because of the 16th amendment, they had the right to vote. vote in northerner into the congress. >> learn more about the aftermath of reconstruction the sunday at 6:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. eastern. explore our nation's past here on american history tv. >> next, john mcmanus talks about his book "the dead and those about to die." he tells the story of the u.s. army first infantry division a great one, and how they were the the first army soldiers to storm normandy on june 6, 1944. the eisenhower society posted this event in celebration of d-day's 75th anniversary. it is almost an hour.

ms. hegeman: dr. mcmanus is the first ever missouri smt faculty member in the humanities to be named curatus distinguished professor. as one of the leading historians and the author of 12 well-known and received books on the topic, he is frequently in demand to speak as an expert commentator, in addition to lots of local radio shows and national programs that he has done, he has appeared on cnn.com, fox news, c-span, the military channel, the discovery channel, the national geographic channel, netflix, the smithsonian network, the history channel, and pbs. so you have probably seen him. dr. mcmanus also served as the historical advisor for the best-selling book and documentary "salinger," the latter of which appeared

nationwide in theaters and on pbs. during the 2018-2019 academic year, he is in residence at the u.s. naval academy as the chair of naval and military history, a distinguished visiting professorship. his forthcoming book, "fire and fortitude: the u.s. army in the pacific war, 1941-1943," will be out july 30. so you can look out for that one. today, his talk will be based on his recent book, "the dead and those about to die: d-day, the big red one on omaha beach." he will speak about the unforgettable story of the big red one's ultimate triumph. on june 2, 1944. while the role of officers is part of the story, john will share the infantry soldier's story during the landing.

now, as a reader of history, i am sure dwight eisenhower would have appreciated john's work. eisenhower always said the real hero of world war ii is g.i. hero of world war ii is g.i. joe. i'm pleased to introduce dr. john mcmanus. [applause] dr. mcmanus: thank you. thank you. everybody hear me ok? good. i will try to keep the microphone at the proper level. if not, please do yell out. thank you for that wonderful introduction. i appreciate it. i would like to thank all the folks that made this possible, our hosts at gettysburg college, the eisenhower society, eisenhower institute. thank you all of you for making time today to listen to me and these brilliant scholars that

preceded me. tough act to follow. what struck me when dr. simons was talking so movingly about eisenhower's weather-related decision, what always struck me about that moment, before he made that decision, you could argue he is the most powerful man on the planet, or one of them. he has all this airpower at his disposal, naval power, technological power, the ground power of the soldiers, this prodigious military might, this coiled spring. he makes that decision, and then it is out of his hands. it is out of his hands and in the hands of not just the generals who rank below him or the admirals or the lieutenant colonels or the majors or even the captains, but it is in the hands of the average soldier, sailor, airman, and a few

marines, too. what i want to give you a sense of today is the d-day/combat experience for the average allied soldier by looking at the first infantry division at omaha beach. but i would not try to argue this is in any way exactly representative for every allied soldier. i think we could build a strong argument that on d-day, this is the hardest, the toughest, the bloodiest fighting that allied germans, and of course soldiers, too, might have experienced. this is not necessarily a representative example, but it is an illustrative example. the thing about this is how i would have come to this story, where this comes from, why another book on omaha beach and , when so much has been done on d-day. of course, we have brilliant o'ryan and solius on and so forth, but the thing

that made it incredible for me after studying the battle of normandy and omaha beach for about a quarter of a century , from when i was a child until later on when i was a graduate student, i got to participate in a program called the normandy scholars, which was a remarkable opportunity to immerse ourselves in normandy for about a month. not just the invasion, the culture, the battle writ large. later on what was incredible to me is that there was still more to say. specifically the story of the big red one, which had certainly been covered to some extent, but not in the kind of depth i believed it warrants. this is something that has been relatively undercovered and under appreciated. enormous amounts of after action

reports and letters and diaries and unit journals. historians' writings of the time, the morning reports that the units kept at the company level that told about what happened to these various units when they hit omaha beach and individuals coming and going and so on and so forth. memoirs, people i knew and corresponded with. all of this comes together in what i hope has allowed me, in this book, to tell the story of maybe this is something you can get a sense of what the soldier have experienced some of the mindset would have been, and the challenges of that day. the first thing to grasp is something of the unique personality and culture and feel of the first infantry division, nicknamed the big red one.

