7 June, And After

Mr. Free Market has a rather good post on events in Normandy after "D-Day."

He points out, inter alia, that the scale of the loss suffered by the Wehrmacht in the Battle for Normandy, was much more devastating than even the losses during and immediately after Stalingrad.

On the subject of pet peeves, in addition to movies getting it all wrong, I also get annoyed by the way that people--especially educators and media--tend to concentrate on a few events, giving the impression that WWII consisted of Pearl Harbor, Normandy, the Battle Of The Bulge, and the Atom Bomb.

There is a rather nice song from WWII, sort of a British Army folk song, aimed at Lady Astor, answering a comment she made during a speech using the phrase "D-Day Dodgers."

Now, this Wikipedia article introduces a new interpretation that I had never heard before, namely, that Astor was clueless as to the satirical intention behind the phrase, thinking that it was the sort of nickname soldiers come up with for themselves, like "Desert Rats."

Not sure I buy that, and it seems irrelevant: The point is that, so far as one could tell from the press, once the Allies had landed in Normandy, the war ceased elsewhere. Not only did fighting continue in Italy and the Pacific, but there were landings in the south of France latter that summer.

Of course, there were all kinds of operations in the Pacific that one hardly ever hears of; so far as the public knew and knows, the Army sat out the Pacific War altogether. The US Army was very active in the Pacific, and had far more troops there than the Marine Corps' 6 Divisions, but you never hear of them. Which is surprising, considering what a publicity hound MacArthur was. (One of Mrs. Drang's uncles was in the New Guinea Campaign, and was charmed that I even knew that there was a New Guinea Campaign...)

"They also serve...", etc., etc.