Comments by "COL BEAUSABRE" (@colbeausabre8842) on "Mulberry Harbours - Rhinos, Whales, Beetles, Phoenixs and Spud's against the Axis" video.
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One of my neighbors growing up had been the CO of an LCT during the great storm. She was blown ashore and had to wait for weeks to be salvaged. Due to fear of Luftwaffe attacks, no lights were to be shown at night and they were to lie low. Then, one night, it happened. Around dusk, first one ship, then another began firing, soon grounded vessels and Army AA batteries joined in. Artillery roared, small arms rattled and tracers sped into the night. Off shore, even the battleships and cruisers were giving their all. Flares and star shells illuminated a surreal scene. Convinced the Germans had broken through, and were headed to the beach, my neighbor sounded general quarters and rifles and submachine guns were issued to all hands not manning a gun. My neighbor strapped on his 45, determined to "take one with him." Then it occurred to someone to look at the calendar when making an entry into the log and yelled the news. That's how my neighbor and thousands of his brothers in arms celebrated July 4, 1944.
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The Great D-Day Crossword Puzzle Scare
Todd DePastino
On 2 May, a British intelligence officer doing the London Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle noticed No. 17 across: “One of the U.S.” The answer, he knew, was “Utah.” Ordinarily, nothing remarkable about that.
But this was 1944, a month before D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history. And the answer to No. 17 across was the code name of the beach assigned to the American 4th Infantry Division A coincidence, or something more?
Two years earlier, the same newspaper had dropped a crossword puzzle clue, “French port,” whose answer was “Dieppe”–the very location of an Allied raid scheduled for the next day. British counter-intelligence, the MI5, ruled it a coincidence. Now, here it was again, but this time the clue leaked far enough ahead of the operation that it might alert German high command.
A quick scan of other recent crossword puzzles in the Daily Telegraph revealed more codewords: “Juno,” “Gold,” and “Sword,” all secret names for Allied landing beaches.
Then, two weeks before D-Day, the Daily Telegraph‘s crossword puzzle issued more codewords:
May 22, No. 3 down: “Red Indian on the Missouri” (answer: “Omaha”)
May 27, No. 11 across: “Big Wig” (answer: “Overlord”).
May 30, No. 11 across: “This bush is the center of nursery revolutions” (answer: “Mulberry”)
June 1, No. 15 down: “Brittania and he hold to the same thing” (answer: “Neptune”) For 40 years, this was the end of the story. The Great D-Day Crossword Puzzle Scare stood as the biggest coincidence in world history, an example of what can happen if you allow the natural human instinct for pattern-detecting get the better of you.
It turns out, however, that there was a pattern, as well as a secret. But the final twist to the story wasn’t known until the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984.
That year, the Daily Telegraph ran an article about the D-Day Crossword Puzzle Mystery, and one of Dawe’s former students, a man named Ronald French, came forward with an astonishing claim. He told his story exclusively to the Telegraph. https://veteransbreakfastclub.org/the-great-d-day-crossword-puzzle-scare-of-1944/#:~:text=The%20Great%20D-Day%20Crossword%20Puzzle%20Scare%20stood%20as,was%20a%20pattern%2C%20as%20well%20as%20a%20secret.
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