it was dating back to world war i, the division still exists, celebrated its centennial founding this year. it had a history of tradition and pride, heritage, a sense of being very special. it had fought in north africa and sicily. of course we learned a great deal about that today in george's film. red one was a major component of in north africa, the big red one was a major component of the allied invasion. they learned some hardknock lessons. they followed, gained ground extremely well, they go to unit. when they were off the line, they were a handful. they loved to fight, drink, beat up on rear echelon people who they thought were a lower form of life.

, of course, as combat soldiers often do. they did not call themselves grunts in those days. they called themselves dog faces or doughboys. they tended to get in trouble. they had a surly attitude about authority. they did not necessarily always listen to officers that were not a part of their unit. "what do you matter? you are not mine." and that sort of thing. they had a reputation as being a handful. this thing that was so popular in the big red one gives you a sense of that. they often said to one another, the united states army consists of the big red one and 10 million replacements. [laughter] mcmanus: that's who they were. successful when mattered and troubling in other ways. troubling to general eisenhower

, in some respects, troubling to generals patton and alan. brigadier general theodore roosevelt, the son of the famous president. they had allowed the discipline to slack. they were good fighters. it was not necessarily a healthy thing for the army to have this kind of thinking. they are relieved not for competence or cause but for disciplinary reasons. both allen and roosevelt were too valuable to send home for good. allen commands the 101st airborne division. roosevelt earns the medal of honor on d-day, was about to get

his own division level command , and died of a heart attack. the developer division needed a new culture. knowing what you know, their insularity and resentment against outsiders, you can imagine how happy they are going to be about these really popular commanders, people you would have known and seen throughout north africa and sicily, people you would have felt a connection with all of a sudden being cashiered. time, whenvery same you have received now this momentous mission of leading the invasion of france, which they also deeply resented, because they thought we had done enough, we are supposed to go home and train new people to do this stuff. combat soldiers always think once we have done our battle, we have done enough let someone , else carry the load. so a lot was riding on who the successor would be. this guy, major

general clarence huebner, who comes to the big red one late summer, early fall. he could not be more different than terry allen. allen was not worried about whether your uniform was rumpled as long as you are a good combat soldier. the soldiers initially hated the new replacement. we are combat soldiers, why do we have to deal with this nonsense? that is rear echelon, basic training stuff. the rumor is running around that he is just this desk jockey who did not know any better. what they did not know was his background. huebner was 55 years old in

1944, had joined the army as a private soldier in time for world war i, worked his way through the nco ranks, got a commission, was a commander in world war i, ends as a lieutenant colonel and is decorated with a distinguished service cross. what division did he serve in? first division. you guessed it. but hardly anybody knew that. they just knew this guy is here to change our lives and in a bad way. but what was indisputable as they started to watch and once they got to england, in the run-up to prepare for the invasion, what was indisputable was he definitely knew his stuff. his nickname throughout the army was coach. he was an athletic coach. he was a teacher as a young man. and a coach, and he kind of brought that sentiment to leadership. i always thought the instances of allen and huebner is an example of how excellent leadership can come in completely different ways. completely different ways. they could not have been more opposite, but they are both quite effective. when huebner dresses you down,

it is not personal. it is instructive. you are going to have to fire your rifle because of xyz. this is why we are doing this, i want you to be better at this. he put himself through the same training. he was an excess rifleman. he had a cancer scare during the run-up to the normandy invasion. fortunately he was fine. , he later told his chief of mason,colonel stanhope in explaining why he came to division with such a heart hard attitude, he said, you can start by being an s.o.b. and become a good guy, but you cannot start by being a good guy and become an s.o.b. the division had taken heavy casualties in the mediterranean.

