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From: "Sally Rolls Pavia" <>
Subject: This Day in History .. Civil War and WWII
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 06:16:33 -0700


June 3, 1864 Union disaster at Cold Harbor

On this day, Union General Ulysses S. Grant makes what he later recognizes
to be his greatest mistake by ordering a frontal assault on entrenched
Confederates at Cold Harbor. The result was some 7,000 Union casualties in
less than an hour of fighting.

Grant's Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia
had already inflicted frightful losses upon each other as they wheeled along
an arc around Richmond-from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania and numerous
smaller battle sites-the previous month.

On May 30, Lee and Grant collided at Bethesda Church. The next day, the
advance units of the armies arrived at the strategic crossroads of Cold
Harbor, just 10 miles from Richmond, where a Yankee attack seized the
intersection. Sensing that there was a chance to destroy Lee at the gates of
Richmond, Grant prepared for a major assault along the entire Confederate
front on June 2.
But when Winfield Hancock's Union corps did not arrive on schedule, the
operation was postponed until the following day. The delay was tragic for
the Union, because it gave Lee's troops time to entrench. Perhaps frustrated
with the protracted pursuit of Lee's army, Grant gave the order to attack on
June 3-a decision that resulted in an unmitigated disaster. The Yankees met
murderous fire, and were only able to reach the Confederate trenches in a
few places. The 7,000 Union casualties, compared to only 1,500 for the
Confederates, were all lost in under an hour.

Grant pulled out of Cold Harbor nine days later and continued to try to
flank Lee's army. The next stop was Petersburg, south of Richmond, where a
nine-month siege ensued. There would be no more attacks on the scale of Cold
Harbor.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

3 Jun 1940 Germans bomb Paris

The German air force bombs Paris, killing 254 people, most of them
civilians.

Determined to wreck France's economy and military, reduce its population,
and in short, cripple its morale as well as its ability to rally support for
other occupied nations, the Germans bombed the French capital without regard
to the fact that most of the victims were civilians, including
schoolchildren. The bombing succeeded in provoking just the right amount of
terror; France's minister of the interior could only keep government
officials from fleeing Paris by threatening them with severe penalties.

Despite the fact that the British Expeditionary Force was on the verge of
completing its evacuation at Dunkirk, and that France was on the verge of
collapse to the German invaders, the British War Cabinet was informed that
Norway's king, Haakon, had expressed complete confidence that the Allies
would win in the end. The king, having made his prediction, then fled Norway
for England, his own country now under German occupation.


Sally Rolls Pavia

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