The Longest Day

Try to imagine for a moment if you can that you are probably fresh out of High School, or maybe just a bit older, maybe you had a girlfriend or wife, maybe not.  Heck, you maybe never even had your first beer or cigarette.

None of that matters though because in a very short space of time, you went from whatever you were used to, to watching our nation become engulfed in a war a million miles away from your favorite fishing hole, bowling alley, mountain top, or whatever great memory you had, to doing your part and proudly joining the military, to finding yourself feeling alone on a landing craft which was tossing in the rolling sea causing a lot of the guys around you to turn green and toss their breakfast.  

The closer you got to the unseen shore, the louder the gunfire sounded, the thicker the smoke and the mixed smell of blood, vomit, and waste from guys who may have lost all control.  Some of the guys were silent, some prayed silently or out loud, and for too many of them, whatever they were doing at that moment before the front of that craft opened to merciless enemy machine gun fire was the very last thing they ever did.

If you survived that moment, now you faced the ordeal of making it past the dead or dying bodies of men who were alive only moments ago in a sea turned red with their blood, by the countless booby traps and sharp, jagged iron structures designed to rip you to shreds.  All the while, the incessant machine gun fire was pouring down from multiple positions above you.  

Fire, smoke, death, the sounds of men screaming in pain mixed with explosions, tanks, a pounding surf; that was your existence if you made it.  In short, you got a taste, a glimmer of what you imagine that hell must be like.

This was your first time away from home and every next moment could be your last; this was what so many brave men experienced on our behalf on a fateful day seventy-seven years ago today.

As we remember this day and their sacrifice, let us honor them by not letting the enemies of our nation, foreign or domestic, destroy what they fought for on that day and for the agonizing months thereafter.  There are not a lot of them left today, so if you are blessed to know one of the survivors of that day, thank them from the bottom of your heart, because without them, none of us could do what we do today.