and disparities." watch "in depth" live with thomas sowell from noon to 2:00 p.m. on c-span 2. >> next, john mcmanus talks about his book "the dead and those about to die." it tells the story of the first infantry division and how they were the first combat soldiers to storm the normandy beaches on june 6th, 1944. the eisenhower institute at getties berg college and the dwight d eisenhower society co-hosted this. >> dr. mcmanus is the first ever in humanities to be named curator's distinguished

professor. as one of the nation's leading military historians and the author of 12 well-known and received books on the topic, he is frequently in command to speak as an expert commentator. in addition to national radio shows and programs he's done, he's appeared on cnn.com, fox news, c-span, the military channel, the discovery channel, the national geographic channel, netflix, smithsonian network, the history channel, and pbs. so, you've probably seen him. dr. mcmanus also served as the historical adviser for the best-selling book and documentary "sallen jer" the latter of which appears on pbs in the american master series. during the 2018-19 academic year, he is in residence at the

academy at 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 1941-43" will be out july 30th so you can look for that one. today, dr. mcmanus's talk will be based on his recent talk the dead and those about to die, d day, the big red won on omaha beach. he will speak about the 19 hours of hell and their ultimate triumph on june 6th, 1944. wha while the role of officers is part of the story, he will share the soldier's experience during the d-day landing. i am sure dwight eisenhower would have appreciated this

work. eisenhower always said the real hero of world war ii is g.i. joe. i am pleased to introduce dr. john mcmanus. [ applause ] >> thank you. thank you. everybody hear me okay? good. i'll try to keep the microphone at the proper level. if not, please do yell out. thank you for that wonderful introduction. i really appreciate it. like to thank all the folks who made this possible, obviously our hosts here at getties berg college, the eisenhower institute, all of you for making the time to come here and listen to me and listen to the brilliant scholars who have proceeded me. it's a tough act to follow so, please indulge me. i'll do my best. what struck me when dr. simons was talking abili

was talking aboutiz eisenhower' decision, he has all this air power to his disposal, naval power, technological power, ground power, this prestigious military might. in coiled spring. then he makes that decision and it's out of his hands. it's out of his hands and it's in the hands of really not just the generals who rank below him or the admirals or the lieutenant colonels or the majors or the captains, but it's in the hands now of the average soldier, airman, and marines too. what i want to give you a sense of today is something of the d-day/combat experience for the average allied sold your just by

looking at the first infantry division at omaha beach. i wouldn't 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 was the hardest, bloodiest fighting that allied soldiers and of course german shoeldiers might have experienced. i'm not saying this is a representative example, but i think it is an illustrative example. the first thing about this is how i would have come to this story, where this comes from, why another book on omaha beach when so much is done on d-day. you have brilliant works by others, but the thing that made it incredible for me after studying the battle of normandy and specifically omaha beach for about a quarter a century from

when i was a child to later on when i was a graduate student i got to participate in a program called the normandy scholars. we were ai believe to immerse ourselves into normandy for about a month, the culture, the battle at large, the larger geopolitical aspects of it or whenever else. later on as an author about it, what was incredible to me was that there was still more to say. and specifically the story of the big red one which certainly had been covered to some extent, but i didn't necessarily believe in the kind of depth that perhaps it did warrant. so, it's sort of this happiest of convergence for a historian, something that has been in term of importance relatively undercovered and underappreciated but yet has availability of sources that are just in prestigious quantity. enormous amounts of after action reports and letters and diaries and unit journals and the

historians' writings of the time, the morning report that is units kept at the company level that told something about what happened to these various companies when they hit the beach that day and what happened to individuals coming and going, casualties so on and so forth, oral history, memoirs, people i knew, people i had corresponded with. all of this comes together in what i hoped allowed me in this book to kind of tell the story in an emergent sense of maybe this is something you can get a sense of any way you can reading about something of what the soldier might have experienced or what at least the mindset would have been and the challenges that day. and i think the first thing to grasp about this is something of the unique personality and culture and feel of the first infantry division which of course is nicknamed the big red one. it was history dated back to world war i and just last year the division which still exists

celebrated its centennial founding. so, the big red one had a great sense already before omaha beach of tradition and pride, of heritage and a sense of being very special. it had fought in north africa and sicily and of course we learned a lot about that today with george's film. north africa, the big red one was a major, major component of the allied armed forces. learned lessons there. fought at sicily and had this reputation by that point, middle to late part of 1943 as being a unit that was really reliable in combat, that fought well, that gained ground extremely well, that was a go-to unit but that with had they were off the line they were a handful. they loved to fight. they love today drink. th they loved to beat up on lower echelon people. they didn't call themselves grunts in those days.