you have a lot of new guys. i would say probably about one in two who hits omaha beach on d-day is a new guide seeing combat for the first time. they are getting inculcated with this culture, this unyielding training standard of having to have proficiency in all sorts of things that are relevant to the invasion. and not just that. this is one of the few divisions that did urban combat training. so huebner is thinking ahead. a lot more than other commanders were. by the time they are in the position of going ashore, you have been crosstrained. you are a mortar gunner, and you know the loader's job. you are a squad leader, you need to know the platoon leader's job, when and if they become casualties. all of these kinds of things are in play. of course, as you might expect, many of the veterans resented getting the honor of going in. why is the big red one chosen?

to some extent, it is obvious. it is a successful unit with a lot of combat experience. contextualize this for you, it was one of only two divisions that general bradley, the american ground commander, one of two divisions that had any combat experience at his disposal. he would later say i could not spare the first division. they knew going in that omaha beach was going to be a tough nut to crack because of the terrain and the build-up of mines and obstacles and so on and so forth. the 29th's role is a little more culturally famous, because it is portrayed in "saving private ryan." it is in the "longest day" and whatnot. the first division felt it would have been nice to have someone else have the honor of doing this, but it is what it is.

there is a little sad back story to this. there was a captain in the unit who once told me in an interview, he said this is not necessarily for attribution and record, although here i am telling you, in the weeks leading up to d-day, there were two nco's in this regiment who which, twod not say nco's who committed suicide rather than put themselves through that responsibility of leading people in combat and responsible for their lives again. there was and was not just this side of we get this job again, but there were some people who literally could not handle it anymore. what are they up against? this is the first division side of omaha beach. i will not get too far away from the microphone, but i would like to point out some things. you see those wn's? my german is terrible. my apologies if you are a german

language. point.man strong they are basically strong points. the purpose of this, in order for an invader to do anything productive, they have to get off the beach. there are no roads at omaha beach. there are no obvious ways to do this. it is the natural defiles that have been created by erosion. those are going to be your beach exits. that is what the germans are going to defend. those circular fortifications are designed to prevent the invaders from getting off the beach. once they do, that is going to lead to problems for the germans. that is the objective you want to take if you are part of the big red one. you can see there are three

subsectors to the big red one beach. omaha beach is about 4.5 miles long. it is crescent shaped, which is good for the defender, so you can have interlocking fire. you have to have those beach exits. you simply have to. you can see the planners further subdivided the three portions of the big red one beach into fox red, fox green, and the most famous of them all, easy red. what is within those wn's? it is primarily concrete whole structures with machine guns and mortars, often called murder holes by allied soldiers. for good reason. there are pillar boxes. you have plenty of riflemen. you have got mortars. you have grenades.

i would argue that the most formidable defenses the germans have, at least in the big red one sector, is the inland artillery. in some ways, your deadliest adversary as you go ashore that day is the forward observer for the german artillery. he is the eyes on who is calling in the deadliest and worst firepower. they have 24 105 millimeter artillery pieces inland from the beaches, all of which survive and almost completely useless inland air and sea compartment with the lines of communication contact. obviously that is important. you have forward observers in those bunkers with eyes on calling down firepower. they had what the allied soldiers called screening mimis, these rocket launchers. that is what you are up against.

this is what it looks like later on. there is more foliage than you would have seen. you are looking from wn60, the witches the eastern most extreme of all of omaha beach. which you have to have that say you can move eastward and link up with the british landing at gold beach. you heard about that from dr. simon. you simply have to secure that for the obvious reason that from one glance at that picture, any german on top of background can sweep almost all of omaha beach with fire. you have the other extreme in the crescent, you can see in the distance. you are looking at almost all of ,maha beach, the 29 division and you have the other round at perseilles. this is what you are up against.

