Tag Archives: Normandy landing

Snoopy And D-Day

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A number of years ago, my husband and I had the pleasure of touring the Charles M. Schultz museum in Santa Rosa, California. We had lunch at the Warm Puppy Cafe and watched the ice skaters through the glass. One of my cousin’s children shared childhood memories of “Charlie” who hung around the ice skating rink to see how the children were doing. “Charlie” of course was Charles M. Schultz who built the rink and supported the children’s skating programs. While we were there, we heard the story of why the Peanuts cartoon recognizes the soldiers who landed on the beaches on D-Day.

Charles M. Schultz was drafted during World War II. He trained with one of the units that eventually stormed the beaches of Normandy. Because of an illness in his family, he was sent home before he completed his training, and when he returned, trained with a different unit. The first unit he trained with had heavy casualties when the hit the beach at Normandy. That is the reason Peanuts salutes D-Day every year.

In 2019, The Washington Post reported:

Snoopy, who first appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip in 1950, has been everywhere at this point: summer camp, college, the desert to visit his hapless brother Spike. He has been to the airfields of World War I in his unceasing fight with the Red Baron, and even to the moon with the crew of Apollo 10.

He also went to Normandy, France, in a national call for remembrance and unity. And there, he became part of D-Day’s pop-culture legacy, one that has shaped Americans’ understanding of the invasion, and indeed, World War II, for decades.

…On June 6, 1993, Schulz drew a comic strip that had little visual relationship to anything that had previously appeared in “Peanuts.” In three grim panels, the cartoonist depicted the eerie silence at the outset of the D-Day invasion. One panel looked atop the beachhead at the Nazi bunkers, where hidden soldiers were ready to fire down on the Allied troops below. The next panel surveyed a Higgins boat carrying a crew of faceless soldiers to a murky landing site. And the final panel revealed Snoopy dressed as a G.I. crawling up onto the beach at low tide. The lone words on the page read: “June 6, 1944, To Remember.”

…In the following years, Schulz’s tributes became more formalized, simply showing Snoopy wading ashore at the rugged beach over the invocation “To Remember.” Despite the simplicity, it was a meaningful statement to some readers. Robert A. Nottke, a World War II veteran, wrote to the Chicago Tribune to complain that he could not find a single reference to D-Day on June 6, 1996, “with one exception.” It was “Snoopy, our beloved beagle, bravely dog-paddling toward Normandy Beach.” Nottke, and undoubtedly other readers, “felt affronted by [the] oversight.” For those who had served and their loved ones, who felt like the sacrifices of that day and month had been forgotten over time, Schulz’s strip was salve on the wound.

This is one of Charles M. Schultz’s cartoons saluting those who landed on the beaches of France on June 6, 1944:

We remember.

Today Is The 76th Anniversary Of The Landing On The Beaches Of France

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Today is the 76th anniversary of the landing on the beaches of France by the Allied Armies (D-Day). General Dwight Eisenhower chose to go on that day because the weather reports showed that day as the only possible window in a stormy period.  He met with his troops before the invasion to talk to them and send them off with prayers and well wishes.  He composed a letter to be read in case the invasion failed.  The letter took full responsibility for that failure if it occurred.  Because of the leadership of Dwight Eisenhower and the courage of the American, Canadian, and British troops, we are free today to do our Saturday errands, enjoy our children, and generally live our lives in freedom.

This is the text of the letter General Eisenhower wrote in case the invasion failed:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

Just a quick personal note about D Day–my father was one of the soldiers who landed on Utah beach.  He never talked much about his wartime experiences, but there are two things I remember from talking to him.  When the Allied troops landed on Utah Beach, they had been blown off course by the winds and heavy surf.  Because of that, they landed in a place that was less fortified by the Germans and were able to more forward more quickly than they might have otherwise moved.  The other thing he mentioned was the total secrecy surrounding the invasion.  There were cardboard tanks placed in England to make it look as if they were going ashore at Calais (which was the closest point to England).  Everything was top secret–but the payday before the invasion, they were paid in French francs!!!

From The Military Times

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Yesterday The Military Times posted a story about D-Day. I would like to share some of that story so that people who may not have studied that day and what it meant can appreciate what the young men involved did on that day.

The story reports:

Seventy-two years ago, on June 6, 1944, Allied troops waded ashore on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe. The night before, on June 5, American airborne forces had landed on the western flank of the invasion area near Sainte-Mère-Église, while British airborne forces secured the eastern flank and Pegasus Bridge. They jumped out of C-47 Dakota transport planes, through darkness and into glory. Some arrived by glider. Pvt. John Steele of the 82nd Airborne landed on the steeple of the church at Sainte-Mère-Église. He managed to survive by playing dead.

…On Utah Beach — all of the landing sites had code names — 56-year-old Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (the oldest son of former President Teddy Roosevelt) landed about a mile from his intended target. When asked whether to re-embark the 4th Infantry Division, he simply said, “We’ll start the war from right here!”

…Eisenhower planned the invasion from his offices at 20 Grosvenor Square in London. Number 1 Grosvenor Square was the wartime location of the American embassy. Averell Harriman presided over lend-lease aid from 3 Grosvenor Square, helping to fund our wartime Allies. The OSS (Office of Strategic Services), forerunner of the CIA, had its offices at 70 Grosvenor Square. Small wonder that this neighborhood was known as Little America at the time. Some wags even referred to Grosvenor Square as Eisenhowerplatz.

Imagine if an operation like the Normandy landing were to occur today in 2016. In the age of social media, interactive polls would ask: “Which beach do you prefer, Normandy or Pas de Calais?” Could all the members of the 101st Screaming Eagles, painted in Indian war paint with Mohawk haircuts, be counted upon not to post their pictures on Facebook? That seems doubtful.

…This June 6, raise a glass and toast the heroism of all those young men who fought to liberate America’s oldest ally from Nazi occupation. Without their service and sacrifice, our world would be a darker place. General Patton may have summed it up best when he said, “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

DDay2016My father was one of the men who landed on Utah beach. I can’t image what those men went through. I only hope that somehow as America is faced with the Islamization that has happened in most of Europe we will find the same courage that America had in 1944.