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D-Day was JUNE 6, 1944. 156,000 troops landed on the Normandy coast of France in the largest invasion force in history.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower issued the order:
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade...The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you...
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely...Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
President Franklin Roosevelt stated JUNE 6, 1944:"My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation... I ask you to join with me in prayer: Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization...
They will need Thy blessings... Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom." FDR concluded:
"Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith to Thee."
Bill Millin, a Scottish bagpiper who played highland tunes as his fellow commandos landed on a Normandy beach on D-Day. Died on Wednesday in a hospital in the western England county of Devon. He was 88. Lived to see his bravado immortalized in the 1962 film "The Longest Day". The actor playing Millin was Pipe Major Leslie de Laspee, the official piper to Her Majesty The Queen Mother in 1961.
The cause was complications from a stroke, his family said. Mr. Millin was a 21-year-old private in Britain’s First Special Service Brigade when his unit landed on the strip of coast the Allies code-named Sword Beach, near the French city of Caen at the eastern end of the invasion front chosen by the Allies for the landings on June 6, 1944.
By one estimate, about 4,400 Allied troops died in the first 24 hours of the landings, about two-thirds of them Americans.
The young piper was approached shortly before the landings by the brigade’s commanding officer, Brig. Simon Fraser, who as the 15th Lord Lovat was the hereditary chief of the Clan Fraser and one of Scotland’s most celebrated aristocrats. Against orders from World War I that forbade playing bagpipes on the battlefield because of the high risk of attracting enemy fire, Lord Lovat, then 32, asked Private Millin to play on the beachhead to raise morale.
When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”
Bill Millin playing the bagpipes in an photograph from World War II taken shortly after D-Day.
After wading ashore in waist-high water that he said caused his kilt to float, Private Millin reached the beach, then marched up and down, unarmed, playing the tunes Lord Lovat had requested, including “Highland Laddie” and “Road to the Isles.”
With German troops raking the beach with artillery and machine-gun fire, the young piper played on as his fellow soldiers advanced through smoke and flame on the German positions, or fell on the beach. The scene provided an emotional high point in “The Longest Day.” In later years Mr. Millin told the BBC he did not regard what he had done as heroic. When Lord Lovat insisted that he play, he said, “I just said ‘O.K.,’ and got on with it.” He added: “I didn’t notice I was being shot at. When you’re young, you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing when you’re older.” He said he found out later, after meeting Germans who had manned guns above the beach, that they didn’t shoot him “because they thought I was crazy.”
Other British commandos cheered and waved, Mr. Millin recalled, though he said he felt bad as he marched among ranks of wounded soldiers needing medical help. But those who survived the landings offered no reproach.
“I shall never forget hearing the skirl of Bill Millin’s pipes,” one of the commandos, Tom Duncan, said years later. “As well as the pride we felt, it reminded us of home, and why we were fighting there for our lives and those of our loved ones.”
From the beach, Private Millin moved inland with the commandos to relieve British paratroopers who had seized a bridge near the village of Ouistreham that was vital to German attempts to move reinforcements toward the beaches. As the commandos crossed the bridge under German fire, Lord Lovat again asked Private Millin to play his pipes.
In 2008, French bagpipers started a fund to erect a statue of Mr. Millin near the landing site, but the fund remains far short of its $125,000 goal.
Bill Millin was born in Glasgow on July 14, 1922, the son of a policeman, and lived with his family in Canada as a child before returning to Scotland.
Lord Lovat and Bill became lifelong friends and he piped at Lovat’s funeral a decade or so ago. Now known as ‘Piper Bill’, he is one of the very few pipers to play during a World War II battle and is an absolute hero in Normandy. There is to be a statue of him unveiled on the 6th June 2010 close to the spot where he played, in Colleville Montgomery.
After the war, he worked on Lord Lovat’s estate near Inverness, but found the life too quiet and took a job as a piper with a traveling theater company. In the late 1950s, he trained in Glasgow as a psychiatric nurse and eventually settled in Devon, retiring in 1988. He visited the United States several times, lecturing on his D-Day experiences. In 1954 he married Margaret Mary Dowdel. A widower, he is survived by their son, John.