someone who has high ground like this shooting down at you like fish in a barrel. why was this different from 1944? you did not have a parking lot, and you do not have tourists on the beach. that is later in the year. you had much more foliage. the germans cut down almost all of the foliage to have better fields of fire. it gives you a sense of what you have got. the allies planned this minutely. it is predicated on surprise. you are not going to hit omaha beach over and over again, so you are telegraphing your invasion. you have a quick aerial bombardment. you are asking four enginer bombers that are lucky to get within a mile of their target, you are asking them to bomb within a tight 1000-yard to 2000-yard window with your own

troops about to come in. predictably, it is a cloudy day, remember the bad weather and all of that. you are not going to drop if you think there is any chance you are going to hit your fleet or your own people. they tend to wait a little longer. they bomb inland. it does next to nothing. from an aerial side. the sea bombardment is better target. the problem is, too, once you see these explosions, you have all of this mist, cloudy weather, you have the dust and smoke that make it tougher for the naval observers to see what they are targeting at. though they have pretty decent intel. but you are shooting at a fortified enemy that is hunkered down in this bunker. it was a was going to be difficult. the naval and air bombardment slightly wounded two german soldiers.

two. it did not do a lot of damage. it knocked down a fortified flamethrower. that was one thing it did. but other than that, the beach was largely untouched. if you have been briefed as a soldier, oh, they are going to knock it over. you are going to go straight in. many of these guys, think very cynical infantrymen, were extremely skeptical. unfortunately, they had their skepticism confirmed. you go ashore at about 6:30. you would have seen the footage of climbing down the nets earlier. it happens about two hours before that. people are seasick. you can imagine the seas are choppy. it is a miserable expense. the 16th infantry regiment had "the honor" of going in first ay

block because they had to deal with the navy and the army had put together combined teams of engineers from the army and the navy. the navy is supposed to deal with everything underwater. the army, everything that was not. they went in as first assault troops. second and third battalion, 16th infantry. and also, armor, some of it that tanks that are disastrous. the concept is land them all at the same time, provide the germans with all of these targets that will overwhelm them, have supporting fire power and surround them, and then you will have the beach. the problem is it all goes wrong. captain james park, the armor commander, citadel class of 1940 graduate. he commanded the company first

tank battalion, who is looking and wondering, should we launch the swimming tanks or not? he decides let's go. it is a bad call, unfortunately, because because most of the tanks are swamped by the surf. 27 out of 32 of those tanks sank with the average of one crewman lost per tank. and there remains are still there. five tanks got ashore, three aboard landing craft. two swam in. the two that swim in the tremendous damage to the german defenses at 62 and 61 and knocked out the only 88 millimeter gun that they had on that part of omaha beach. they had two,, and they knocked out the one at 61 pretty quickly, so they did some damage, and then more tanks came in. but only about 16 out of 56 , oh, tanks.

for you as a tanker that they -- day, you are presented with a difficult situation. you want to be stationary to provide fire support. you have so many soldiers around you, you do not want to run them over, dead and confusing. but if you are stationary, german antitank gunners can pick you off. it was a devastating battle for them, as well. the assault troops land in jagged groups, confusion, not knowing where they are looking, and the smoke and dust and the fear, the seasickness. it all leads to late landings in the wrong spot. the two mainately, assault companies, e and f, landed in the exact wrong spot. they landed in the kill zone of 62, and that leads to massive loss-of-life and wounding in

those two companies. a german machine gun or roughly in that vicinity claims to have fired 12,000 rounds that day. i do not necessarily doubt that. he picked off other soldiers with rifles. it gives you a little insight into just how devastating this was. so you come ashore, probably seasick. you are wet, scared, tired, confused, wearing gas resistant uniforms, inated case they use poison gas. they stank like sour milk. the soldiers called them skunk suits. and it just made them -- you are caring 70 pounds of stuff. way too much stuff. you are wet. you are staggering around, moving like a rabbit when you need to be moving like a tortoise. he was so sick and overloaded, as he put it, i did not care if it if adolf hitler was waiting

