credit: Carol M. Highsmith

Aerial and naval bombardment

156,000 men sent in

Canadian, American and British airborne troops

Free French Resistance and Polish ground forces

Then Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword

Landing craft blown off course

Beaches of wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire

German dead – 4,000 to 9,000 men

Allied dead – 4,414 confirmed – to 10,000 casualties

The Battle of Normandy

Over 425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded or  missing

209,000 Allied casualties

37,000 dead amongst the ground forces

16,714 deaths amongst the Allied air forces

Allied casualties

 83,045 21st Army Group -British, Canadian and Polish ground forces

125,847 from the US ground forces

German casualties 200,000

200,000 prisoners of war captured

French civilians killed 15,000 to 20,000

27 war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides:

• 77,866 German
• 9386 American
• 17,769 British
• 5002 Canadian
• 650 Poles.

Operation Overlord, from June 6th (the date of D-Day) to August 30th 1944 (when German forces retreated across the Seine)

Lest We Forget

aerial view of the Normandy American cemetery Official White House Photo by Pete Souza