65 years later

Some still remember...

65 years ago today, June 6, 1944 thousands of young men waded ashore on D-Day. Young men, in their late teens and early twenties, men who should have been getting jobs, going to school, enjoying their youth instead signed up to free Europe from the Nazi scourge. I cannot imagine what it was like to sit in those landing craft at an age when I was in college, clutching a rifle and watching the shore get closer. A shore littered with obstacles, barbed wire and overlooked by battle hardened Nazi soldiers behind machine guns.

These young men, many who lost their lives, started the end of the war in taking and holding that beach. Because of their sacrifice and courage, the Nazis were overthrown and Europe was freed. All of Europe, and America and the world owe a debt of gratitude to these men. Without these men, one teenager with a rifle at a time, setting aside the urge to flee or hide, the world would be a far different place.

To those who served, at D-Day and everywhere else, a nation still remembers and says: Thank you.