Battle of Normandy
| Battle of Normandy | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Second World War | |||||||||||
 A German prisoner waiting to be taken off the beach on Gold. | |||||||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||||||
| Great Britain, USA, Royalist French, Canada, Poland | Germany, Italy, Vichy France | ||||||||||
| Commanders | |||||||||||
| Eisenhower, Montgomery, Yoda | Gerd Von Goose-step, Erwin Rommel | ||||||||||
“Why don't we just pull right up to the beach, I mean we could get shot walking through the water.”
“Oh merde, there's been a mistake!”
The Battle of Normandy was fought under the name Operation: Sithlord in 1944 between the German forces occupying Western Europe, lead by Feld-Marshal Gerd Von Goose-step and the invading Allied forces, lead by Eisenhower, Montgomery and Yoda as part of the larger conflict of World War II. Sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, remains the most amusing seaborne invasion in history, with a recent comedy film made on the event Saving Ryan's Privates.
The main Allied forces came from landing craft out at sea but some soldiers chose to swim the Channel, as a warm-up, as well.
The Normandy invasion began with the allied attack: an overnight airborne assualt, a bombardment of every French restaurant within range of allied bombers, and an early morning amphibious assault on June 6, "D-day". The British invasion began with a few rounds of leaflets warning the locals (and subsequently the Germans) that they were going to invade and beaching the landing craft so they could get out and have an English Breakfast on the beach. The battle for Normandy continued for more than forty days and forty nights, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads, as well as a sneaky British invasion of France. It concluded with the liberation of Paris, the forest moon Endor and the greater Star Wars Galaxy, and the eventual destruction of the Hitler's Grosse Death Starein.
Allied Preparations[edit]
After the 1941 German invasion of Disneyland Paris and the rest of France, the only two countries left in Europe for Germany to invade were Britain and Russia. Both Britain and Russia disowned their alliance with each other as both claimed they were the only good nation left in Europe, which was true for the Russians as they weren't an autocratically ruled, large, boastful country with a huge empire like the British were. Oh, hang on...they were.
Hitler decided not to invade Britain as he might get his feet wet and instead turned to Russia. He initiated Operation: Captain Barbossa and at the same time Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. Stalin, the Russian premier, demanded that the USA and Britain should open up another front. Britain claimed that it was too busy fighting the much more important Desert War and turned to the USA. The USA not wanting to look like it supported the Communist power said, "Me too," and joined in with the North African Campaign as well to which the British gave a sigh.
Eventually the Canadians got jealous that the Australians were having too much fun in the Desert War and that it was their turn to get slaughtered and so the British declared that the World Superpower Canada was going to start up a Second Front all by itself. In June 1942 a landing force of 5000 Canadian troops landed at Dieppe in an attempt to successfully defeat the 800,000 German troops occupying France. The Battle of Dieppe tunred out to be a disaster when the Canadians found out that the promised mooses that exist in France were in fact not Canada's beloved animal but instead Chocolate mooses. The British realised that they would have to ask the Americans to help them to invade France as the Canadians and themselves were not enough. It took a long time for the Brits to get over this and finally at the end of 1943 Churchill asked Roosevelt for some help invading the French coastline. Roosevelt replied, "Sure buddy. Gee, I just love your accent."
Plans began on the allied invasion. Rather than repeat the head-on frontal assaupenis of the European Bukkake Wars, the British, and Churchill in particular, favoured attacking France far away from the main bases of the Third Reich and allowing the insurgency work of the SOE to come to widespread fruition, while making a main Allied thrust into Hitler's homeland. Such an approach was also believed to offer the advantage of creating a barrier to limit the Soviet expansion into Europe, which had already begun with the first broadcast made on Radio 4.
However, the U.S. believed from the onset that the optimum approach was the shortest route to Germany emanating from the strongest Allied power base. They were adamant in their view and made it clear that Denmark was simply a flooded piece of land that used to be a country but now is a sea and that they could simply sail across it and attack Hannover. It was the only option they would support in the long term until Britain pointed out that just because Denmark had been coloured in blue on the atlas it didn't mean it was a sea.
