D-Day Through German Eyes by Holger Eckhertz

D-Day Through German Eyes by Holger Eckhertz

War is brutal, unforgiving destruction, formed by grand strategies, over which the men and women who fight the war have little control, and their efforts are mostly forgotten.  The personal experiences of those who fight and die is seldom in the history books, and not at all in the high school classroom.

Yes, Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo.  MacArthur and Nimitz followed different strategies in the Pacific.  Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander in Europe.  Patton was a great commander,who slapped a soldier.

But, what of the man in the trench, with dust in his eyes, while the man beside him has skin burned away and dies in the horrifying hell of being burned alive by white phosphorous?  How about irrational hate for an enemy whose bullets ripped your friend apart and left a bloody mess of what used to be a man?

We see old newsreels of the storming of the beaches at Normandy. We’re shocked at bodies floating in the waves and slumped in the sand.  But, it’s long ago and not personal.  You never knew your dad’s brother or your aunt’s husband.  They died in the war. The fullness of their lives limited to a bland statement.

I don’t blame the teachers or the writers of history books, who have compressed time and pages to make a good summation.  Even movies like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or books like ‘Band of Brothers’, must of necessity leave out details in favor of painting with a broad brush and keeping the plot moving.

Sometimes an author gets it right, but often the work is fiction, like Norman Mailer’s ‘The Naked and the Dead’.  Another is ‘The Red Badge of Courage’ by Steven Crane, and a third is ‘Killer Angels’ by Michael Shaara.  And while novels pick up the flavor of men in battle, they are the voices of those men portrayed by fictional characters and created by the authors.  I’m not belittling these books and have enjoyed all three immensely.  But, Holger Eckhertz’s book is the real thing, unvarnished, with the smell of cordite and blood and the feel of truth.

To me, real history is personal and for the common soldier, sailor, Marine, or aviator, war is as personal as it gets.  But even more rare than personal history is personal history seen from the other side.  In D-Day: Through German Eyes, Holger Eckhertz shares interviews with German solders, both officers and other ranks, of what they saw and felt, their fears and tragedies.   He puts a human face on an implacable enemy, not to vilify, but to trace commonalities of fighting men, no matter the style and color of their uniforms.

“We crouched down there (in the chamber under the German bunker) and looked up at the roof over us, as the English up there began to set off explosions and smash our equipment…It was extremely hot and smoky in the chamber, and sweat ran down my face as I crouched there, wrapping a bandage around my wounded arm and looking (up) at the trap door….

…the thought of those incendiary grenades coming down into our confined space was horrifying.  Some of my men began praying, while others kept up a stream of muttered obscenities directed at the enemy, vowing a dreadful revenge for this humiliation.”

“…why would they (the English) want to burn us alive when we were protecting Europe?  What was the origin of this hatred?  I had no answer to such questions.”

Eckhertz takes us into the mind of the enemy, near the beaches, in the bunkers further back, into hand-to-hand combat and best of all into the mind of the German soldier, his thoughts, his fears, his sudden realization that this is it.  Not just a feint, not just a commando raid.  He looks though the heavy cement bunker’s machine gun slits and sees the sea alive with more ships and landing craft than he could ever imagine.  Unimaginable power.

This book is alive with emotion, dread, realizations, and all the personal horrors of war.  If you want a glimpse of D-Day as you’ve never seen it, D-Day: Through German Eyes is a book you can’t and won’t stop reading. This is the story of the German soldier, not another caricature of the hated Nazi, but a personal glimpse of men at war.

The National Naval Aviation Museum

Yes, sir, this is one hell of a wondrous place tucked away on Naval Air Station Pensacola. If you breeze through this part of the Gulf Coast, don’t you dare let the pestering wife and screaming kids make you miss one of the great military museums in the world. Before you come in, have a short talk with the fam and mention a whole section dedicated to the important role women have always played in aviation.  For the kids, promise them sights, hands-on exhibits and rides that take them into the wild blue with the Blue Angels.

Do you find yourself saying: “Yeah, sure, another stack of dusty old stuff sitting around for me to stare at.  All the same to you if we just go have a beer?”

No, you dull minded nitwit, it’s not all the same to me.  There are more tentacles of history running through this museum than you’ve ever imagined.  Important history and not just history, but heroic, breathtaking stories that you’ve never heard. History streaked with the blood and gritty determination of men and women who took us from wood and cloth covered airplanes, dangerous and freakishly chancy, to air travel that’s as necessary to the 21^st Century as trains were to the 19^th.

“Wait a sec,” you’re saying, “I thought you said this was Naval Aviation!”  See, you just lack the knowledge, and it’s another reason you need to visit a few museums.  When the dream of manned flight escaped from Orville and Wilbur’s bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio and took it’s first gasping breath on the sandy hills four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a new world was born.  Maybe it was a new wing (pun intended) of the library.  One giant lift-off for mankind. Pick your own metaphor.

Orville Wright

Wilbur Wright

The reality is it’s only since the middle of the 20^th Century that aviation really untangled itself and spawned Army Aviation, Naval Aviation, Air Force Aviation, Commercial Aviation, and General Aviation.  In the beginning, there was only aviation, period.  Yes, yes, I know a stickler will claim the aviation branches came along much earlier.  Ok, you’re right, but Jimmy Doolittle’s 1942 attack on the Japanese mainland was Army B-25 bombers lifting off from a Navy carrier. And who provided the Intelligence?  A naval officer.

B-25 Mitchell 

 No, I’m not going to lead you through all the trials and successes, failures and growth.  And yes, of course the National Naval Aviation Museum focuses on the Naval part, but this museum has so much more to offer, and is superbly organized into World War I, between the wars, World War II, and modern aircraft.  Along the way, you’ll meet the Curtiss Jenny, an aircraft that trained so many pilots following the First World War, including Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and military pilots from all services.  The Jenny in the museum is a cutaway and affords you a firsthand look at the delicate design that just barely kept pilots away from violent death. 

Amelia Earhart

You’ll see flimsy craft like the British WWI airplane the Sopwith Camel. Know how long the average British fighter pilot lasted on the Western Front in World War I?  Three weeks.  How much flying time did the lads get before going to France?  8-12 hours.

Even in World War II, we lost over 14,000 aircraft in training accidents.  Aviation has always required courageous people.

See the bullet hole patches?

How about the Douglas Dauntless, the primary Naval dive bomber of World War II?  You’ll learn all about it and especially the unlikely story of the Dauntless on display. Retired Naval pilots weave through the museum to explain and entertain and thrill and make even the seasoned aviator stay glued to the tales of desperate heroism and miraculous survival.

It’s not just U.S. Naval aircraft on display, also a slew of aircraft flown by the opposition:  the German Fokker D-VII from WWI, Japanese Zero and German Me-262, and Soviet MIGs.

Fokker D VII

Me 262, one of the first jet fighters

Korean War MIG 15

I could write forever, but instead check out a few photos to whet your appetite.   This museum won’t just entertain, but quickly turn you into a budding aviation historian.  Your kids will suddenly want to be aviators and you’ll hear your wife whisper, “Honey, is it ok if we spend the night and come back again tomorrow?”

“Yes, dear, if you insist.”  I applaud your unselfish spirit and budding interest in aviation.  High five!  I take back the part about you being a dull minded nitwit. Now let’s go grab that beer.

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/

P-40 Warhawk in the colors of the American Volunteer Group in China

Ball turret from a PBY4, the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator