My father was on the 2nd Wave to the Beaches, with a MASH Unit. As part of the Welsh Regiment he was folded-in to the XXX Corps that went on the Market Garden move towards that "Bridge Too Far". He remained on Service and put up the Tent for signing the surrender in 1945.

I remain awfully proud of him with the 6th of June a yearly day of reflection and unbelievable gratitude to all that made mortal sacrifices that makes this British Jew eternally grateful. Think about it - 21 miles of seawater just ain't possible as a barrier.

The sacrifices made on that Day proves the humanity that we all posses, and the need to break down "other" barriers that work against us ALL from making a better World.

Thanks for posting this Hulk. Any way of accessing this footage?

Grazie

great film caller 'overlord' by the imperial war museum.

sort of makes saving private ryan look VERY hollywood...

My father was on a troop carrier off in the Pacific and would have been in the first invasion wave of Japan if Truman had not used the atomic bomb. My dad was born in '27 and luckily did not see combat. Unfortunately many of his friends, uncles and other relatives did. About 10 years ago I interviewed a couple of them and made a DVD titled "Why We Remember." My father, who passed in 2008, and I (along with my brother) have been students of WWII for as long as I can remember. The DVD was my first attempt at a video production and while some of the content is okay the production is not good.

"D-Day Sacrifice" is excellent. Good enough to search out. They really were the greatest generation and if you get a chance to speak with a WWII vet by all means sit down and take it in. Those moments will stay with you for the rest of my life.

On one interview a relative who was in the battle of the bulge told me how mad it made him to see movies about the battle where the guys in the holes had blankets and warm food. He said "we had nothing!" Of course they had some things but it was more miserable than he could describe and of course not glamorous at all. In fact the main point I got from all of these men who were in actual combat is that the reality of combat is something you cannot fathom unless you were in it. Screaming, yelling, confusion...a terrible, terrible thing. He also noted that when they came into the first German towns he noticed how they were using circuit breakers in their homes and not fuses as we were in the US at the time.

I feel it is vitally important for the world to never forget what brought us to WWII, what happened during the war, and the brave men and women that lived through it. So it can be avoided at all costs in the future. The scale of WWII is inconceivable to me. And most young people have very little knowledge of it, which is scary in itself knowing what a Earth changing event it was.

I will never forget the men who rushed into German machine gun fire to fight for my freedom on June 6, 1944.

I accompanied an Oregon children's choir on their tour to France in 2007 as videographer (the expenses were comped, thankfully). They performed at the cemetery at Omaha Beach on the 4th of July. I had a chance to spend some time there in the cemetery and to walk down the path to the beach. Never saw a trace of what it looked like back in 1945, though I understand now that there was still a concrete pillbox remaining nearby.
Visitors there told me that the first few minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" was actually pretty accurate. Just chaos and tens of thousands of bullets, with bloody corpses everywhere.

I'm afraid war will be with us forever. It's the inevitable mechanism of solving issues that are not or cannot be solved any other way. Natural selection and all that. Not condoning it, just trying to be realistic.

The Band of Brothers tv series seemed to be pretty accurate as far as depicting the conditions.

No doubt there have been some quite realistic movies of late, but of course nothing can compare to the actual footage. For me it is chilling in a way that no movie can be.

If anyone is interested, CBC (our national Canadian broadcaster) is doing an interesting take on the events of this day. Based on historical records, they're tweeting the events in real time as it happened.
D-Day Live: The historic invasion in real time

Mike