>> he was a successful businessman and in concert with his wife margaret became a generous philanthropist. a gift from the mason foundation created an endowed lecture series here at the museum which we have been hosting since 2008 and with which we will be bringing in he)e for multiple events, many distinguished speakers such as the gentleman will be joining us just a moment. for the final session of the morning, we're brint)jt one of our oldest friends from the museum, best selling author,

alex kershaw. who as i joke one or two may know him, i think all of you know him, anybody who has any interest in world war ii or military history generally has great respect for alex and his many books which include "the bedford boys." "longest winter" "escape from the deep." in our final mission submarine experience. but today alex is here to discuss his latest book, "the first wave: the d-day warriors who led the way to victory in world war ii." please join me in welcoming alex kershaw. (applause) >> good morning, can

you hear me? good. i'm going to leave the podium and join my men. how are you this morning? let's get this thing started. you'll see my bald spot here, which is growing very quickly. do we have can you see this? finally great. this is what it's down to for me. this is a

shot. second deadly place that you guys could find yourself on d-day. this is easy sector. one of eight sectors on omaha beach. it takes you through all june 6, 1944. i will photograph enormously when i woke up in the hotel this morning, i could smell paint. thank you for that. i love the smell of paint. look at that plane t$ere. look at the plane. the paint on that plane is fresh fresh. this is taking it thank you. this was taken around 6:00

in the evening. the guy here, second from left is a guy called joe crouch. he's the finest c47 pilot of world war ii. think about this. plane one, his job is to drop the first

yanks into normandy on d-day. plane one. why did he get the job? because he's done it four times before. lead pilot north africa, lead pilot sicily, lead pilot number one, plane one, first american to be drop on d-day. former united airlines pilot, thankfully in those days in the 30s you weren't dragged off leading from the united airlines. anyways he's a super star. lead pilot operation market garden. six times number one. these are i'm pleased to give you british or european.

these are the first 18 americans to jump out the plane, out of joe crouch's plane at 12:15 a.m. on d-day. i love them because they are the first and started to kill my least favorite people. german nazis. i should add nazi to the german part. only one of these guys were killed. they are pathfinders. their job is to set up lights, beacons, radars to guide in that beautiful magnificent sky train 6.5000 screaming eagles. they don't get the job done. d-day could fail. here's their leader, captain frank, 28 years old. 43 practice jumps let's not forget almost three quarters of americans were prepared on

d-day. superstition. in his boots, hit the jew sudden graphs normandy, 12:15 a.m. on june 6, 1944, badly 1 wounded that evening, completed his mission. hit in the face with shrapnel, went back to england and came back to 101st airbourne.all the way through end of the war. fantastic combat leader and american. you can tell from my tones that aren't white like boris johnson, i am british. been here 25 years. my heart beats faster when i look at this photograph. this is the most successful

operation in british military history. 10 minutes. there's a glider, a plane made of wood. it different land using the wheels. they are entirely cosmetic. this plane is designed not to land, it's designed to crash land at 100

miles per hour. 30 guys in each glider, this is famous pegasis bridge. after 10 minutes crash landed at 12:15 a.m. just 10 minutes later, 90 guys have carried out successfully the first operation that is a success on d-day. question arises, who was first? americans or british. who was

able to claim bragging rights that they were the first? it wasn't captain frank and the pathfinders. it was norman poole. imagine him standing in the shaking door of c-47. he jumped out holding a grammarphone. four other britts, we are crazy. we did stop to have cups of tea, four other britts jump out with grammarphones. surrounded by thousands. these are not british public schoolboys from minor public schools. they are about 4-foot high. they are part of decoy unit. they land

and they actually play the grammarphones and they play the sound of war. we can legitimately claim on d-day we were the first. here's the first guy, american guy dome in from the water. 6:20 a.m. that is the seawall there utah. think about this, over 900 americans gave their lives on one beach on d-day, omaha beach. that is lives lost. not wounded. not psychologically

scarred. less than 200 casualties on omaha. a tenth of what happened on omaha. there is really the only significant opposition that morning. i get a 97 i think. a frenchman who was in the audience, a wonderful guy. he will correct me if i'm wrong. give me a wave. thank you sir. hundred 97 casualties. this guy was the first guy. he came ouá of a landing craft and was officially 6:28 am when he waited at the shore in utah beach. the very first american in the first wave on utah. i'm going to pause a second here because i find this photograph to be very powerful very emotional. this is you at your very finest. two times in your history. first time when you kicked us out over 200 years ago. thank you. always fear

