The Significance Of D-Day

13 Pages 3272 Words

ngers down, they would run a hundred off. Because they just pushed a button, the barrel fell off, put a new barrel on, then loosen it three clicks, it was a pain. So he fired, I picked him up, I got about ten rounds in there, that sonofagun never fired anymore. Some of the riflemen got up and walked over and looked in the hole. They didn’t signal that anybody was in there. They just looked in the hole and then walked away…”
The second World War had started almost five years ago, on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. But they were unprepared to fight, and as a result they were terribly beaten. By the next spring France had fallen into German hands. The British army had to flee the continent and escape from the French port of Dunkirk with frightful losses. In the summer of 1940 the Germans, with their allies, the Italians, controlled all of west Europe. The German air force began its attempt to bomb the British Isles into rubble.
Nevertheless, the British began to think about getting back into the continent. They started planning an attack across the channel – even though it seemed more likely that they would become the invaded rather than the invaders. Hitler threatened to invade England. He went so far as to assemble a fleet of barges along the French coast, planning to use them as assault boats. But he hesitated because he realized the risk of an ambitious attack. Also, he knew that the British navy would destroy itself, if necessary in an attempt to smash a German invasion fleet. Still the idea was tempting. The British knew as well a Hitler did that if the Germans could make the landing successfully, England would be lost.
Meanwhile, Royal Air Force fighter pilots in their spitfires and hurricanes, lashed back at the great German air force. And British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people looked forward to the day when England would attack. Then Hitler postponed his...