Today is more thank just another Sunday

Today is Sunday, June 6th, 2010.  For those of you forgot, 66 years ago it was June 6, 1944.

66 years ago, tens of thousands of young men stormed the beaches at Normandy in the greatest amphibian invasion the world has ever seen. It is known as D-Day.

Many of those young men knew they wouldn’t live to see June 7. But they stormed off their ships anyway, into all the hell that the Nazi’s could muster. Amongst shrapnel and bullets; mortars and bombs they came. Wading towards those beaches through the blood of their comrades, they came. As their buddies fell all around them, they came. And they kept on coming. All day, those brave young men from small towns and big cities, many of whom would never have seen an ocean of not for the war, dove into chest-high water and waded through all that and  more towards the beach. Nothing could stop them, for they were fighting for the very freedom of the world. Fighting to rid the world of the greatest menace it has ever known, National Socialism; Nazi Germany.

Those men won that day and slogged their way across Europe, liberating small towns and big cities that were both similar yet so very different from the ones they had left a world away. But they fought on, to liberate people who did not speak their languages or know their customs. But they shared one thing in common, the one thing that people everywhere share: a desire to be free, to determine their own destiny. That they succeeded was not a forgone conclusion at the time. Those brave young men who endured the tortures of Normandy and 10 months of fighting across Europe accomplished what no army had done before them.

There are so very few of these remarkable men left with us today. If you know one, please stop and say “Thank You” on this anniversary. If you don’t know one, visit the local VA Nursing Home – you can find one there.