[Retain Mike]

This essay is my way to remember annually the extraordinary men I met growing up; men who seemed to consider their WW II service as a common rite of passage. I often ended up as a dishwasher at the country club and noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. He saw my puzzled look, and said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Such is one of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.

[dfwgator]

As Stephen Ambrose wrote: “A minute earlier (Ike) had been the most powerful man in the world. ...The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless.”

[centurion316]

I am an Army brat and part of my youth was in the 50’s with the 16th Infantry Regiment in Germany and at Ft. Riley. Much later, I had to honor to command a battalion of the 16th Infantry. I came to know many veterans of D-Day over the years who were friends of my parents, veterans still with the 16th, and as visiting veterans when they could still do that sort of thing. Hard fighters by reputation and from my own experience with them in Vietnam. They were also hard drinkers, some of them, but everyone of them were hard soldiers and good men.

[missthethunder]

https://archive.org/details/NBCCompleteBroadcastDDay

Thanks for this.

I’m listening to this now and it’s very moving.

Can’t imagine being a wife or mother in the US or anywhere else
of a man/boy on that day and not knowing if they were there or not.

[Starboard]

A sobering account of the horrors of Omaha Beach.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-06/churchill-ike-epic-human-tragedy-first-wave-omaha

[Albion Wilde]

bump