they called themselves dogfaces or dough boys. they tended to get in trouble. they had a surly kind of attitude about authority, didn't always necessarily listen to officers who were not part of their own unit. you know, what do you matter? you're not the captain i follow, that kind of thing. they had a reputation maybe as being a bit of a handful. and i think this saying that was so popular in the big red one kind of sort of gives you a sense of this. they often said to one another, the united states army consists of the big red one and 10 million replacements. 10 million other faceless replacements out here and here's the lead actors. that's who they were. successful at what matters, but troubling in other ways. troubling certainly to general eisenhower in some respects but also his key subordinates patton. they held terry allen

responsible for this and his second in command, theodore roosevelt, the son of the famous president. they had just allowed the discipline to slack off. true, they were good fighters. they had led the division well, but it wasn't necessarily a healthy thing for the army to have this kind of thinking. so, they relieve not for competence or cause, they relieve for disciplinary reasons both allen and roosevelt, both of whom were way too valuable just to send home for good. allen commands the 104th infantry division very, very well in the campaign in northwest europe. roosevelt more famously ends up with the 4th infantry division at utah beach. was about to get his level command and died of a heart attack during the battle of normandy. they just felt that the division needed a new culture. so, knowing what you know about the big red one, their ins lairty and resentment against

outsiders, you can imagine how happy they're going to be about these popular earthy commanders, people you would have known and seen, people you felt a connection with all of a sudden being cashiered. and at the same time when you have received this momentous mission of leading the invasion of france which they also deeply resented because they thought we've done enough. we're supposed to go home and train new people to do this kind of stuff. combat soldiers think they've done their battle, they've done enough, let someone else carry the load. a lot was riding on who the successor would be. it was major general clarence hugher who comes to the big red one in early fall. he couldn't be more different than terry allen. terry allen was an earthy guy, didn't necessarily worry whether your uniform was rumpled,

whether you saluted the proper way. hugher comes in with a spit and polish feel to him and the soldiers initially hated him. this guy is making us salute. he's making us lace up our legs. that's rear echelon basic training kind of stuff. so, there are these rumors around that hubner was a sort of desk jock ki who didn't know better and was coming the in telling them what to do. they didn't know his background. he was 55 years old in 1944. he joined the army as a private soldier in time for world war i. worked his way up tlhrough the ranks. he had been a decorated with distinguished service cross. and what division did he serve

in? first division. you guessed it. but hardly anybody knew that. they just knew this guy's here to just change our lives and in a bad way. but what was indisbutte able as th they started to watch them during the rupp n up to the wee and months was he knew his stuff. his nickname was coach. he was an athletic coach. he was a teacher as a young man and a coach. he brought that sentiment to leadership. i always thought that the instances of allen and hubner is a good example of how excellent leadership can some completely different ways. it couldn't have been more opposite, but they're both quite effective. so, hubnor when he dresses you down, it's more constructive of you're going to have to fire your rifle better because of x, y, and z. this is why we're doing this and

why i'm unyielding on this. he put himself through training. he was an expert rifleman. he had a cancer scare during the run up to the normandy invasion. they did tests on him. fortunately he was fine. in explaining why he came to the division with such a hard attitude, he said you can start by being an s.o.b., and become a good guy. but you can never start by being a good guy and become an s.o.b. a lot of good lessons there. i would argue by late 1943 or 44, division had taken heavy casualties so you've got new guys coming in. as they're absorbing these replacements, probably one in every two who hits omaha beach on d-day was a new guys seeing combat for the first time. they're getting infiltrated with

this big red one culture and the unyielding training standard of having proficiency of all things relevant to the invasion. not just that. this is one of the few divisions that does urban combat training. hubnor is thinking ahead. by the time they are in a position of going ahead, people have been cross trained. you're a mortar gunner and know the loaders job. you're a squad leader, know the platoon leaders job. all of these kinds of things are in play by then. of course as you might expect, many of the veterans resented getting the honor of going in. s so, why is the big red one chosen? some extent it's obvious. it's a successful unit with

