#How many americans died on d day archive
That year the city was celebrating the 50th anniversary of D-Day with billboards of archive photos. Half a century after that fateful day, Alice Mills, a French scholar of African American literature, joined the Université de Caen, not far from the American war cemeteries in Normandy. However, the commitment and bravery that members of the 320th Battalion displayed during World War II would then fade into obscurity for decades. Japan capitulated as his unit was on its way to the Philippines. His task was always to raise the explosives-packed helium balloons, a defensive measure that proved decisive in protecting Allied materiel and men from Luftwaffe bombings.ĭabney returned stateside only when the war in Europe ended and nearly saw combat in the Pacific. I went to Saint Lo, then near Paris, and then later to Belgium and Holland,” he remembered. “I followed the big gun wherever it went. View of allied troops landing in Normandy, France on D-Day. Following the heroic invasion, the young soldier was then dispatched to a 90 mm anti-aircraft gun team. With no replacement balloon to raise, he dug into the sand and survived long hours of carnage before regrouping with other members of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion – the first African American unit in the segregated US Army to come ashore on D-Day.ĭabney, like other black WWII soldiers, didn’t just play a key role in reclaiming and keeping France’s northwestern shores on D-Day, he actively contributed to the entire war effort. “Of course we were still coming in, just stepping over the bodies, moving forward.” “Some marines had already landed before us and the beach was just about covered with dead bodies,” he told FRANCE 24 in a recent interview.
In the bloody chaos that ensued, Dabney’s balloon was shot out above him. Strapped to Dabney via a long steel cable, it was designed to dissuade German fighter pilots from strafing the US soldiers who were about to hit Omaha Beach. A giant, zeppelin-shaped helium balloon hovered over the Allied boat. William Dabney could barely see the outline of the French coast as his landing vessel made an unsteady approach before dawn on June 6, 1944.