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During the summer of 1964, I lived with the family of MG Harry W. O. Kinnard at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Gen Kinnard was then commanding the 11th Air Assault Division which was in due course to become the 1st Air Cavalry Division of Vietnam fame. I was a high school kid working as a life guard at the officer's club swimming pool.

Among the house guests in the Kinnard household that summer was one S.L.A. Marshall who was visiting in anticipation of the divison's impending deployment to Vietnam. I had read most of Marshall's books at that stage of my young life and this apparently impressed Gen. Marshall. I spent quite of bit of time with him and he told me many stories, including a number about D-Day.

Years passed and I came to command a battalion of my Regiment, the 16th United States Infantry, years after having experienced combat in Vietnam as a long range reconaissance platoon leader and rifle company commander. One of my great pleasures commanding in the 16th Infantry Regiment was the annual visit of veterans for Big Red One Week. On one of these occasions, I have the privilege and later pleasure of coming to know Captain Joe Dawson, who was the first to lead his company off Omaha Beach and gain the heights where today sits the American Cemetery. He, and others, told us young soldiers the tales of D-Day, much as I had heard them years earlier from S.L.A Marshall. I hold their performance on that day in awe, we who were not there can scarcely imagine how courage was common virtue and where cruel fate, not competence determined who would live and who would die.

You cannot live in this country and enjoy the fruits of our freedoms without falling down on your knees and thanking God Almighty that our country should have produced men such as these.

At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning, we shall remember them.

Interesting.

"At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning, we shall remember them."

Amen.

At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning, we shall remember them.

And you as well, sir. 82d ABN, CSC 1/504, 80-83.