for me. you are landing at low tide. open beach, just swept with fire in practically every direction, defended by barb wire, mines, tanks. you are seeing the assault teams getting decimated. they are trying to wire up the obstacles to be blown like gaps in them, to move tanks and people through. soldiers are taking cover behind the obstacles. that is shown very well in "saving private ryan." you are not to wire up obstacles when you have your own guys in the way. you are taking casualties. in many cases you had explosive , laden landing craft that are hit and touch off massive explosions. there is about a 56% casualty rate in the gap assault team. 15 distinguished service crosses. a brand-new platoon leader in f like all infantry, and

platoon leaders or boat section leaders they call them on d-day, the first one off the landing craft. you will notice that in pictures d-day with pictures in the back of the landing craft, you will notice the guy with a vertical helmet, he is standing at the front, and he is the officer leading the way. the guy the back is the nco, his -- he is the push man. i am your sergeant. i am your to radical leader here, so move. he gets off first. he takes his first step in france and is hit in the head by machine gun fire and is killed instantly. after the war, his heartbroken mother wrote to army historians, urging them to tell the story. she said, "i to proud mother of a son, and it is a story i try to understand." you talk about being humbling. pfc. norman speckler, this is

-- was carrying a satchel charge. something touched at all. it blew him to pieces. in every direction read the biggest piece was as big as my fist, as white as snow, and the other survivors had to crawl over this as they made their way up the beach. after this book was published, i heard from a french family. and, as you may know, it is a custom, not just in france but in some of the other liberated countries to adopt a grave of americans who were buried in cemeteries overseas and they had , adopted speckler's grave, they wondered if i could share with them how he died in what had happened. it was not a pleasant thing to relate, but at least they had some closure in a sense that they had sort of a proprietary sense of knowing him at a distance. so the survivors are pinned down

against a stony bank that slopes upward that gives the illusion of safety but is really not. circular rocks all over there, tough for vehicles to get over, and when mortar and artillery shells come in, it compounds the fragmentation effect, as you can imagine. it is slippery and wet. but it is the first place you would have gotten to beyond the obstacles and shale and whatever else. many dead and wounded along the water line. medics are risking their lives to go back to the surf to grab and drag people forward, the medics, it is one of the few times in the war when medics are dragging wounded men toward the enemy rather than the opposite direction, and i think it is a little bit of an insight into a planning oversight, that the allies landmark a lot of shipping for things that are ancillary on d-day, trucks, artillery pieces, not as much for medical evacuation.

there was a lot of frustration that medics would later relate to army historians or memoirs or whatever that they would stabilize a guy, they would get them to a landing craft, and the cockswains would say, no we are leaving. they would accuse them of cowardice unfairly. go back and get something else. you are not to evacuate the wounded, so this was a point of frustration. i think it certainly cost some lives. now, you see some folks i'm showing you. right there. that is lieutenant john spalding. so, like where does this lead? ,does anyone get off of the beach? are they all dead? no. you are presenting the germans with a lot of targets. they cannot hit them all. by my estimate there are only , about 500 to 600 german soldiers defending the big red one beach at omaha beach. there isre looking at

lieutenant john spalding, who is the commander of probably the first american boat section to get off the beach. he was 30 years old. he had gotten an ocs commission, was from kentucky, loved baseball. he was married. he had a young child back home. and this was his first day of combat. he has a very seasoned and nco, techced, sergeant sacheck, had to leave school to get the family by. joins the army. in the run up to world war ii, fights through north africa, sicily, was heavily decorated. if you were to take a poll in the big red one on the eve of d-day, who was the most valorous soldier in this division, he would have gotten a lot of votes. so he knows what he is doing, so imagine if you are spalding. an uncomfortable circumstance. you are brand-new to combat, you