D-Day was JUNE 6, 1944. 156,000 troops landed on the Normandy coast of France in the largest invasion force in history.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower issued the order:
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade... The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you...
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely...Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
President Franklin Roosevelt stated JUNE 6, 1944: "My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation... I ask you to join with me in prayer: Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization...
They will need Thy blessings... Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom." FDR concluded:
"Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith to Thee."
The turning point in the Pacific War began JUNE 4, 1942.
American intelligence intercepted Japan's plans to capture Midway Island and from there, Hawaii. The outnumbered U.S. Pacific Fleet ambushed the Japanese armada, but was losing badly. It was not until American dive bombers, navigating by guess and by God, sighted the Japanese aircraft carriers far below through a break in the clouds at the precise moment the Japanese planes had left to attack the U.S.S. Yorktown. In just five minutes, the screeching American dive bombers sank three Japanese carriers, and a fourth shortly after.
After this providential event, Japan was forced to go on the defensive.
On the Pacific War, President Roosevelt said, August 12, 1943:
"Three weeks after the armies of the Japanese launched their attack on Philippine soil, I sent a proclamation...to the people of the Philippines... that their freedom will be redeemed...
The great day of your liberation will come, as surely as there is a God in Heaven."
Roosevelt stated October 20, 1944:
"On this occasion of the return of General MacArthur to Philippine soil...we renew our pledge.
We and our Philippine brothers in arms - with the help of Almighty God - will drive out the invader."
We Shall Fight On The Beaches is a common title given to a speech delivered by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the British Parliament on the 4 June 1940.
This was the second of three major speeches given during (roughly) the period of the Battle of France, with the others designated as the "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech of 13 May, and the "This was their finest hour" speech of 18 June.
Events developed dramatically over the 5-week period, and although broadly similar in themes, each speech addresses a different military and diplomatic context, in which it should be approached. In this speech, Churchill had to
* describe a great military disaster, and warn of a possible German invasion attempt, without casting doubt on eventual victory
* prepare his domestic audience for France going out of the war without in any way releasing France to do so
* reiterate a policy and an aim unchanged - despite the intervening events - from his May 13th speech, in which he had said
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy?
I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.
That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be...
Jimmy Carter, in his book Sources of Strength, 1997, wrote:
"Rev. Niebuhr urged Dietrich Bonhoeffer to remain in America for his own safety. Bonhoeffer refused. He felt he had to be among the other Christians persecuted in Germany.
So he returned home, and...in resistance to Hitler...preached publicly against Nazism, racism, and anti-Semitism...
Bonhoeffer was finally arrested and imprisoned, and FEBRUARY 4, 1945, just a few days before the allied armies liberated Germany, he was executed on orders of Heinrich Himmler.
He died a disciple and a martyr."
Jimmy Carter concluded:
"The same Holy Spirit...that gave Bonhoeffer the strength to stand up against Nazi tyranny is available to us today."
On February 16, 2002, Dr. James Dobson told the National Religious Broadcasters:
"Those of you who feel that the church has no responsibility in the cultural area...
What if it were 1943 and you were in Nazi Germany and you knew what Hitler was doing to the Jews...
Would you say, 'We're not political-that's somebody else's problem'?"
Dobson concluded:
"I thank God Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not give that answer, and he was arrested by the Nazis and hanged in 1945, naked and alone because he said, 'This is not right.'"
Battle of the Bulge- Nazi's amassed three armies for an enormous attack against the Allies in the Ardennes Forest and soon surrounded the 101 Airborne Division in southern Belgium, demanding their surrender. U.S. General Anthony McAuliffe answered in one word:
"Nuts"
This response confused the Nazi commander, causing him to hesitate.
Three days later, after General Patton directed the entire Third Army to pray, weather cleared and Allies counterattacked.
In his order, DECEMBER 22, 1944, General Eisenhower stated:
"By rushing out from his fixed defenses the enemy may give us the chance to turn his great gamble into his worst defeat. So I call upon every man, of all the Allies, to rise now to new heights of courage...with unshakable faith in the cause for which we fight, we will, with God's help, go forward to our greatest victory."