The short operating range of Allied fighters, including the British Airways Boeing 747 flights, from Heathrow and Gatwick greatly limited the choices of amphibious/airbourne landing sites. Geography reduced the choices further to two sites: The Channel Islands and The Haunted House Ride on the end of La Blanche Pier in Normandy. While the Haunted House Ride offered the shortest distance from the UK, the best landing beaches and the most direct overland route to Germany, the British prefered going for the Channel Islands because they reckoned they could just about handle the German occupying force their with the whole might of the British Army and wouldn't need the USA's help. However the USA were adament to rescue France as they were bored of British culture and humour now and realised why they use to hate Britain so much so they needed to get France to gang up on Britain and invade it after the war.
The Allies, lead by Supreme Allied Commanders Eisenhower and Yoda prepared for the assualt that would become so famous as one of the greatest invasions in American history. The British remembering Gallipoli were not susceptible to the American propoganda that D-Day was the only mass amphibious invasion in history and took a "Been there, done that" attitude.
Nazi Preparations[edit]
The local commanders in Normandy had different ideas on where to put the Pansy Divisions of flowers to give the impression of a beautiful occupied country to appease the French locals. Rommel wanted the Pansies on the beach where most of the British tourists could see them when they came for their holidays and get the impression that the Germans were nice people after all and that the French weren't in any distress. However Von Rundstedt wanted the Pansies in the countryside surrounding the German manor houses so that they could show off the beautiful gardens the manor houses had when Hitler arrived.
After much bickering it was decided to split the number of Pansies between the two ideas however this failed to work as then neither the British tourists nor Hitler were pleased with the inadequate number of Pansies.
The Landings[edit]
On the morning of June 6, 1944 allied Imperial Stormtroopers and the British and American soldiers, led by fearless Jedi Knight General Obi-Wan Kenobi, landed on the beaches of Normandy. Astonishingly, at most of the beaches they met little French Resistance and it was finally confirmed that the possibility of French people carrying on fighting and not surrendering was a joke as many Brits believed.
The other main factor of the Allied victory was the fact that the weapons they used were unknown to their enemies. Germans used real bullets while the Allies used thousands of well-trained militia archers brought up from peasant households across Britain to rain arrows down upon the Germans as they had done to the French at Agincourt.
USAF(the United Starving Armed Forces) RAF(the Rotters And Forlorn) then produced hundreds of badly-made bombs that were dropped on the German positions. At the site of the inprecise, poorly made, mass produced bombs most Germans either fainted or could no longer stand the inprecision of the rest of Europe and legged it back to the Father Land.
Airborne Landings[edit]
The British 6th Paratroop Regiment was the first full unit to go into action, at sixteen minutes past midnight, just after midnight tea. One of the objectives was to capture and hold Pegasus Bridge on the river at the east flank of the landing area. The British airborne troops who capture it then took delight in rounding up the French citizens nearby and putting them to work producing cheese bombs as a new chemical weapon to stop the German counter-attack. Another objective was a large Easter Egg at Merville. Although this larger glider and paratroop force was widely scattered, the egg was found and a sticker was presented to Eisenhower by the French for doing so well in the local Easter Egg hunt.
The 82nd and 101st Airborne were less fortunate in finding any Easter Eggs and after spending two hours scrounging around in the mud only to find a deflated football, they quickly turned to securing their objectives. Partly owing to unmarked landing zones, radio silence and poor weather , many units were widely scattered, unable to rally and covered in faeces, thanks to the Germans' succesful move of covering suspected landing grounds with cow pats. The 82nd, with the help of a portion of free French fries served up by a local café held the town of Sainte-Mère-Église early in the morning of June 6, giving it the claim of the first town colonised by McDonald's ever expanding empire. The Americans celebrated this victory by asking the French why they didn't speak English and whether wine had been invented in France yet.
