Sev­en­ty-five years ago today, thou­sands of Amer­i­can troops rushed ashore onto the beach­es of Nor­mandy along with com­rades from the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da, France, Aus­tralia, Nor­way, Poland, and Czecho­slo­va­kia on a mis­sion to lib­er­ate Europe from the grip of fas­cism and Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.

Unit­ed States assault troops in an LCVP land­ing craft approach Oma­ha Beach, 6 June 1944. Note hel­met net­ting; faint “No Smok­ing” sign on the LCVP’s ramp; and M1903 rifles and M1 car­bines car­ried by some of these men. This pho­to­graph was tak­en from the same LCVP as Pho­to # SC 189986. Orig­i­nal Source: Pho­to­graph from the Army Sig­nal Corps Col­lec­tion in the U.S. Nation­al Archives.

It was and remains the largest amphibi­ous attack in the his­to­ry of the world.

The Allies knew that if the attack failed, it could sig­nif­i­cant­ly pro­long World War II, so they pulled out all the stops to max­i­mize the chances of success.

They sought to deceive the Nazis into think­ing that there would be an attack on Nor­way and that Calais would be where the Allies would attempt to break into France, not Nor­mandy. They coor­di­nat­ed with the French Resis­tance to sab­o­tage rail lines, elec­tri­cal facil­i­ties, and tele­phone and teleprint­er cables. And they planned and exe­cut­ed a mas­sive aer­i­al bom­bard­ment ahead of the landings.

Para­troop­ers were dropped begin­ning short­ly after mid­night, which is also when the night aer­i­al bom­bard­ment effort began. Some advance forces arrived by glid­er, and were in fact the first to touch down in France that night.

The largest naval fleet ever seen was assem­bled to fer­ry troops across the Eng­lish Chan­nel and pro­vide pro­tec­tion from ene­my forces.

6,939 dif­fer­ent ves­sels par­tic­i­pat­ed in the oper­a­tion: 1,213 war­ships, 4,126 land­ing craft of assort­ed types, 736 ancil­lary craft, and 864 mer­chant vessels.

Eight dif­fer­ent navies were rep­re­sent­ed in the fleet.

The Unit­ed States pro­vid­ed three bat­tle­ships, which engaged in bom­bard­ing coastal tar­gets begin­ning just before first light on June 6th, 1944.

The Allies came ashore at five dif­fer­ent beach­heads start­ing at 6:30 AM (0630). They were code­named Utah, Oma­ha, Sword, Juno, and Gold.

This map shows the five beach zones where Allied forces came ashore on June 6th, 1944 (Graph­ic repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license from Wikimedia)

Amer­i­can forces were respon­si­ble for the Utah and Oma­ha zones; forces from Britain, Cana­da, and oth­er Allied nations were respon­si­ble for Sword, Juno, and Gold. Free French Forces com­mand­ed by Philippe Kief­fer land­ed at Sword.

The going was par­tic­u­lar­ly tough at Oma­ha Beach because Nazi for­ti­fi­ca­tions had not been impaired by the aer­i­al bom­bard­ment as planned.

Nev­er­the­less, the Allies came ashore, and were able to secure addi­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry as the days went on. None of the major objec­tives for the first day (cap­ture of Carentan, St. Lô, Caen, and Bayeux) were achieved, but in time, they would be. The Allies’ plan to deceive the Nazis worked, and Allied air suprema­cy pre­vent­ed the Nazis from find­ing out about and act­ing to repel the inva­sion until it was too late.

Con­firmed Allied casu­al­ties on D‑Day were 4,414; actu­al casu­al­ties were over 10,000. The oppo­si­tion is esti­mat­ed to have lost between 4,000 and 9,000.

If you’re not inter­est­ed in lis­ten­ing to the remem­brance speech­es that were offered today by cur­rent office­hold­ers like Don­ald Trump and There­sa May (and that lack of inter­est is cer­tain­ly under­stand­able), then you might want to instead read or lis­ten to the prayer Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt offered on that day.

Here’s the audio:

And here’s the text:

My fel­low Amer­i­cans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the Unit­ed States and our allies were cross­ing the Chan­nel in anoth­er and greater oper­a­tion. It has come to pass with suc­cess thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeav­or, a strug­gle to pre­serve our Repub­lic, our reli­gion, and our civ­i­liza­tion, and to set free a suf­fer­ing humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stout­ness to their hearts, stead­fast­ness in their faith.

They will need Thy bless­ings. Their road will be long and hard. For the ene­my is strong. He may hurl back our forces.

Suc­cess may not come with rush­ing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the right­eous­ness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, with­out rest-until the vic­to­ry is won. The dark­ness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shak­en with the vio­lences of war.

For these men are late­ly drawn from the ways of peace.

They fight not for the lust of con­quest. They fight to end conquest.

They fight to liberate.

They fight to let jus­tice arise, and tol­er­ance and good will among all Thy peo­ple. They yearn but for the end of bat­tle, for their return to the haven of home. Some will nev­er return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy hero­ic ser­vants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home — fathers, moth­ers, chil­dren, wives, sis­ters, and broth­ers of brave men over­seas — whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them–help us, Almighty God, to reded­i­cate our­selves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many peo­ple have urged that I call the Nation into a sin­gle day of spe­cial prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our peo­ple devote them­selves in a con­tin­u­ance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invok­ing Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too — strength in our dai­ly tasks, to redou­ble the con­tri­bu­tions we make in the phys­i­cal and the mate­r­i­al sup­port of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long tra­vail, to bear sor­rows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons where­so­ev­er they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each oth­er; Faith in our unit­ed crusade.

Let not the keen­ness of our spir­it ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of tem­po­rary events, of tem­po­ral mat­ters of but fleet­ing moment let not these deter us in our uncon­quer­able purpose.

With Thy bless­ing, we shall pre­vail over the unholy forces of our ene­my. Help us to con­quer the apos­tles of greed and racial arro­gan­cies. Lead us to the sav­ing of our coun­try, and with our sis­ter Nations into a world uni­ty that will spell a sure peace a peace invul­ner­a­ble to the schem­ings of unwor­thy men.

And a peace that will let all of men live in free­dom, reap­ing the just rewards of their hon­est toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

Sev­en­ty-five years lat­er, we pause to remem­ber all who were involved in the Nor­mandy land­ings. The suc­cess of the oper­a­tion set the stage for the end of Hitler’s Third Reich and the lib­er­a­tion of occu­pied Europe, includ­ing France. Men rushed ashore onto those beach­es not know­ing if they would live or die on a mis­sion of the utmost impor­tance. Many sur­vived, but many did not.

We remem­ber the fall­en and we salute their sacrifice.

They died so we could be free, and we thank them.