Two days later President Franklin Roosevelt stated:
"It is not easy to say 'Merry Christmas' to you, my fellow Americans, in this time of destructive war...We will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way...because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives...the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace."
"DECEMBER 7, 1941- a date which will live in infamy- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
Thus spoke President Franklin D. Roosevelt following the attack on Pearl Harbor by over 350 Japanese aircraft.
Five American battleships and three destroyers were sunk, 400 planes were destroyed and over 4000 were killed or wounded. President Roosevelt concluded:
"No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory...
We will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."
FDR continued:
"Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces- with the unbounding determination of our people- we will gain the inevitable triumph- so help us God."
(As a note, FDR's phrase "So help us God" is not on the new World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Of the over 500 words inscribed, the designers chose not to include any mention of God.)
Audie Leon Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of WWII.
He was awarded the:
Medal of Honor Distinguished Service Cross Silver Star with First Oak Leaf Cluster Legion of Merit Bronze Star Medal with "V" Device and First Oak Leaf Cluster Purple Heart with Second Oak Leaf Cluster U.S. Army Outstanding Civilian Service Medal Good Conduct Medal Presidential Unit Citation with First Oak Leaf Cluster American Campaign Medal European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with One Silver Star, Four Bronze Service Stars (representing nine campaigns) and one Bronze Arrowhead (representing assault landing at Sicily and Southern France) World War II Victory Medal Army of Occupation Medal with Germany Clasp Armed Forces Reserve Medal Combat Infantry Badge Marksman Badge with Rifle Bar Expert Badge with Bayonet Bar French Fourragere in Colors of the Croix de Guerre French Legion of Honor, Grade of Chevalier French Croix de Guerre With Silver Star French Croix de Guerre with Palm Medal of Liberated France Belgian Croix de Guerre 1940 Palm
Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy, 01692509, 15th Infantry, Army of the United States, on 26 January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy's indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy's objective.
Music: The Ballad of Audie Murphy, by Wiley J. Smith. Pics: To Hell and Back, starring the same Murphy as himself, Universal, 1955. Visit: http://www.audiemurphy.com/
Lyrics
His name was Audie Murphy just a Texas farmer lad. His country found itself in war; he tried to lend a hand, He volunteered to fight and die for freedom with a smile; He was too young to carry a gun and had to wait a while. He reached 18 and tried again, this time they let him in; The soldiers called him Baby Face and he took it with a grin; But he told the men of the Fighting 3rd Dont judge me by my size, I may be small, but I bet you all, Ill spit in the Germans eyes He learned the deadly game of war and they shipped him off to France. And soon he heard the rumble of the deadly German tanks, Some men started praying but he stood there in his tracks, He sure looked tall and they heard him call Well fight to hell and back Though he was badly wounded Audie never left his gun, He killed 240 men and made the Germans run; And when the fight was over, the men all gathered round, To shake the hand of the Texas man that backed the Germans down. He fought 100 battles, and he never turned to run, The President sent for him when he heard what he had done; Gave him the highest honor our country has to give, He said You didnt fight in vain as long as freedom lives. His plane went down, the searchers found him on a mountain side, And our country mourned its loss; our hero son had died Though he will live forever as long as men are free This little man that took a stand to fight for liberty
"V" for Victory! It was on JULY 19, 1941, that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill held up two fingers as a sign of victory.
It became a symbol for all Western European resistance during WWII, with V signs painted on walls and over Nazi posters. A year earlier, Churchill stated before the House of Commons, June 18, 1940:
"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization...
The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war."
Churchill continued:
"If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.
But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science."
Winston Churchill concluded:
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"
D-Day was JUNE 6, 1944. 156,000 troops landed on the Normandy coast of France in the largest invasion force in history.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower issued the order:
"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade...The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you...
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely...
Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
President Franklin Roosevelt stated JUNE 6, 1944:
"My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation...
I ask you to join with me in prayer: Almighty God, Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization...They will need Thy blessings...
Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom."
FDR concluded:
"Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith to Thee."
D-Day was JUNE 6, 1944. 156,000 troops landed on the Normandy coast 
of France in the largest invasion force in history.
The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you...
Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
