WHAT YOU MUST KNOW

The 9000 who never made it home, 1944. This is an art piece dedicated to those who died on D-day. It was designed by Andy Moss and Jamie Wardley. It was created with the help of volunteers. It shows outlines of dead soldiers who died both attacking and defending the beaches of Normandy. The art piece was made in 2013 D-day is one of the most infamous land invasions of all time. It consisted of American, British, Canadian, and other allied troops attacking the heavily defended coast of Normandy, France. It was divided into 5 different beaches codenamed Juno, Utah, Gold, Sword, and Omaha. The deadliest of all was Omaha. The Germans thought the Allies would land at Calais, as it is closest to Britain, but the Allies chose Normandy to trick the Germans. 9000 men lost their lives. Before the invasion, Allied planes dropped 13,000 bombs at the coastal defenses, but they all missed their targets, especially at Omaha Beach, which led to the highest death toll at 2,400. The bombs were m...

On this day 30th October 1941. The worsening weather and seas of mud bring the German offensive against Moscow almost to a standstill. This gives the Red Army precious time to reinforce their defenses in front of Moscow. It was the Rasputitsa - the 'quagmire season' - and wheeled and horse-drawn transport became hopelessly stuck. The Germans chose to temporarily halt operations. The rasputitsa are severe weather conditions occurring in Eastern Europe, particularly in areas that were part of the Soviet Union during WW2. The rasputitsa occurs twice a year, in the spring and autumn. The spring rasputitsa occurs when the surface level ice and snow starts to melt over ground that is still frozen. The Autumn rasputitsa occurs because of the rainy season. Although the cause is different the effect is the same. The ground, including unpaved roads, dissolve into mud and rivers can become enlarged. The result is transport bogs down, making troop movement and logistics very difficul...

Violette Szabo was a young British woman who served as a secret agent during World War II. She joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British organization that conducted espionage and sabotage missions in occupied Europe. Szabo's mission was to aid the French Resistance in sabotaging German communications and transportation lines. In June 1944, she was sent to France to carry out her mission. Szabo's work with the French Resistance was dangerous and required her to constantly move from place to place. However, she was able to establish strong relationships with members of the Resistance and helped to coordinate their efforts. In July 1944, Szabo and her group were betrayed by a collaborator and ambushed by the Germans. Despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Szabo fought back fiercely, allowing some of her comrades to escape. She was eventually captured and taken to a prison in Germany. Szabo's refusal to give up any information about her mission or her fe...

The Battle for the Scheldt 2nd of October to 8th November 1944. Solving the supply problem. Following Germany’s decisive defeat in the Falaise Gap, the Allies made rapid advances across France and Belgium. The supplies still had to come into Normandy and be driven the long distances forward. As the Allies moved further away from their supply centres in Normandy, it became difficult to supply all the allied armies in the field. The situation regarding effective supply was becoming critical. Hoping to secure the remainder of Belgium, advance through the Netherlands and into northern Germany, 21st Army Group was teetering at the end of a lengthy logistical chain trailing back to Normandy. Further south, the Americans encountered the same problems. In the weeks following Operation Market Garden, some of the most bitter fighting seen since Normandy occurred during a series of operations designed to clear the estuary leading to Antwerp. With this port open, adequate supply could be rest...

On this day 21st December 1945.General George S. Patton, commander of the U.S. 3rd Army, dies from injuries suffered not in battle but in a freak car accident. He was 60 years old. Descended from a long line of military men, Patton graduated from the West Point Military Academy in 1909. He represented the United States in the 1912 Olympics-as the first American participant in the pentathlon. He did not win a medal. He went on to serve in the Tank Corps during World War I, an experience that made Patton a dedicated proponent of tank warfare. During World War II, as commander of the U.S. 7th Army, he captured Palermo, Sicily, in 1943 by just such means. Patton’s audacity became evident in 1944, when, during the Battle of the Bulge, he employed an unorthodox strategy that involved a 90-degree pivoting move of his 3rd Army forces, enabling him to speedily relieve the besieged Allied defenders of Bastogne, Belgium. Along the way, Patton’s mouth proved as dangerous to his career as the G...