aristocracy, it is not a good thing. the second time is this moment here. most of the man in this boat will be killed or wounded within a few hours. first wave approaching omaha beach. there are about three or four miles away. this dude here at the front of the landing craft. of course

here is a very fine a young american gentleman. 26 years old on d-day. from always burrow, kentucky. he looks like a baby there, doesn't he? really young. now you put your hands up earlier on and you told me you had been to the graveyard above omaha beach now some of you will remember when you were there that there is a gorgeous place it is called the look out. when you go to the lookout you look down on that beautiful winding path that takes you down to easy red sector. to some of you remember a place? it is named after this guy here. it is named after lieutenant john spalding, first time in combat. haunted by dreams of death before he even went to combat. he landed at 6:32 am, first wave. he has a distinction of being the first of you guys. the first of you guys to lead terrifying young americans out of death towards

life. up the bluff at omaha and lead the first break out of americans on d-day. interviewed in march, 1945 he said when i walked up that path there were minds on both sides of that path. when i got to the top of that path i believed one thing, there was an angel on each of my shoulders. that i had been put on this planet to do one thing. i was immortal, how could i survive that crossing the first with the first wave on omaha beach when everyone was being killed around me. how could i survive? how could i lead those 18 men? none of whom were wounded as we walked up that path. how could i do that if i was not immortal? that was my mission. he knew only too well by august august 1944, that he wasn't immortal. today, 75 years ago, in the meat

grinder, when nine americans of division square wasted certainly decimated in longest defeat for americans in world war ii, this guy broke down. he broke, 1945 end of the war he entered a psychiatric unit. the price of victory was very high. here we have my favorite d-day super star for obvious reasons. it's not because he's a limey he's scottish. this is lord lovat. 34 years old. graduate just like me. a brutal poet. wrote beautiful accounts of world war ii. a ruthless man. he said to his men before d-day, he said we are the fine cutting-edge of the british

army. our best killers, guys do it nice and gentle. don't stab and jab, pull him on the eye. 2500, you're the fine cutting edge of the british army. if you make one single mistake, most important day in history. you'll never come into combat with me again. late june 1944, lovat buried 12 of his officers an apple orchard in normandy. he said on our brothers, after we have dropped the last civil of earth, thank you for the interruption, after we dropped the last civil of earth on to our brothers, we tiptoed out of

the field. lord lovett. here's my ugly mug and i'm sorry, i almost missed the best part of the show. those of you who adore world war ii, this is a wonderful image. that's lord lovett on the beach walking towards, walking across. the guy in front of him here, some of you may recognize this chat, it's bill miller. he's actually playing the pipes there. there's over 150,000 allied troops that landed on d-day. we believe that he's the only guy with a bagpipe. we believe he's the only guy wearing the kilt. he talked to lovett before hand. he said you're going to

be my piper. bill said the british army has regulation. they don't allow pipers. after the first world war, they blew up pipers and the sniper would kill you. we're not allowed to have pipers in combat, sir. lovat said, you're not in the british army. you're serving as scotsman. you're following my orders. bill millin said after the war, he waited for lovat to go first so he could test the depth of the water. why drown if you don't have. we don't know what tune he's playing there. who cares. any way, millin said it was cold, water was very cold that day. it was 57 degrees. when he finally walked in the water with his nice little scottish kilt, the kilt rose up rather like a tutu,

like this. i should apologize to anybody who's scottish or scottsman or relate to a scotsman here. i won't because i'm english. i don't care. there's been expensive studies done about the size of various nationalities testicles. we know that all scotsmen do not wear anything under these tutu or kilt. they don't wear anything underneath. it's fair to say when he entered the water, not only where they were very small, they were very small indeed. sometimes that gets a larger laugh than other places. we have to be careful here. we're not far from the end. frenchman, 177 french guys get the huge honor. the fantastic honor of invading yes

