"New" D-Day footage re-emerges

[Tiki Tom]

Fascinating film footage of the actual D-Day landing. What strikes me is that, over all these years, my mental image was that the disembarking was much faster; i.e.- done at a sprint. I guess considering the amount of weight each soldier was carrying, I shouldn't be surprised that the pace was a bit slower. Also the fact that they are wading in surf must be considered. Finally, there is no way of knowing exactly what beaches this was shot at and when exactly. Although in at least one segment you can see soldiers getting hit as they emerge from the surf. Pretty scary stuff.

Quote: "The extraordinary clip, branded the first D-Day documentary, was filmed by the Public Relations Division of Supreme Headquarter Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), which was headed by General Eisenhower.... The footage was archived at the Eisenhower Library in the US and recently restored by researchers."​

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4853550/The-remarkable-footage-D-Day.html

 

[Fading Fast]

Having seen a lot of D-Day footage over many years, I can't say anything here stuck me as surprising in the sense of I never saw anything like that before.

That said, no matter how many times you see it, in the panoramic shots where you see several almost-silhouetted men walking forward on the beach and then one "falls" as, presumably, he is shot, the impact is still stunning and gut wrenching.

 

[BlueTrain]

My father, who took part in landings in Italy (where he was captured after a couple of months), described men on either side of him falling while he got through the whole thing without a scratch. He thought he was pretty lucky.

In another war, one of my wife's distant relatives described being in Pickett's Charge in the battle of Gettysburg. He was also lucky and wasn't wounded. He was lucky, too. In his papers, which my wife has copies of somewhere, he said he "left the field in disgust." I don't remember his name or unit. In nearly 40 years of marriage, I still don't have all her relatives and antecedents straight.

 

[robrinay]

My Father-in-law a Royal Marine Sergeant was part of the D day landings. His landing craft was hit by a shell and the marines were forced to disembark in deep water. Their full packs and weapons caused many of them to sink and drown. He survived by releasing his pack and dropping his weapon. He spent the rest of the day on stretcher duty and was taken off the beach to be trained in infantry attack supported by tanks. A few weeks later his unit accompanied Canadian Tank units in the invasion of Holland which involved much dangerous street fighting. He seldom spoke of his experiences but occasionally after a few drinks he would open up and relate them. Many years later his nightmares were of the time he was blown through the air by a shell burst and the sight of German soldiers running from a pill box engulfed in flames following a flame thrower attack. He never watched war films.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't recall that my father avoided watching war movies. He generally never mentioned much about fighting, though, but he would talk about his experiences as a P.O.W. and never really had anything bad to say about it. He was prisoner for about a year and held captive in Mossburg, north of Munich, which was the largest POW camp in Germany during the war. During my time in the army in the 1960s, I was stationed in Augsburg, not all that far away.

My father-in-law had been in the Army Air Corps during the war and flew in bomber missions over Germany. My wife says he was fascinated by such films as were shown on TV as documentaries about the air war there. Also, my son-in-law's grandmother, a Londoner and still living, served in the R.A.F. during the war and remembered the blitz.

 

[p51]

"New", my left foot! I've seen most of that reel countless times in documentaries!

 

[MisterCairo]

"New", my left foot! I've seen most of that reel countless times in documentaries!

You seem to be quite

"New", my left foot! I've seen most of that reel countless times in documentaries!

It's new to someone.

 

[SHOWSOMECLASS]

My great uncles served in the infantry in WWII. They came back stateside affected and altered. They said nothing about combat or would not talk about their experiences or what they had seen. But those people became alcoholics for life.
Yes they never talked, but since their death: we have found their pictures of the Nazi concentration victims they had to move and bury.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A special two-reel edition of the Universal Newsreel on the preparations for D-day, which hit the screen the week of the invasion.

 

[ChiTownScion]

My dad hit Utah Beach on D+ 3, and lived through the Bulge. While I was growing up he loved to watch documentaries about the war and some of the better movies on the subject (The Longest Day, Patton, The Great Escape) with me, and was never shy about noting when Hollywood got it right or wrong. As he hit his 70's, however, he couldn't handle anything dealing with death or dying. I wanted his take on Saving Private Ryan, but he wouldn't even consider going to see it. At the time we had a German exchange student living with us- a really bright and motivated young man who was heavily steeped in military history (he ended up as a Bundeswehr/ Heer officer) . He and my Dad got along famously, and I thought that it would make for an interesting discussion at dinner after the film. But as I said, Dad wasn't interested. I think that he was facing his own mortality, and it tempered his outlook on any film dealing with death and dying, even Titanic.