The terrible true life story of Vasily Blokhin: And his Heroic before the incredible execution happen to him. Born in 1895 to peasants in the countryside near the city of Vladimir, he went to work as a shepherd at the age of ten before moving to Moscow to become a bricklayer. By June 1915, the Russian Empire was deeply entangled in World War I. Blokhin joined the Imperial Russian Army and likely saw combat in Belarus. Eventually, he rose to a senior noncommissioned officer rank. In May 1921, Blokhin joined the Communist Party, he was immediately appointed to the ranks of the already-feared “All-Russian Extraordinary Commission,” better known as the Cheka — the first of many iterations of the secret police in the Soviet Union. Blokhin took an active part in the Cheka mission, quickly gaining the attention of his superiors. He steadily climbed the ranks and in 1926 was appointed “Commissioner of the Special Department of the OGPU” — in other words, chief executioner. Blokhin was tasked...

On the 22nd December, 1944, in Bastogne, Belgium, the German surrender demand is rebuffed by General McAuliffe,with the famous response "Nuts!"; meanwhile, the US Third Army shifted its axis of advance in attempt to relieve Bastogne. Anthony McAuliffe (centre) and his officers in Bastogne, Belgium, December, 1944. The commander of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne would go down in history for his defiant, one syllable reply to a German surrender ultimatum. IT WAS MID-morning on Dec. 22, 1944 when U.S. troops manning the defences of the besieged Belgian town of Bastogne watched as four German soldiers – a major, a captain and two enlisted men – approached under a large white flag. The U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division had established a perimeter there just two days earlier to halt Hitler’s surprise offensive through the Ardennes. By that point, 400,000 German troops supported by more than a thousand armoured vehicles had smashed though the American lines and were driving on ...

Edward Silk was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions #OnThisDay in 1944. Fighting in France, he single-handedly captured a German strongpoint and saved many lives in his battalion. His citation reads: "Scouts saw an enemy sentry standing guard before a farmhouse in a valley below. One squad, engaged in reconnoitering the area, was immediately pinned down by intense machinegun and automatic-weapons fire from within the house.  Skillfully deploying his light machinegun section, 1st Lt. Silk answered enemy fire, but when 15 minutes had elapsed with no slackening of resistance, he decided to eliminate the strong point by a one-man attack.  Running 100 yards across an open field to the shelter of a low stone wall directly in front of the farmhouse, he fired into the door and windows with his carbine; then, in full view of the enemy, vaulted the wall and dashed 50 yards through a hail of bullets to the left side of the house, where he hurled a grenade through a window, silenci...

🇨🇦WWII uncovered: Legends of D-Day: 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion: Lieutenant Colonel Fraser Eadie. "Lieutenant Colonel Fraser Eadie was part of Canada’s very first elite airborne regiment, the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, which landed in Normandy on D-Day. Eadie fought there for weeks alongside the British, helping to break the German army in France.  Fraser served as the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion’s second-in-command for the Rhine drop. He quickly assumed command when Lt.-Col. Jeff Nicklin the Commanding Officer was killed.  He and Nicklin had not only been fellow officers, but had also been good friends and athletes in Winnipeg before the war.  Nicklin had been a renowned Winnipeg Blue Bomber and two-time Grey Cup winner, while Eadie had been a hockey player with the University of Manitoba and the Chicago Blackhawks.  They had both decided to join the airborne regiment after it was created in 1942." (Source: National Archives of Canada) As the war ...

World War II veterans remember: Bill Parker helped lead first invasion wave on D-Day. By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer. Whether Bill Parker was indeed the first D-Day invader to set foot on Normandy’s Omaha Beach is impossible to know for sure.  But there’s one fact that he believes makes a good case for it. “I didn’t see any bodies in front of me yet,” Parker said.  With German resistance at peak intensity, the stretch of French coastline would be littered with the dead and dying within minutes of the invasion’s launch.  Many of the bodies would belong to Parker’s 116th Infantry Regiment. The leaders of the first wave on June 6, 1944, the unit sustained 96 percent casualties. Parker, somehow, made it through unscathed.  And he learned something, he said, that would serve him in the dangerous months to come. “I made up my mind if you were first and the quicker you got across there, the better chance you had,” he said. “So, all through the war, when we attacked, I tr...