That Day of Days: 6/6/1944

Seventy-three years ago on June 6th, 2017, some of your fellow citizens--mostly young men--boarded landing craft and sailed across the English Channel to a place on the French coast called Normandy.  It was a stormy, bitter day.  Many of those young men are and will forever remain unknown to you because that day was their last day.  They fought and died there at the beginning of the Great Crusade which a year later crushed the Nazi death machine in Europe.  In many of those photos, a young face  is turned towards the camera. They gaze at us through the mists of time and it seems as though they look to us as if to say, "What will you do with this?"

Every year when the 6th of June comes up on the calendar I think about those men.  They weren't all brave.  They had their fears; many were plain afraid.  They understood--as only soldiers can--there might be no tomorrow; but they had their duty, and they did it.

Every one who can read this is a beneficiary of those men who that day and in the days that followed bought and preserved our freedom.  That's what makes it all so precious. That's what makes every crumb of our freedom worth fighting for.

June 6th, 1944 was a horrible day.  It was also a wonderful day.