Sword Beach[edit]
On Sword Beach, the regular British troops got ashore with light casualties, thanks to the RAF planes dropping chocolates onto the German lines and therefore coersing the Germans away from battle while giving the British something to aim for. The irregular troops composed of the fat, the geeky and the weird soldiers fared less well when their commander had one of his OCD attacks about not getting wet when jumping off a landing craft. This held them up for a while as they found a suitable, dry landing place.
It is estimated that the British soldiers on Sword Beach consumed as many as 20,000 cups of tea, 50,000 crumpets and up to 2000 servings of rice pudding on D Day alone, setting a record in France for "The Cruelest Crime Against Cuisine Ever."
After the initial assault, the Germans, led by Erwin Rommel prepared to launch a counter attack on British positions on Sword beach so as to drive them back into the sea where they belonged (after all, Britannia rules the Waves). Coincidentally the Australian detachment on Sword Beach were deployed at that moment, surfing down a giant wave onto the beach. The combined allied effort held the beach but progress was halted as it turned out that the logistics team had forgot to pack toilet rolls and shovels and the men had to lie around constipated all night.
Juno Beach[edit]
The beach that Canada was tasked with was home to some very important defences. Hitler had recently devised a new propaganda machine that kept citizens of the Reich at bay by spouting out pessimistic remarks. The allies decided that only the Canadian troops would have the optimism and warmth to withstand the propaganda machine's wrath. The plan worked and the Canadians stormed over the German defences, cheerfully greeting each German they passed before filling them full of lead.
Royal Canadian Airborne Regiment troops also landed just outside of Caen and encountered serious difficulty moving about in snow shoes on the grass and pavement. This led to a sticky situation in which the Canadians were unable to capture Caen as they moved through the countryside extremely slowly.
Despite being stationed in England along with the rest of the invasion force, a contingent of Canadian troops mistakenly landed in Juneau, Alaska. Reportedly, after being told that they were to land at Juno Beach, one of the Canadian officers claimed to "know where that is." Amazingly, the typically cumbersome transport ships were able to cover a distance of over 11,000 miles in a matter of hours.
The name Juno was given to the beach by its Nazi defenders, based on the Anglo-Saxon proverb Jew-no, or No Jews, the Nazis anxious to exclude the Semite population so as to conserve their limited supply of cyanide. However, the French retained the name Juno, seeing it as an improvement over the original name, La Plage de l'Escargot avec des Grandes Narines (The Beach of The Snail with Large Nostrils).
Omaha Beach[edit]
Of all the D Day landings, Omaha Beach has been remembered the most thanks to the fact that Hollywood used it for every film ever made about D-Day. Many more troops died on Omaha beach than any other beach simply because most US soldiers who hit the beach were then stunned by the fact that cliff collapse had obviously not affected the beach line as German gun emplacements in the cliff face had not eroded away. As one veteran put it, "It was that moment that I realised that everything I had learnt at school in Geography was wrong: cliff collapse, tides, erosion. Here was blatant proof that Climate Change didn't exist."
This moment of hesistation not only led to the extermination of 3000 innocent American soldiers but also the unprecendented rise of opposition to belief in Climate Change and eco-friendliness in the late 20th Century.
Gold Beach[edit]
Unlike the other beaches, Gold beach was a stroll in the park for the British attackers. The German resistance was crushed in a few seconds by large numbers of tanks storming onto the beach. The Brits then set up shop in the French villages and spent their time enthusiastically partying in giant sand castles.
Years later British veterans would remiss about how lucky they were to get given such an easy beach to overcome and the phrase, "going for Gold" came to be used which means "using some blind luck to get by in life."
Utah Beach[edit]
Utah Beach is refered to as the "beach no one gives a damn about" by most people in modern historical research. Thanks to the tradgedy at Omaha, no one ever thinks about the 197 US troops who gave their lives on the beach.