My D-Day Moment

Seventy-five years ago today, thousands of Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, the start of the final great endeavor, to defeat the forces of evil, to reclaim Europe for the sake of her people's freedom, and to make the world a better place, a place of freedom.

So many of them never made it to the shore, gunned down by well-placed if overwhelmed German gun placements. So many more died on the beach, and are buried in the green fields beyond that shore. Some of them survived, and lived to tell the tale of their push across Europe.

I knew one of those men. I heard his stories, in the three years after he offered me a job, the job that brought me to Washington nearly four decades ago. I wrote of him on this day in 2010, by which time the stories I had heard were already compiled into a book that he himself had authored. I read the book, and relived those stories.

We who live in peace can never forget what happened that day, when the world was not at peace. I have reasons of my own to remember, as I shall not see his like again.