successes. it was one of only two divisions that general bradley, one of only two divisions that have combat experience he's got at his diz postal. the first and the 9th. he'll later say i couldn't spare the first division. they knew that omaha beach was going to be a tough nut to crack because of the terrain ask approximate tand the build up of mines and obstacles. that's why they earmark two dates to go in. the 29th is more culturally famous because it's what's portrayed in "saving private ryan." it's near where the rangers hit in the longest day and what not. it would have been nice and proper to have someone else doing the honor of this, but it is what it is. so, there's a little sort of sad back story to this. there was a captain in the unit

who once told me in an interview, he said this isn't necessarily for attribution or record -- although here i'm telling you -- that in the weeks leading up to d day i had two ncos in this regimen -- he didn't say which -- who committed suicide rather than put themselves through that responsibility of leading people in combat and being responsible for their lives again. so, resentment wasn't just the ha ha side of yeah, we get this job again. there were some people who literally could not quite handle it anymore. now, what are they up against? well, you can see this is what i'll call the first division side of omaha beach. liel i won't get too far from the microphone, but i would like to point out some things. see the wns? my german is terrible. these are basically strong points. the whole purpose of this is that in order for an invader to

do anything productive they've got to get off the beach, okay? so, there are no roads at omaha beach. there are no obvious ways to do this. so, it's the natural defiles that have been created by erosion over numerous millenia, millions of years obviously. those defiles then are going to be beach exits. so, that's what the germans are going to defend. so, those circular fortifications you see there are designed to prevent the invaders from getting off the beach. once they do, that's going to lead to problems for the germans. so, of course that's the very objective you want to take if you're part of the big red one. so, you can see there's three subsectors to the big red one beach and omaha beach is about four and a half miles long, and it's crescent shaped which is good for the defender because you can have interlocking fire from either side on to any invader. so, you have to have those beach

exits. you simply have to. so, you can see the planners further subdivide the three portions of the big red one beach to fox red, fox green, and the most famous of them all, easy red. you can see the defenses there. what's within the wns? it's a blend of weapons. primarily it's like concrete hole structures with machine guns or mortars in them often called toe brooks or murder holes. there's concrete bunkers you associate with the normandy invasion. there are antitank guns. some of the most deadly weapons are 50 millimeters guns. you have of course plenty of riflemen. you've got mortars. you've got grenades. but i would argue the most formidable defense that the germans have at least in the big red one sector is the inland

artillery. the in some ways, your deadliest adversary as you go ashore that day is the forward observer for the german artillery. he's the eyes on who's calling in the heaviest and worst and deadliest of the fire power. they have 24 105 millimeters almost completely useless. all of them survive with communication lines intact. that's important. you have forward observers in the bunkers with eyes on calls down this enormous fire. they also have screaming mimis that are going to hire rockets at the beech with saturation fire. that's what you're up against. this is what it looks like later on. there's more foliage than you would have seen. but what is your perspective? you're looking from wn-60 which

is the eastern most extreme of all of omaha beach which you have to have to move east ward and link up. you simply have to swur that for the obvious reason too that you look from one glance of that picture, any german atop that ground can sweep almost all of omaha beach with fire. you can see distance there almost all of omaha beach all the way to the 29th division and ranger sector. you don't see point dele hoc. you have someone shooting down at you like a fish in a barrel effect. why is this different than what you would have seen in 1944? certainly you didn't have a parking lot. you didn't have tourists on the beach. but you also have much more

foliage t. germans cut down almost all the foliage to have good fields of fire. you don't have to have trees to deflect your bullets. still it gives you a sense of what you've got there. the allies, of course, planned this minutely. we heard about that and it's a remarkable plan. it's predicated on surprise. you're not going to hit omaha beach over and over and over again so you're telegraphing the obvious date and time of your invasion. that means you're talking about a quick in one off aerial bombardment and you're asking four engine bomber, the heavies, who are lucky to get their bomb within a mile or so of the target, you're asking them to bomb within a 1,000 to 2,000 window with your own friendly fleet below your bombay and your own troops to come in too. predictably it's a cloudy day. if you're a bomber, you're not

going to drop if you think there's any chance you're going to hit your own fleet or own people. so, they tend to wait a little longer. they bomb inland. it does next to nothing from the aerial site. the sea bombardment is about 45 minutes. it's better targeted. but the problem is too once you see these explosions, you've got all this mist. you've got the cloudy weather. you have dust and smoke and flumes of smoke that make it a little tougher for the naval observers to see what they're shooting at though they have decent entail. you're shooting at a fortified enemy hunkered down in his bunker. the naval and air bombardment slightly wounded two german soldiers. two. it wasn't pleasant. you know, but it didn't do a lot of damage. it knocked out a fortified flame thrower so that was one very productive thing it did. but other than that, the beach

