the engine going. That meant it was going to fly over us, but once the engine stopped, it would dive to earth and that was the time for me to dive under the bed and shout: “Bang planes Mummy, bang planes.” Then in September of the same year the Germans launched V-2 rockets at London.
My mother and older brother experienced these events. I was fortunate to have survived the heavy bombing of our neighborhood during those five years. (A neighbor’s house and its occupants were not so lucky). Over 60,000 civilians were killed by bombing during the war in England.
My father was in Burma fighting the Japanese and did not return home until a year later. I was four years old when I first met him!

Valerie9185 Loc: Weeki Wachee florida

Wow. What a great story.
We must never forget.

pesfls Loc: Oregon, USA

Good on you for relating your memories. It’s important to preserve. My father once described his experience as a young U.S. soldier of having one day of leave before the landing and taking a bus into London. He described the sound of the German rockets flying over the pub he had lunch in that day. Exactly as you describe. Thanks for sharing.

B_meyer5.55NY

We are so fortunate to live in this country to have survived WWII and not lived it.
Only through our parents eyes and experiences.....they still have vivid memories and fears from yesterday.

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

chippy65 Loc: Cambridge

Tough folks in those days, hardships from rationing, restricted movement, absent fathers, hard working mothers, heavy bombing

interrupted sleep, shortages of fuel electrical and gas stoppages and fear of V1 and V2 weapons.

Could we match them today ?

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

And they'd lived through ten years of a worldwide Depression before the war even started.

chippy65 Loc: Cambridge

D -day landings and Overlord celebrations are entirely justified but it should be remembered that without the

savage Eastern Front war and the manpower and resources diverted from " Fortress Europe" to fight on the Russian front

it is possible that the landings could have been much more costly or even have failed.

Alafoto Loc: Montgomery, AL

A very good point! Thanks to Hitler's greed and arrogance, coupled with his lack of any knowledge of strategy or tactics, many of his finest were slaughtered in Russia.

DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

I read that one reason the post-war Stalin was so difficult was that he trusted no one. The only one he ever trusted was Hitler ( non-aggression pact) and that turned out horribly.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Listening for V-1's and V-2's will toughen a kid up. Forget bullies.

EdJ0307 Loc: out west someplace

As far as I'm concerned, Stalin was just a evil as Hitler. And the Russian military was no better than the German army when it came to atrocities.
I watched a video on NatGeo about "Hitler's Final Days". A lot of people thought Eisenhower should have pushed through and taken Berlin before the Russians got there. However, the Yalta conference gave Berlin to the Russians and if Eisenhower had captured it he would have had to hand it over to Stalin. So Eisenhower decided, instead of experiencing the enormous casualties, he would leave Berlin to the Russians who lost 81,000 men taking it. Good on you, Ike.

DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

I completely agree. I'm glad Ike was so savy and well informed. Why lose all those lives just to take Berlin, then hand it over to the Russians? The Russian general was furious at Stalin. Russia could have shelled Berlin into submission with artillary, but Stalin insisted in a building-by-building sweep.
When the war was over, Churchill lamented that it started over Germany's invasion of Poland, and in the end, Poland was ruled by Russia instead of Germany. For the Poles, it didn't much matter who won the war. Poland lost.

JoAnneK01 Loc: Lahaina, Hawaii

Mahalo for sharing your friends' experience. We must never forget the sacrifices that were given not only on D-Day but all throughout WWII.

DJ Mills Loc: Idaho

Pretty amazing that a little boy would remember so well, isn't it?