are roughly about the same age as this guy, but he has been around a lot. their section gets off the beach first. you can kind of see where this happens. there, it says spalding. they start to work their way in. it is like what i would compared to like knives in the vitals to the germans. they do tremendous damage around behind 62, lose two killed and eight wounded. 11 men in this section of 32 got the distinguished service cross. and strayspalding sect. another example, captain joe dawson, texan, who had seen combat earlier in the war. this is his first company command. he was a 30-year-old geologist who had worked in the oil business, the son of a prominent baptist minister from texas and

a graduate of baylor university, and he feels he has to prove himself to his men. he is taking over from the guy who was a really popular leader, who took over from e company. spalding is determined to lead by example. he comes in 20 minutes after -- excuse me. dawson. he comes in 20 minutes after spalding and his group, and he starts to make his way up. he takes out a machine gun nest himself with grenades. and he leads them to where you see right there, where you have a prominent church steeple. his unit ends up fighting bitterly the rest of that day and night. the tragic thing about dawson's company, they took about 16 casualties getting off the beach. most were lightly wounded. the heaviest casualties were late in the day because of the poor coordination communications wise between the army and the navy. the navy had preplanned fire, and it killed several of dawson's guys and wounded several others. he will also be highly decorated

for this, as will many of his guys. this sort of governing over this is colonel george taylor, 16th infantry commander. dead and the term "the those about to die" comes from him. there is the role played by robert mission, which is really unfortunate. if you have seen the longest day, it is attributable to meacham. it is taylor who said this and wrote it. a few months before d-day, he said, in a landing operation there are two classes of men , that may be found on the beach, those who are already dead and those who are about to die. so his big message, get the you know what off the beach, so he comes in about an hour to an hour and a half, and his xo is killed immediately. he sees all of this carnage, people taking coverage, and he

walks up and down. get up and off the beach. people, the dead and those about to die, and that is where the book comes from. his contributions are twofold. he saves a lot of lives by getting people off the beach. you are vulnerable and helpless. when you're in the shingle area of the beach you are a target. , once you are starting to move inland, you are a hunter. he gets this. i just mentioned spalding and dawson. there is other groups also that are doing much the same thing, and some we probably don't know about. what he does is reinforce them at a time they could have been vulnerable, behind enemy position. now there are other guys putting more pressure on the germans, creating that natural manpower advantage the americans already have and really going a long way to helping win the beach. so by the end of the day, what do you have? you have a beachhead.

you have got a confused clump of a beachhead. by midday, a lot of this is sorted out. and, by the way with the help of , accurate, excellent naval gunfire from destroyers that come in, and once you have spotted targets, then they do tremendous damage. you have done this by nightfall, but it has been costly. there is no lines, really just , positions, foxholes, patrols. i would estimate, and this is 1174bly an underestimate, casualties at the big red one, including 300 killed. probably an underestimate, probably another 500 casualties from the engineers, all the other folks, the barrage balloons from the gap assault , teams. the emotional toll it took on the survivors, you can imagine. chasek and spalding fought throughout much of the rest of world war ii.

stray sick log probably over 400 days in combat. he eventually had to be evacuated for combat fatigue. both of them went on to lead productive postwar lives. stracek took his own life in the 1950's. spalding was shot to death by his wife in the late 1950's. so you would have to think the trauma of omaha beach at least had some relation to this. dawson, on the other hand became , a millionaire. a much better story. he lived well. he lived into the he wrote to 1990's. his family shortly after d-day, what little satisfaction gained from it has been the belief that it was all worthwhile, and this is shared by all of our loved ones and those who represent our nation. and i think culturally, that is very true now. it might have been hard to see then, especially with the battle of normandy in the summer of