was kind of largely untouched whereas you would have been briefed as a soldier they're going to knock it over. it's going to be great. it's going to be good. many of these guys being cynical were extremely skeptical and unfortunately had their skepticism confirmed. so, you go ashore about 6:30. you saw the footage climbing down the nets and all that. that happens about two hours before that. so, you're climbing down the nets into landing craft and circling around about an hour and a half two hours. people are seasick. the seas are choppy. ice miserable. the 16th regimen received the quote honor of going in first at low tide. why low tide? so we can see the obstacles. there's ton of obstacles and mines. one out of four americans going on sure is an engineer because they have to deal with mines and obstacles. the navy and army put together

gap assault teams. the navy is supposed to deal with everything in the water. so, they went in with armor, armor coming aboard landing craft and more famously swim tanks, the duplex drive tanks that are kind of disastrous. the concept is land them all at the same time, present the germans with targets that overwhelm them, clobber them that way, capture the draws, move up, circle around, and you'll have your beach. problem is it goes wrong from the start. not just the bombardment. but captain james thornton was the armor commander. he was citadel class of 1940 graduate. he commanded the tank battalion who is looking at the choppy seas and is wondering should we launch the swimming tanks or not? and he decides yeah, let's go. it's a bad call unfortunately

because the tanks, most of them with were swamped by the surf. 27 out of 32 of those tanks sank with an average of one crew man lost per tank. and their remains are still there, most of them. 5 tanks got ashore. three aboard a landing craft. two swam in. the two that swam in under staff sergeant shepherd and gattis did damage and knocked out the 88 millimeter gun they the had in that part of omaha beach. they had two at omaha beach. they knock out the one at wn 61. they did damage and more tanks came in, but only about 15 out of 64 tanks. for you as a tanker that day you're presented with a difficult situation because you want to be station fair had to provide fire support and you've

got so many soldiers around you, you don't want to run them over, dead and wounded and it's confusing. if you're a stationary aircraft, the germans can pick you off so it is a devastating battle for them as well. the assault troops land haphazardly in jagged groups. the tides were messed up. the confusion, not knowing where they're looking, the smoke and dust and the fear, the seasickne seasickness all leads to late landings and in the wrong spot. unfortunately the two main assault spots landed in the exact deadliest spot, the absolute kill zone right under the fire power of wn 62. that leads to massive loss of life and wounding in those two companies. a german machine gunner in that vicinity claims to have fired 12,000 rounds that day.

i don't doubt that. he picked off other soldiers with rifles. it gives incite into just how devastating that was. you come ashore, you're probably seasick, wet, scared, tired, confused, wearing specially gas resistant, gas impregnated uniforms in case they use poisonous gas. they stank like sour milk. the soldiers called them skunk suits. you're carrying way too much stuff. you're wet. you're staggering around. it's a time when you need to move like a rabbit and you're moving like a tortoise because you're sick and laiden and in the skunk suit. 19, perfect shape, physical specimen, he was so sick he later put it he didn't care if adolf hitler was waiting for him. open beach swept with fire in

every direction, barbed wire, mines. you're seeing the gap assault team get frustrated. they're trying to move the tanks and people through but soldiers are taking cover behind the obstacles. that's shown very well in "saving private ryan." you have that plus you're taking casualties. in many cases you've got explosive landing craft that are hit immediately and touch off massive explosions. so, there's about a 56% fatality rate. just a few examples of the toll. lieutenant aaron demstat. like all platoon leaders or boat section leaders, he's the first guy off the landing craft. you'll notice in pictures of

d-day when you see the image of the back of the landing craft, the guy with a vertical hash mark is standing at the front. he's an officer. it's his job to lead the way. the guy at the back is the push man. don't think about staying in this landing craft or you will deal with me. i am your sergeant. i am your ran the cal leader here. move. so, denstat gets off first. hit in the head by machine gunfire and killed instantly. after the war, his heart broken mother wrote to historians urging them to tell the story of the big red one. if the story isn't included i will try to understand. you read that as a historian, you're a little bit motivated to tell that story, perhaps. you talk about being humbling. another example, pfc norman specular -- this isn't pleasant but we're talking about normandy beach. he was carrying satchel charge,

