Friday, June 6, 2008

Overlord Day

I'm enough of a pedant that it bugs me when folks refer to Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy 64 years ago, as "D-Day."

I admit I was a little surprised to find that Wikipedia article explaining the origin and meaning "D-Day" and "H-Hour."
D-Day is a term often used in military parlance to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. "D-Day" often represents a variable, designating the day upon which some significant event will occur or has occurred; see Military designation of days and hours for similar terms. The initial D in D-Day has had various meanings in the past, while more recently it has obtained the connotation of "Day" itself, thereby creating the phrase "Day-Day", or "Day of Days".
Etc., etc.

As the article notes, later in WWII the term "D-Day" was replaced by other "letters", such as "A-Day" for MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines--certainly Dugout Doug was not about to use a term that might cause his own "show" to be confused for someone else's!

(And surely I'm not the first to think it odd that we use "invasion" to describe the liberation of France and the Philippines.)

Certainly the Normandy landings were the beginning of the end for Hitler. Just as certainly there were hundreds of thousands of troops on other fronts who had it just as bad, or worse. Whether any of the veterans of other theaters could be said to resent the attention, well, Lady Astor made a comment about "D-Day Dodgers" which spawned a folk song among British troops in Italy; or, as Willie said to Joe--or was it the other way around?--"The hell this ain't the most important foxhole in th' war, I'm in it!"

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