you sir. 177 under british command of course invade their own country on d-day. this is leon gotye here on d-day. reason why i love this photograph is because if you look up at the top here, you'll see an oil painting. oil painting of the part of the sword beach where he landed. the house where he's sitting is half a mile from where he landed. he's still alive. he's one of only three french guys, living gods in france. 30-year walked among the same beach he landed on with the britts on d-day. married an english woman, we have the most beautiful women in the world. his daughter is half french half english, not quite as beautiful as the mother. british troops,

first, this is where most of us were killed. nowhere near as many as you on omaha. this is an amazing representation of the adrenaline and drama and tension of what it's like in the first wave for the british. canadians, do we have any canadians here? anybody canadian? well, let's not forget that for the americans and the british and the french and the others, this was their they had to do this. every single guy in this photograph, every canadian on d-day was a volunteer they didn't have to be there. this is footage taken from the first for about two or three minutes of film. only film that we have. motion film what it was like to arrive in the first moment. you can find it on youtube, google, whatever. i have to say that

after omaha beach, the canadian suffered the second highest casualties on d-day. over 300. towards the end, over here, everyone knows his famous desires here. this is taking mid-morning june 6, 1944. guess what he's thinking. he's thinking this is a big disaster. we are in real trouble. early reports coming from omaha beach are very negative, very pessimistic. one message comes from one officer in the 116th infantry. it says we are being butchered like hogs. butchered like hogs. he's thinking, do i do the unimaginable. do i pull off the first division, do i pull off the 29th division from omaha beach. what happens if i pull over 30,000 americans off the

second american beach. should do i that. that's what he's thinking. thankfully, that those who like to go back to france to vote in a democracy, he didn't make that decision. further reports later that morning on june 6th, suggested that americans were starting to get off that beach. they were starting to take the ground that we needed. young americans very young, let's say six dozen, we can argue the toss. six dozen young leaders on omaha. leaders who had never been in combat before, who would kick and shove, punch inshout and scream and take their combat knives and stick them in the back of young americans who they thought were dead, get

them to stand up and run into the line of fire and get off that beach. six dozen, changed history, i believe. courage matters. it matters. here is a picture of omaha beach. it's a bad map. i'm using it to show you one thing. not one of the defenses, german defenses was taken by an assault. that's how costly it was. all of them were outflanked. not one taken from the front. here we have some statistics. not going to bore you. my eye sight is really bad. omaha beach, 4700 casualties. over 900 killed. it was a blood bath. as you know,

the water ran red and a slaughter house for company a on the sector. 116th infantry regimen, company a, original 6.5 miles of the beach, 200 men. only units to land in the right place at the right time. 6:32 a.m., 180 guys, 102 killed in maybe 20 or 25 minutes. that's not wounded. that's dead bleeding out on the sand, 102 killed. from virginia, guys joined company, hometown of that national guard unit in the 1930's. they joined the national guard because they were really poor. they were patriotic, they loved their country and they wanted to put food on the table. imagine this,

a town of 3000 joined the national guard in 1937, in 1944, still 34 of you guys from a town of 3000 in the first wave in company a. out of the 35, 19 killed, dead. look at the penetrations on d-day. the thing i like to stress here is my half baked theory, which is look at utah over here. look at omaha and look at the british. that's around 30 miles. what would have happened if he said pull them out. that's a massive gap. even the most rudimentary strategy tells that the german could have divided the forces and d-day would have had a very different outcome indeed. look at these statistics. the one i want to stress here,

casualties. 10,250 casualties. u.s., it didn't have the majority of troops, canadians and british did. you had the majority of casualties. already on june 6, 1944, the yanks are doing most of the dying and the bleeding. by december 1944, 75% of the killing and the dying and the bleeding is done by americans in the european theater. you arrived far too late from our point of view but boy, did we need you, did you do a fantastic job in finishing that dirty, dirty, dirty job. 6603 casualties. d-day did not end on the 6thof june 1944. for

many veterans, i can say many i'm old enough to say that, many veterans of d-day that i interviewed, they said that d-day was the easiest day. the cakewalk compared to what happened next to the fourth division in utah, for john spaulding, 1 a 68 days in combat after d-day. 158 days, getting up every morning and having to move forward towards berlin. this was taken two days after d-day. this is sergeant jack pune over here. and you may see my favorite weapon. two days after june 6th, the americans, the ones who can