something touched it off. literally blew him to pieces. quote, the biggest piece was as big as my fist. he and 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. as you may know it's a custom in not just france but other liberated countries to adopt a grave, americans who are buried in the cemeteries over seas. they adopted speckler's grave and they wondered if i could share with them how he died. it wasn't a pleasant thing to relate but at least it was a little bit of knowledge and closure in the sense that they had the knowledge of knowing him at a distance. the survivors are pinned down in a bank that gives the illusion. it's the sloping rocks that are just all over there sloping and

it's tough for vehicles to get over. when mortar shells and artillery sells come in it kpoupds the fragmentation effect. it's slippery and wet but it's the first place you might have gotten to beyond the obstacles and the shale and whatever else. many dead and wounded lay along that water line. medics are risking their lives to go back to the surf and of course the tides were coming the in getting closer. ed manics are going back in trying to drag people, wet, half dead. it's one of the few times when medics are dragging wounded men toward the enemy. i think it's a little bit of insight into a bit of planning oversight. the allies earmark a lot of landing craft and other shipping for things that are ancillary on d day, trucks, and not smmuch f medical evacuation. there's a lot medics say they

would stabilize a guy, get to landing craft, and they were like no, we're leaving. your orders are go, dump off your load. you are not to evacuate the wounded. so, this is a point of frustration. i do think it certainly cost them lives. now, you see some folks here i'm showing you. right there. that's lieutenant john spalding. so, where does this lead? does anyone get off the beach? are they all dead? no. fortunately you're presenting the germans with a lot of targets in this sense and they can't hit them on. there's only about 500 to 600 german solders. the americans have massive advantages in power. what you're looking there is 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. he was from kentucky, loved baseball. he was married, had a young child back home. this was his first day of combat. he has a very seasoned and experienced nco, tech sergeant phil striken. child of the depression. he to leave school because times were tough. had to leave school around the 8th grade to work to get the family by. joins the army. fought through north africa, sicily, heavily decorated. if you take a poll on the big red one, who's the most valorous soldier in this division, he would have gotten a lot of votes. he knows what he's doing. imagine if you're spalding. it's an uncomfortable circumstances. you're brand-new in combat, roughly the same age as this guy, but he's been around the

block. regardless of the tension that might have been between them, their section gets off the beach first. you can see where this happens. right there where it says spalding. and start to work their way in and are like what i would compare knives in the vitals to the germans in the course of the day. do tremendous damage about wn 64 behind wn 62. they lose two killed and eight wounded, 7 men in this boat section of 32 got the distinguish service cross including spalding and strasic. another example. captain joe dawson. this is his first company command. 30-year-old geologist from texas who worked in the oil business. he was son of a very prominent baptist minister from texas and graduate of bailor university. he feels he has to prove himself to his men. he's taking over for a guy who

had been really popular, captain ed, took the worst casualties under wn 62 that i mentioned earlier. spalding is determined to lead my example. he comes in 20 minutes after -- excuse me, dawson. he comes in 20 minutes after spalding and his group. takes out a machine gun nest himself with grenades and leads them to caldwell which you can see there with a prominent church steeple. he ends up fighting bitterly the rest of the day and night. they had taken about 60 casualties gets off the beach. most were lightly wounded. the heaviest casualties they took were late in the day because of the poor coordination between the army and navy at this point and the confusion of the circumstances. the navy had preplanned fire which killed several guys. he also will be highly decorated as will many of his guys.

the governoring overlord in george taylor. the term "the dead and those about to die" comes from him. if you've ever seen "the longest day" that phrase is conducted to one. he wrote before d day, he said in a landing operation, there are two classes of men that may be found on a beach, those who are already dead and those who are about to die. so, his big message, get the you know what off this beach. so, he comes in about an hour to an hour and a half. he sees this carnage, all these people taking cover.

two type of people, dead and those about to die. i think tailor's contributions are twofold. motivates people to get off the beach where you're vulnerable and helpless. you're a target. once you're starting to move inland, you're a hunter. he gets this. also i just mentioned spalding and dawson. there are other groups too doing the same thing and of course some we don't know about to this day. what he does is helps reinforce them at a time they could have been vulnerable to german attacks. now there's other guys putting pressure on the germans creating that natural manpower advantage and going a long way toward helping win the beach. to use the phrase we love nowadays, at the end of the day, what do you have? you've got a beachhead. you've got a confused clump of a beachhead. by midday, this is sorted out.

