ww2db.com Featured Image, #7

The first time I saw this image, I wondered if it was posed. There are the kids on a hillside looking off into the distance, over the grayness of all the debris (all pushed back) to the future. The color, too, is interesting, with the splash of red in the middle, and the blue framing the top of the image.

I do know this, as the caption reads:
“Two French boys watched from a hilltop as Allied vehicles passed through the badly damaged city of St. Lo, circa Jul-Aug 1944.”

I also know this: the battle for St. Lo was a tough go, and it spanned a good portion of July, 1944. The link provided here leads to a title called the American Forces in Action Series, published by the Historical Division, War Department.

This has been another entry in the ww2db.com Featured Image partnership. The idea behind this post (and the weekly posts to come) is to highlight ww2db.com’s collection of 4000 plus photos, many culled from the National Archives, Library of Congress, the US Naval Historical Center, and other research institutions.

Operation Cobra in The War

So in the Invasion episode of The War, I found the discussion of Operation Cobra a little short. I mean, how is it possible to discuss this event and not mention the fact that Allied bombers also killed and wounded American soldiers due to “short” drops? One web page…

Over 100 U.S. soldiers were killed and approximately 500 were wounded. One unit, 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, from the 30th Infantry Division, suffered 25 soldiers killed (including General Lesley J. McNair) and 131 wounded.

Another web page (the DB)…

150 Americans were killed by accident by these bombs. The highest ranking fatality of this massive friendly fire incident was a three-star general of the US Army, “blown out of his slit trench some two miles behind where I had been hole up…”

This seems like a pretty big detail to exclude. How hard would have it have been to mention that in one sentence, out of respect to the dead?