stand, who have not collapsed from exhaustion, who have not been shot, killed, wounded or traumatized, so they cannot fight on. two days later, they are finally relieved by the fellow americans. you might be able to see the little arrow over here up there that's pointing at bill rudder, the commander of the second ranger battalion. it didn't end on d-day. it only ended in europe on the 7th of may 1945. for many of those allied troops, the fighting got a hell of lot harder. we talk about statistics. we talk about numbers too often, too much history reads like an extended wikipedia entry. i prefer to

look at faces. these are 19 faces of young americans. bedford boys, 19 brothers, literally four sets of brothers. identical twins. these are the men that landed on omaha beach at the right place at the right time and were killed about they gave the most precious thing any human being can give, his life. now, bear with me -- i'm about to end. i'm convinced of this, it is deep in my bones in my heart, i do not believe that these men died for your freedom. your freedom in america in 1944 was assured. there was no way a panzer tank would come rolling, rattling along the street out here. there was no way every jew in this country will be systematically industrially killed quicker than any other

human beings in history. no way that 19 million of your fellow civilians were going to lie dead at the end of world war ii as in the continent i come from. 19 million were dead. when these guys gave their lives and think about this when you walk through that grave yard among these white crosses, all of those dead young americans had they lived full lives at 600,000 human life years given. so that people like me, limeys, people like sylvain, french and germans, europeans can grow up in peace and freedom. i'm 53 years old. i know that to be true. 75 years since d-day, the longest period in european history we have not been killing each other. we have been united in democracy and peace and freedom. thanks in part to what

was given on d-day. it was a beautiful gift. incalculable altruism. incomparable. i'm very much indeed thankful. (applause) >> before we get to questions, please make your way to the podium. i would like to take an opportunity to introduce you a friend to the museum what is about 500 plus. jim pee wee martin is sitting right in front of me, jim was in the third battalion of the

506 on d-day. pee wee, i know i can call you pee wee like a badge of honor because you were the smallest guy. (applause) you're a thoughtful guy. we thank you for being here and we thank you for what you do. our first question here, would you like to say something? >> i'd like you to know, i'm nothing special. all the people in my unit did the same thing. i'm here only because i outlived

them, all of them, not only that, i can tell a lie (unclear) >> first question here is from bruce. >> i'd like you to talk about the first wave. one of the first persons killed was ensign james (unclear) from missouri). >>

i've often beenb corrected before for not mentioning the us navy. yes, it was the end of d-day was proclaimed that thank god for the u.s. navy certainly on omaha beach. yes, u.s. navy, the coast guard were very much involved on d-day. the situation you're talking about that literally was, i hate to use the term, suicide mission. that's what it was. being an engineer trying to fiddle around in the water trying to detonate (unclear). i think they had the highest casualty rate any unit on d-day. i didn't get that one wrong. that's not forget omaha beach, you got the bedford boys landed by a 21-year-old guy, jimmy green. he was the flotilla

commander that landed with company a on d-day. the stories of yanks pulling out their colt 45, pointing them at british coxwains to make them land in the right place at the right time. without the navy we wouldn't have succeeded that day on omaha. we were able to pinpoint german defensive positions very accurately indeed and destroyed them. but note, at 6:30 a.m. is when the first wave landed. great question. >> next question is from connie. >> in this

wonderful world of commanders. >> i feel omaha hey >> you are all being a very big can of worms, are way? i will try to be quick because time is moving on. beach with groups. sometimes people always filled with anger and frustration. why do so many guys have to die? we

did mess up so badly. a lot of very serious mistakes. we knew. we made omaha terrible mistakes. i we ignored most of the lessons and pacific. we had a bloodbath in 1943. we knew how not to and yet we made, an omaha these terrible mistakes. i think the answer to that is yes, certainly they will attack a very heavily german. you shouldn't have a wet 80-pound pack on your move, north low, move fast. that is a trick. the

rangers have been told the same thing. they were not climbing cliffs with massive packs on their back. it was all about movement and speed, that it would save him. a lot of mistakes made. i will say one thing, if you go to utah beach, next time you go. walk along those dooms and think about this. almost 30,000 americans came ashore on utah. 197 casualties. it is a miracle. it is a beautiful success story. and the reason is, being bombed living daylights out of every german along that beach, within -- as omaha, -- i'd like you to find me an example of a more lethal bombing in u.s. history than utah beach. some of those beautiful planes were almost touching. but boy, did they do a good job. i hope i have

