A Message from Normandy By James Kitfield

There is a name on a cross in a sea of crosses on a hillside in Normandy. Each of those names was once on the lips of loved ones as they called out to ardent young men who had their whole lives in front of them. Their names echoed on the nearby cliffs and beaches below, shouted by their brothers in arms in a hellscape of terror as they stood together against a gale-force of tyranny that had very nearly swept the world.

“Lieutenant Montieth!”

The scene at the Omaha Beach landing that greeted 1st Lieutenant Jimmie Monteith Jr. and the 1st Infantry Division’s first wave assault was one of utter chaos and horror. Everything in the sequencing of the attack that could go wrong had gone worse. Unanticipated cloud cover blinded high-altitude allied bombers targeting the German defenses near the beach. Adolf Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” of fortresses and bunkers stretching from Norway to the northern coast of Spain remained intact and deadly.

SNIP
D-Day was a rare inflection point in history, an audacious and in many ways desperate gambit: an amphibious assault across storm foamed seas against an entrenched and battle-hardened foe, the brutal conquerors of the European continent. There would be no coming back from failure. If the allies were repulsed on June 6, 1944, the receding tide would carry the last best hope for democracy and self-rule back out to sea along with the blood of thousands that foamed the waters red that day.

The German high command knew it too: “The first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive,” Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, commander of the German defense, presciently declared before the attack. “The fate of Germany depends on the outcome. For the Allies as well as for Germany, it will be the longest day.”
https://www.thepresidency.org/the-dispatch/june-6-2025#page

James Kitfield is the author of “In the Company of Heroes: Inspiring Stories from Medal of Honor Recipients in America’s Longest Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” and a three-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.

In memoriam