6/06/2010

June 6, 1944

Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

....................SIGNED: Dwight D. Eisenhower

MLB.com story from June, 2004.
Sixty years ago today, on June 6, 1944, with thousands of Allied troops storming the beaches of Normandy and the future of the free world hanging in the balance, America held its collective breath. As the battle raged throughout the day, news trickled back to the homefront. When it became clear that this was the beginning of the end of World War II, all of the day's baseball games were canceled.

That had happened only once before, on the day U.S. president Warren Harding died in 1923, and the only time it happened afterward was when Commissioner Bud Selig stopped play for six days from Sept. 11-16, 2001, because of the terrorist attacks.

Thirty-five Hall of Fame members and more than 500 Major League players served in World War II, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Many of them served as fitness trainers, morale officers or in other non-combat roles. But among the sailors and soldiers participating in the D-Day invasion were future Hall of Fame baseball players Yogi Berra and Leon Day.
...
n the 1998 book, "A Mile in Their Shoes: Conversations With Veterans of World War II," author Aaron Miles included a conversation with a veteran named Lou Putnocky that offered an interesting view of serving on D-Day along with Berra.

"He was a coxswain on one of the rocket boats," Putnocky said in the book. "He was attached to the admiral's staff. Let's figure they brought maybe a hundred men to supplement our crew of 500, and Yogi Berra was attached to Admiral Moon's staff. He latched onto our particular group because that's where the action was, and he said to us that the admiral was such a nice man. He said that when he was in England, with thousands of sailors, he was able to recognize men and he would stop his jeep with the two stars and he would pick up seamen that were part of his ship. He didn't know them by name but he knew them by looks, and he would pick them up in the staff car, which was very, very unusual. But this was the kind of man he was, very well-liked.

"Yogi was very personable. Of course it always would come up in conversation when you had new people, 'What are you gonna do after the war? What did you do before the war?'

"And he said, 'Oh, I played ball, at Norfolk, in the minors.'

"And we looked at him, with his bandy legs. What the hell kind of ballplayer is this; are you pulling our leg? Were you a batboy or something? And we never paid much attention. He didn't elaborate on it too much. It would come up every now and then, and we would kid him about it.

Go read it all.

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