with the help of naval detroyers, frankfort, cardic are just a few example that is come in and once you spot targets, they've done tremendous damage. you've done this by night fall but it's been costly. there's no lines really. this is probably an underestimate, 1,074 casualties in the big red one. probably an under estimate. there's probably another 500 from the gap assault team, the bah ranil balloons we talked about earlier. the emotional toll it took on the survivors you can imagine. strasic and spalding fought throughout much of the rest of world war ii. strasic logged probably over 400 days in combat. he had been wounded many times, eventually had to be evacuated

from combat fatigue. both of them went on to productive post-war lives. strasic took his own life in the late 1950s. spalding was shot to death by his wife in the late 1950s. yeah. so, you would have to think the trauma of omaha beach at least has some sort of relation to this. dawson on the other hand became a millionaire, so that puts you in a better mood i think. lived well into the 1990s, incredible person. wrote to his family shortly after d day. what little satisfaction gained from it was the belief it was all worth while. this shared by loved ones and those represent our nature. culturally it's true now. it might have been hard to see in the summer of 1944 with the battle raging. that's how he looked at it in the moment and i think he was sort of anticipating.

where's hubenner in all this? there's only two generals really who are in play throughout most of the day on d day, willard wyeman and dutch coda. there's still german patrols, artillery and mortars coming in, mines, mining goes on for days and weeks. there were thousands and thousands of mines there. he comes in and he is just -- hubnor has been like a caged lion. he's a front lead by example kind of guy. he's wanting reports and his staff is able to tell him you can go ashore but you're going to be cut off from communication and everything is going to be chaotic if you're not in command of things here. so, you've really got to kind of hunker down here for a while.

finally he's ashore and sees the after math of this battle. he sees what his guys have done. there's this sense of awe in him. he speaks with a young staff officer the in the 16th infantry who explains to him here's what we did, here's the toll it took on us in terms of sashlties, the basic situation report. hubnor is very emotional. he's got tears in his eyes and says over and over again he did it. when i look at that as a historian, i think you can extrapolate that to the larger normandy invasion, not just these guys at omaha beach but all the allied soldiers. i don't know how it happened but somehow you did it. at that moment hubnor believed and many soldiers solidify that there was a bond that never evaded. he commanded it successfully,

became a corp. commander and was looked at lovingly. i think that's the place to close the loop on this. they did it. thank you. applause questions? love to take questions. there is a lot i did not include. yes, sir? >> yes, sir. can you expand a little bit upon the german division that defended that day? >> there's parts of two divisions on the omaha side. parts of the 716 infantry division which has a lot of eastern european roster filler, in other words people given the choice we can work you to death in slave labor or you can work in the german army. so, you have some of those guys. and the 352 infantry division which is mostly but not entirely

german but it is a better unit. interesting anecdote that dove tails with this. an experience strasic had. he was polish american. he spoke polish. he encounters a polish soldier who had just shot at him and his guys. strasic was not pleased. so, he took this guy and literally kicked him in the pants as he took him prisoner and walked him back to omaha beach. think about the place he is in. now he has to open fire at somebody who is one of his countrymen in a way. that's what the war had done to a lot of people, the polls just being a good example. so, you know, that's why i say i mean the average german infantryman at least the big red side of omaha beach is not your

greatest enemy there. it's the artillery that's coming in and the other fire power controlled by other folks. yes, sir? >> yeah, when and why did they get rid of the entire shingle which is no longer there anymore? >> the shingle bank i mentioned where a lot of people took cover. in a way some of it is still there in the stones. a lot of the stones are the exact ones you would have had then. what you'll notice if you go there, they are scarred by ordinance. you can go there today and pick up stones and see them scarred by the ordinance of that battle probably. but the engineers in the after math successful landings, like the road building engineers are going to come in and start blowing holes in the shingle bank and all that in order to get roads to get -- we talked about the logistics earlier, to get the logistics moving to get the stuff in and help building a road on the draws and ravines

leading you off the beach. so, the engineer mission is one of incredible complexity because you have some dealing with mines, some dealing with barb wire, some building roads or whatever else they're doing. so, they had 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? >> i suspect, and i'm 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 12th ss hitler youth division as a possibility. the guys at omaha beach tend to be a older, into their 20s, some in 30s, a few in 40s.

