Beaches of D-Day: Images of June 1944 versus June 2016

By Dean McCleland in Military History, Other Galleries 2 Comments

Seventy two years after the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy in France, are the places in these iconic images still recognisable today? Surprisingly most locations can still be identified 72 after that momentous and pivotal day.

Four years ago, Nigel and I traipsed across some of these beaches and cliffs. Standing at the German gun emplacements on Omaha Beach, one wonders how anybody could have survived the landing on this exposed beach.

Main picture: The sounds of Nazi jackboots have been replaced with the slap of sandals on the tar

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This Day in History: 6th June 1944 – D-Day

By Dean McCleland in History, Military History 0 Comment

The largest beach landing in history

The 6th June 2014 represented the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Nazi occupied Europe and has widely become recognised by the generic military term known as D-Day or the first day of the attack. Hence D+1 would be the second day et cetera. Due to this conflation, the term D-Day in common parlance is synonymous with the landing on the Normandy Beaches.

As a tribute to the men who fought and died there, on every tenth anniversary of the battle, paratroop veterans would parachute into Normandy. On the 60th anniversary, ten years ago, this practice was abandoned due to the superannuation of the veterans being a minimum of 80 years of age. On this anniversary, ten years later, one brave solitary soul, a Scotsman, Jack Hutton, elected to show that he was made of sterner stuff and represented all those still alive but now too fragile to do so.

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