Adding notes & links here as first draft for eventual D-Day / Freedom Lesson Plan. Please drop any suggestions or links regarding the topic in the comments section. They will be most appreciated 🙂
D-Day is the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated.
The best known D-Day is June 6, 1944 — the day of the Normandy landings— initiating the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II.
A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of June 6, 1944. American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Division when landing. During the initial landing two-thirds of the Company E became casualties. Uploaded by Christoph Braun @WikiPedia
Saving Private Ryan – Omaha Beach Scene
—WARNING——GRAPHIC IMAGES / SOUNDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH
Ref the first picture showing the troops that have debarked from the landing craft. The photographer was Chief Photographer’s Mate Sargent, of the US Coast Guard. He and that landing craft were from the USS Samuel Chase attack transport, which did not land its first wave of troops until 0740 hours on 6 June – about 70 minutes after Co. E, 16th RCT had landed. Although no one is certain who the troops pictured are, it is most likely men from either Co. A or Co. C of the 16th RCT – which were the units landing in the initial wave from the Chase (Wave 10 in the landing tables). They are pictured landing on beach sector Easy Red not Fox Green.
Co. E was aboard the USS Henrico, and hit the beach from the Henrico’s landing craft; most of them were indeed mis-landed on Fox Green. It is impossible for Co. E’s troops to have landed in Chase boats, as at the time Co. E landed, the Chase’s boat were loading its own troops 10 miles out to sea in the Transport Area.
This incorrect identification of the pictured events is all too common, but is equally easily disproven. See Sargent’s article ‘Into the Jaws of Death’.
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