God story, thank you.
My dad was in a B26 that morning. I'm equally as proud.
I have to add, I am even more grateful that your father was an attorney of such character. There are too few, these days.
On a D-Day related topic, this link may interest you:
http://baby.indstate.edu/gga/gga_cart/frankfor.txt
It is in regard to how the stalemate at Omaha Beach was initially broken by the U.S.S. Frankford at approximately 10:00 A.M. beach time; it is a story not well-known. Of course, later in the day, other Navy ships moved in toward Omaha Beach and successfully shot up various German emplacements, but the Frankford got their first.
The Frankford moved in to within 400 yards of the water's edge.
The story at that link, above, is first told by a man who was on the beach, and then the story shifts to a man who was on the Frankford. This is a brief part of the story, from the ship's view, so to speak:
[W]e never had clear targets on the beach. Unfortunately, German camouflage was excellent, so from that distance we could not see who was where or pinpoint anything to shoot. Then LCDR Semmes decided we should go in for a closer look. The tide was in our favor at the moment. Navigating by fathometer and seaman's eye, he took us in close enough to put our optical rangefinder, ranging on the bluff above the beach, against the stops -- 300-400 yards away.The camouflage on the beach was still good. We could not spot a target -- and frankly we did not know how far our troops had advanced. Then one of our light tanks that was sitting at the water's edge with a broken track fired at something on the hill. We immediately followed up with a five-inch salvo. The tank gunner flipped open his latch, looked around at us, waved, dropped back in the tank and fired at another target. For the next few minutes he was our fire-control party. Our rangefinder optics could examine the spots where his shells hit.
By this time, we knew none of our troops was on the hill, so we used the rangefinder to pick out targets, including apparently at least one artillery emplacement. We did have the satisfaction of seeing our soldiers take some prisoners out of one of those bunkers. When we had expended our limit, we returned to our screen station, but not before seeing our troops moving up the hill toward the crest.
- Owen F. Keeler