On 6 June 1944, D-Day, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France. After airborne landings in the night, American troops came ashore at Utah and Omaha, then British and Canadian divisions at Gold, Juno and Sword. More than 150,000 men landed that day and, despite heavy losses at Omaha, the Allies won a foothold in Normandy.
D-Day, 1944: the longest day on the Normandy beaches
6 June 1944 · 82 years ago
By 1944 Nazi Germany held the coast of France behind the Atlantic Wall, a belt of bunkers, guns and obstacles. To get back into Western Europe the Allies had to land an army on a defended shore and hold it there, the hardest operation in war.
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1918: on 6 June the US 2nd Division, with its brigade of Marines, struck back at the Germans near Château-Thierry. That day the Marines took the village of Bouresches, and an assault launched at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, into heavy machine-gun fire, won a foothold in Belleau Wood. The wood was not cleared until late June: on 26 June according to McClellan's Marine Corps history, on 25 June according to the 1938 American Battle Monuments Commission guide.1