it's a mixture. i'm using german as an umbrella term. some are polish. but the german opposition is diverse in this sense. so, i am not aware of all that many teenage soldiers. cyber low was very young. i think he was 19. there were young guys but maybe not quite as young as 14. say again, please. >> we did see grave sites that said 15 and 14. i mean they may have been later on in the normandy -- >> that's my suspicion. absolutely. i've seen them too. that's why i say i think it's possible those may have been from the 12th ss hitler youth division. who fought the canadians and basically annihilated.

absolutely. i've seen those too. >> i think i've seen a documentary talked about the 352nd, the reason it was a pretty good division it was the remnant of a division that was in the east, brought back to the hanover area, and described as a fresh draft of 18 years old. that's a lot of young guys there led by seasoned ncos. >> right. exactly. and eastern european guys that filtered in there too. of course there was a myth that came out on d day that tended to endure in pop culture that happened to on omaha beach that day, that it was a total accident. no, ramal's concept was to defend the water line. he had started to move elements of the 352nd as close to the beach as he could get it. the french resistance knew

something of this but allied intelligence failed to determine this. but it also -- but in a way they had figured out some things because they knew that omaha beach was getting more and more fortified with the mines and obstacles. that's why on the fly they created the gap assault teams. other questions? thrilled to answer. sir? >> several questions. the mg-34s and mg-42s, they raked the beaches from the overhead lines as you know. i suspect many of those 2,000 that were killed were result of those machine guns. the other question i have, i know the obstacles, but could they not have landed later at night? i heard terry allen was relieved because he was not very kind to

superiors. and also i believe his son was killed in vietnam. >> you are correct. his son was killed in vietnam in the big red one in the fall of 1967. terry allen -- one of the reasons terry allen was loved throughout the big red one is that the soldiers figured out quickly he cared more about him than superiors. he had a relationship with george patton where he did not suck up to patton. you mentioned night. while we're talking terry allen, it's the perfect time to visit that. terry allen is a pioneer in the u.s. armed forces in his advocacy of night attacks. the u.s. army in world war ii and their forward through the vietnam era has a let's fight the 9:00 to 5:00 war and hunker down in bunkers and shoot at everything that moves.

it was let's fight in the day and not at night because we can't see at night. allen's division was quite different. absolutely. he was just too competent a commander to sit out the rest of the war. he got the 104th which is called the timber wwolves. they helped liberate a concentration/labor camp called in order how issen at the end of the war. remarkable unit really. anything else? okay. i'm told this is the last question. go ahead. lots riding on this. >> it's the sorrow of my life

because i'm going to be 89 shortly. i couldn't wait to get in the service. i enlisted in the navy reserve. i was still in high school. they let me finish high school. and then went to 30. and i've been there twice. anyone i've ever spoken with who has been there, everyone has cried. >> with good reason. >> it's an emotional place. >> it is. >> lieu rita from eastern pennsylvania put out a series of films on world war ii, and in one he had a german machine gunner who was on the coast there slaying our people.

he said he feel down, guns back and forth, back and forth. and he ended up crying. and he kept saying they kept coming. they kept coming. they kept coming. they kept coming. that's what made the difference. >> it did. it was just overwhelming them with wave after wave of troops. it's better than two divisions coming in during the course of the day against couple thousand soldiers on the german side. you're going to overwhelm them. with emotion of it with good reason. think about what happened there. nowhere does this become more evident than the cemetery, normandy american cemetery. over 900 americans buried there. i could relate to that sentiment. that's part of what i had hoped to convey not just today but in the book, who these guys were. humanize these guys again as

these were flesh and blood people like all of us just in this situation. maybe that's what really interests me as a historian. before i finish today, i would like to thank you for your service, world war ii veterans, vietnam veterans, all veterans, i would like to thank you for your service. thank you. [ applause ] >> you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span 3. follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. >> the complete guide to congress is now available. it has lots of details about the house and senate for the current session of congress. contact and bio information about every senator and representative. plus information about congressional committees, state

governors, and the cabinet. the 2019 congressional directory is a handy spiral bound guide. order your copy from the c-span online store for $18.95.$18.95. this year marks the 75th anniversary of the june 6th, 1944 d-day invasion of nazi-occupied france. normandy, the airborne invasion of fortress europe, is an hour-long documentary produced by the u.s. army air forces. the film details the planning, training, combat operations, and after-battle summaries of the airborne forces. with an emphasis on more than 500 gliders that were dropped behind enemy lines on the morning of june 6th. ♪