1944, but that is how he looked at it in the moment, and i think he was anticipating. where is hubner? i think there is little insight there also. this has been a small unit leader's battle. once all of the rest of them are taken care of, which is a big deal. there are only two generals in play throughout most of the day on d-day. wyman, hubner's second in command and also comports himself very well, and also dutch coda. hubner comes in around 7:00 in the evening when most of the fighting had died down. omaha beach is safe. there is still german patrols, artillery, mines, thousands and thousands of mines. the demining goes on for weeks. he comes in, and hubner had been a caged lion throughout the day. is a from the front, lead by example kind of guy. a combat soldier. his staff tell him, general, you can go ashore, but you will be cut off from communication.

everything is going to be chaotic if you are not in command of things here, so you really have to kind of hunker down here, so finally, he is ashore. theets ashore, and he sees aftermath of the battle. he sees what his guys have done. there is this sense of awe. he speaks to a young staff officer in the 16th infantry who explains to him here is what we did, here is the toll we think it took on us in terms of casualties, and hubner is very emotional. he has got tears in his eyes. and he over and over you did it. ,like a sense of awe. at the moment, it probably meant nothing. when i look at it as a historian, i think you can extrapolate that to the larger normandy invasion not just these , guys at omaha beach but all. i don't know how it happened, but you did it. at that moment, hubner believed , and other soldiers would corroborate this in the years to

come, that there was a bond solidified between him in that division that never abated. he really commanded it very, was lookedsfully and on very lovingly, just like terry allen. i think that is the place to close the loop on this. they did it. thank you. [applause] mr. mcmanus: [applause] questions? i would love to take questions. there is a lot i did not include. >> yes, sir. can you expand upon the german division that defended that day? mr. mcmanus: yes. there are parts of two divisions

on the big red one side. parts of the 716th division, which has a lot of eastern european recruits, you can either work to death or serve as recruits. a better unit. an interesting antidote, in the course of the day, polish american, and he encounters a polish shoulder who had just shot at him and his guys. so he took this guy, and he literally kicked him in the pants as he took in prisoner and walked him back down omaha beach, and i say i do not blame them, i guess. he shot at his guys, but think about the conundrum that soldier is in. he probably has a german nco ready to kill him if he doesn't open fire. think about where the war has taken him. and now, he has to open fire at somebody who is one of his countrymen at this point. that is what it did to a lot of people. the poles just being a good example. the average german infantryman

, at least at the big red one side of omaha beach, is not your greatest enemy. it is the artillery and other firepower controlled by other folks. yes, sir? >> yes. when and why did they get rid of the entire shingle? which is no longer there anymore. mr. mcmanus: yes. the shingle bank i mentioned where a lot of people to cover, and in a way, some of it is still there in the stones. what you will notice when you go there, a lot of the stones at omaha beach are exactly what would have been there. a lot of them have been scarred by the ordinance of that battle. probably. but the engineers in the aftermath of the successful landings, like the roadbuilding engineers, are going to come in and start blowing holes in the shingle bank in order to get roads.

dr. simons talked about the logistics earlier. start building a road on the ravines leading off the beach. the engineer mission is one of incredible complexity. you have some that were dealing with mines, some dealing with barb wire, some building roads. or whatever else they are doing, so they have a lot to do. great question. >> in visiting normandy, we went to the german cemetery. and we were amazed at the ages of the people in the cemetery, 14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old. 14 years old. were these some of the people that were there at d-day? mr. mcmanus: i suspect, and i am only kind of guessing here, that these guys are not the ones you would have seen at the cemetery. i suspect some of those were in kittler youth

division. outh division. the guys at omaha beach tended to be older, fairly well into their 20's, some in their 30's, a few in their 40's. the german opposition, some of them are polish or whatever, is really kind of diverse. i am not aware of all that many teenaged soldiers, although one of them was, i think another guy , 19. was 18. there were young guys, but maybe not quite as young as 14. >> [inaudible] mr. mcmanus say again, please? :>> we did see gravesites, 15, 14. it may have been later on in the normandy. mr. mcmanus: that is my suspicion. i have seen them. they might have been from the 12th ss hitler's youth division