answered the question. the famous german general said, you can plan as much as you like but when a plan hits reality, everything goes out the window. or worse, it has an effect. anyway, thank you. good question. >> to the back on your left. thank you for. for moving and the presentation. my question is somewhat similar. what is the single factor using those casualities of omaha? what the german positions were. or are they simply that this is -- you can expect lots of casualties when you do it. >> simple answer to that is

saying, an empty 42 machine gun. 1500 rounds, possibly a minute. when they landed, -- certainly the size of this room, you would have five or six angie 42 machine guns. they've been trying to -- could wake up in the morning. past the trigger and kill one of the americans. most of the killing was done by machine gun fire. the simple as sir is that we did not destroy a single defensive german obstacle on that beach. the pre-invasion bombing. that is not my statement, it is a statement from a u.s. intelligence navy officer who is writing the report about the day. not a single defensive obstacle on course destroyed. it is very hard for 5000 feet to drop a

bomb on a defensive area maybe maximum the size of this room. 5000 feet through the cloud cover when you have been told to delay dropping the bombs by a few final seconds. it is impossible. it is not going to happen. you are not going to do it. that is exactly what happened. for fear of friendly fire. for fear of dropping bombs on our troops. we delayed vital seconds of that dropping of that last and most important bomb above omaha. the blocks are higher. the utah since -- it is a perfect crescent and the exits, the five exits were extremely well defended. it was an arc of fire, which means you can be shot in the front and the back. with machine guns all around that arc. basically yes, that intelligence, the failure of many people including omar

bradley. if you like to blame any one individual, he was in charge of the orchestration. he protested that this was going to be difficult. omar bradley was the one guy to know on his door and say, hey, you messed up. >> you mentioned the naval engineers, can you speak little bit more about the role combat engineers once they got on utah obstacles opening up the path? >> combat engineers on utah not only had to destroy the obstacles to get through them. they had to carry on during the

war. we're about to not dodging the question, i think everybody kind of understands combat. they destroyed obstacles. they built bridges and they allowed the u.s. army and u.s. combat engineer to move quickly and a speed towards their objectives. think about this, we're about to celebrate and commemorate the 75th anniversary of the biggest battle ever fought by the u.s. almost 800,000 americans involved in that battle. the reason why you can argue that we actually prevailed in the first phase of that battle was because of the speed and the bravery of u.s. combat engineers. yes, combat engineers were absolutely vital. they were vital. we built bridges so quickly. it was almost unbelievable. every bridge on the same blown as

german treated. didn't matter. >> detailed question there. 64 65 defensive german installations on omaha were neutralized. should i say carefully by spalding and his units. yes they had to be fully constructed. had they been fully constructed, might not

have survived d-day. they knew how to they had russians, it was a mixed bag indeed. but they knew how to pull a trigger. they knew how to to fire the machine gun. >> it's one of the military education today. perhaps this is wishful thinking but was there any effort made in the planning of d-day to learn from what the marines and the navy's were doing in the pacific -- >> what had been happening in the pacific, especially which was the direct example of an amphibious landing. i think

that one thing we have to remember is that this is the national world war ii museum. the hotel over there where i have been staying is called the higgins hotel for a reason, which is that the only way we can win, i say we, i mean you americans, did a way we can do that to wage two wars, 3.5, 4000 miles away in the pacific and europe. there were about landing young americans and taking territory. moving towards tokyo. really, as eisenhower said, the most important outcome of world war ii was higgins. he built many of those boats here in new

liberty tackle. 29th of april 1945, he was in five amphibious operations in europe. 501 days of combat. third division 365 days of combat. and he said that it all came down to one thing, a statistic. 20%, that is a magic number. statistic. if you suffer 20% of casualties in amphibious operation, that's to be expected about. if you go higher than that, didn't do

very well. flood good. if you go lower than that, success. omaha beach, we didn't have 20% killed or wounded. it was relatively successful and in utah, it was miraculously miraculously successful. it some of them will manage to have the courage to get up. thank you very much. ..."