The challenge consists not so much in proving that Landry did not come ashore on June 6 but in finding evidence that he did land on D-Day. So far, the evidence for a D-Day landing is scant, error-prone, and far from convincing. […]
The challenge consists not so much in proving that Landry did not come ashore on June 6 but in finding evidence that he did land on D-Day. So far, the evidence for a D-Day landing is scant, error-prone, and far from convincing. […] It’s been my unhappy experience to discover that the majority of first-person D-Day stories are to some degree inaccurate. Often this is because the individual experienced such a narrow view of the massive operation that he misinterpreted what he saw. In other cases, it is a result of fading memory or unintentional exaggeration. And then there are the cases in which people alter the facts to enhance their reports or their reputations. […] With Operation Fortitude South in mind, should we consider the possibility that SHAEF’s system-within-a-system for retrieval of civilian press coverage of the D-Day invasion did not in fact fail, but instead operated exactly as it was intended to do? […] |