June 6
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June 6.
A day to remember sacrifice, heroism, and the deep cost of freedom ... to renew our commitment to repel forces of hatred and injustice ... to dedicate ourselves to our nation's noblest ideals. The beaches, once strewn with death, now offer affirmation of our ability to heal.
Is 1944 already 79 years ago? The ranks of those alive to remember D-Day dwindle. Soon there will be no more.
A lived experience will recede forever into the history books.
The horror of the war that preceded this day, and all that was still to follow.
The full scale of the bloodshed, and the fear — even in the United States, separated by oceans — that a permanent darkness would envelop the globe.
The desperate sense that if we did not come together to the cause, we risked losing everything.
Even as a child, the uncertainty, dread, hope, yearnings, loss, and resilience were palpable. For years, I had listened to reports from far-flung battlefields. I had learned world geography, from North Africa to the islands of the Pacific, by plotting datelines of death and destruction in books of maps. The career path that would become my life’s work was forged in those moments when I was alone with my thoughts, my radio, and the voices of fearless correspondents.
D-Day, its anticipation, execution, and aftermath, still seems immediate to me today. I have had occasion to visit those beaches, report from there, and pay tribute to the fallen. I think of these young men, just a bit older than I was, asked to run toward bullets in the service of freedom. I think of those they left behind, and those who returned who were never the same.
One of the indelible lessons of war is the preciousness and precariousness of peace.
June 6
Anyway. This was the experience of the Greatest Generation that is defined as the age cohort born from 1901 to 1927. Here is the link to the wikipedia article about how this age cohort is defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation Most of that generation has died off. A great number of people from that generation probably did not want to talk about what they experienced. I bet it was very traumatic for them to witness people being blown up by grenades, land mines and other explosives.
My Dad was a 26 year old Major when he landed at Easy Red Beach in Normandy. We have gone back to Normandy twice. The last was for the 70th anniversary: it was very moving. He died at age 99 in 2017. I know he would have appreciated this description of D-Day.
Sharye Monson Skinner