that fights the canadians around cannes, basically annihilated. i have also seen those. >> [inaudible] i think i have seen a documentary that talked the 35 2nd was a pretty good division, the remnants of a division that was in the east, had been brought back to the hanover area , and had what was described as a fresh draft of 18-year-olds. yes, a lot of young guys there, led by some seasoned nco's. mr. mcmanus: and some eastern european guys came in as well. there was this myth on d-day that tended to endure in pop justre about the 352nd

happened to be on maneuvers in normandy that day. no. rommel's objective was to defend the water line. he moved as close to the front as he could get it. the french resistance knew something of this, but allied intelligence had failed to determine this. but in a way they had figured , out some things because they knew that omaha beach was getting more fortified with the mines and obstacles, and that is why they created the gap assault teams. other questions? thrilled to answer. sir? >> i have several questions. the mg-34's and mg-42's raked the beaches from the overhead lines, as you know, and i suspect many of those that were killed were the result of those machine guns. and the other question i have, i know they were obstacles, but

could they not have landed later at night? terry allen, i heard he was relieved because he was not very kind to his superiors, and also, i believe his son was killed in vietnam. mr. mcmanus: you are correct. his son was killed in vietnam and the big red one in the fall of 1967. terry allen, one of the reasons terry allen was loved is that the soldiers figured out quickly he cared a lot more about them than making himself look good to his superiors. terry allen had a tempestuous relationship with george patton. it is not that they disliked each other, but he did not suck up to patton or anybody else. allen was not wired that way. you mentioned night. i believe allen is a pioneer in his advocacy of night attacks. in world war ii and really they're forward through the vietnam era has this

night, let's fight at and hunker down in our perimeter and shoot anything that moves. let's use our firepower to destroy anything at night. this allen's division, the was not necessarily a good thing. 104th, was different. absolutely. a he was just too confident commander to sit out the war. 104th, which is called the timberwolves. liberate aelped concentration/labor camp at the end of the war. a remarkable unit, really. anyone else? mm-hmm? the mic. >> [inaudible] mcmanus: hmm. ok.

question.he last lots writing on this question, sir. shortly.ing to be 89 i could not wait to get in service. i enlisted in the navy when i was still in high school. they let me finish high school, .nd then i went to active-duty been to one area, and my sons have been there twice. anyone i have ever spoken to who has been there, everyone has cried. mr. mcmanus: with good reason. >> it is an emotional place. and they put out a series of films on world war ii, and in one, he had a german machine

gunner who was on the coast people.laying are gunned down, and they back and forth and back and forth, and he ended up crying. he kept saying," they kept coming, they kept coming, they kept coming, they kept coming." that is what made the difference. mr. mcmanus: that is what made the difference. a difference against a couple thousand soldiers and overwhelm them. the emotion of it, with good reason. there,bout what happened and i think nowhere does it become more evident than in the cemetery. 87 americans buried there, including those from the big red one. i can very much relate to that

sentiment, and that is part of what i had hoped to convey in the book. humanize these guys again, that these were flesh and blood people like all of us, just in that situation. maybe that is what really interests me as a historian. also, before i finished today, i want to thank you for service, the world war ii veterans, and all veterans for your service. i would like to just thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] every weekend, american history tv brings you 48 hours of programming, exploring our nation's past. for a schedule and an archive of all of our programs, visit c-span.org/history. announcer: this year marks the 75th anniversary of the june 6, 19 44 d-day invasion of nazi occupied france.

normandy, the airborne invoice and -- invasion of fortress europe, is a documentary. the film details the it details the planning, training, combat operations and summaries of the airborne forces. with an emphasis on more than 500 gliders that were dropped behind enemy lines on the morning of june 6. ♪ >> ladies and gentlemen, the picture we are about to see is as important [inaudible] it rapidly details the use of gliders in normandy, gliders which you have to manufacture. you will not soon forget this picture. you