69 years ago men willingly boarded landing boats, jumped out of planes and piloted gliders not knowing whether they’d live to see another day. There is a good reason why their generation is sometimes called ‘The Greatest’ because I don’t know if we could do the same thing today.
History will never forget the details of the invasion such as the names of the beaches – Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno – but we must also never forget the sacrifice and the herculean effort that these people undertook in the name of Freedom.
We throw around words like ‘warrior’ and ‘patriot’ today but when our deeds and actions are measured against those who hit the beaches or jumped out of planes on June 6th, 1944 it seems unfair.
Remember these warriors today by sharing their story with someone from a younger generation.
cosmoscon 
Thank you for the acknowledgement, Cosmo…
My Dad was one of the those who was fighting that day. At 17, he enlisted in the Marines (NOBODY verified age then, they just needed men willing to serve). He served from 1942 until the end of the war, and then, later, served in Korea.
As kids, from the time we were old enough to ask, to the day he passed away, he would NEVER talk about those days in WWII. His only answer would be: “You really DON’T want to know what I saw”. It was years before I fully understood that answer.
Thank God for men like your dad, Pgh. I remember movies about D-Day and I felt the fear those men must have felt when I was just a kid. Yet they came off those boats that took them nowhere but (most of them) to their deaths, as the few made it up the cliffs and to the Germans, beginning to take back Europe for freedom. Indeed, the GREATEST GENERATION. I’ll never forget them.
Thank you Cosmo for this remembrance.
Amen, my friend. Although he didn’t lose his life in those battles, he lost a part of himself that he never got back. My grandma once told me that she never again saw the talkative, gregarious young man who left their house in 1942…