The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for June 06, 2014
June 05, 2014
June 07, 2014
Transcript:
Gladys: You haven't forgotten what day this is, have you? Brutus: Of course not - it's National Yo-Yo Day! Gladys: Very funny! Now, where's my birthday present!
And it is amazing how few casualties there were. Of the 150,000 troops who took part in the first day of the D-Day landing, between 4,400 to 10,000 were killed (where the lower figure is more likely). The Germans had between 4,000 to 9,000 casualties, although that includes injured soldiers as well as dead.
For comparison, in the Great War, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 19,000 British soldiers died. During that battle, 125,000 allied troops died and across both sides, one million solders became casualties.
Given the German defences along the European coast at the time of D-Day, it is amazing the death rate was as low as it was. It says a lot for the effort made with the training, planning and preparation. Especially compared to the senseless insane slaughter caused by telling men to walk into machine-guns across No Man’s Land, wave after wave, regiment after regiment, day after day, week after week, month after month.