On D-Day, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. landed with the first wave at Utah Beach, about a mile south of the planned spot. Instead of waiting for the plan to catch up, he scouted the exits behind the beach, consulted his commanders and kept the landing coming in where it was.
He was 56, walked with a cane, and had asked twice, then in writing, to go ashore with the first wave. He was the son of President Theodore Roosevelt, not Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Illustrated reconstruction: the scenes, faces and gestures are dramatized, and this is not his recorded voice. The quotation “We’ll start the war from right here” is attributed to him by the U.S. Army. The line about the ocean is the narrator’s joke.
Sources
– U.S. War Department, Utah Beach to Cherbourg (American Forces in Action), “The Seaborne Assault”:
– Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., citation:
– U.S. Army, D-Day Historical Overview:
– Naval History and Heritage Command, H-Gram 031, “D-Day—Operation Neptune”:
– U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “D-Day’s Oldest Soldier: Theodore Roosevelt Jr.”:
Music and sound
– “Heroic Age” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License,
– Sound effects from Pixabay (Pixabay Content License): Cinematic Impact Hit and Ground Impact (Universfield); Door Slam and Waves SFX (SoundReality); Whoosh Cinematic (DRAGON-STUDIO); Firefight, Small Boat Engine, traditional stamp, SPLASH (by blaukreuz), Distant Cannon Fire (simulated) and Single Rock hit Dirt (freesound_community).
#history #ww2 #dday #shorts
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