This one reminder got lost in the shuffle.

(delayed due to my being busy, I now make amends . . . )

Seventy-Two Years ago this day. 

Seventy-Two years ago, on this day, June 6, 1944, on the beaches in Northern France, the United States, British, Canadians, Free French and others embarked on "The Great Crusade" to free Europe from the Nazi tyrant. 
Before dawn, some 156, 000 men, under the overall command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, got down into landing craft and prepared to go ashore. Awaiting them were some 31,000 men of the Armed forces of Nazi Germany.
The Germans had taken years to prepare the defenses, including mines, barricades, wire, traps, pillboxes, bunkers and hardened artillery emplacements. The landings would prove particularly brutal to some -- notably the Americans of the 29th Infantry Division (the "Fighting 29th", later known as the Yin-Yangs and later still as the Perfect Storm ) and the 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red 1). These men stood in their landing craft -- mostly flat-bottomed shallow draught boats designed by American Andrew Higgins -- and rode their way in, often times vomiting into the boat, wetting their pants, and crapping their trousers, but they gritted their teeth and went. At Omaha Beach, the Germans saw them coming. Saw some of them land as much as a mile out of position. The Nazis saw the allies coming and waited. The Higgins Boat, as with all other such, had one fatal flaw. It featured a heavy armored front loading ramp. Great for defense, great for offloading -- unless someone opposing you had fast-firing high powered machine-guns, a thing the Germans had in plentiful numbers. The Germans had been trained about how to deal with invaders coming by landing craft -- wait until the ramp dropped, then blast into the boat with your machine-gun. This they did. Over and over again. Those men of the Fighting 29th and the Big Red One rode right into the most concentrated barrage of combined machine-gun, rifle, mortar and artillery fire ever seen. They died by the scores. In one incident I am personally aware of, when the ramp dropped, there were 54 men in the boat. Of that, about 18 survived to make it to the beach, and something like 12 survived the day. If you told me tomorrow I would have to get in a boat and go ashore under similar conditions, I am not sure I would be able to follow through. These men went. Not gladly, perhaps, and most assuredly not singing patriotic songs and smiling as some propagandists would have you believe, but they went. Grimly, sickly, fearfully, they went. Yes, fearfully. No sane person would not be afraid in those conditions, bombastic jingoism not withstanding. Yet these men mastered their fears and went, standing straight up, right into the gates of hell. No finer group of men ever existed. Some day I might sit down and write more stories of the valiant men who waded ashore on June 6 1944. I don't have time today, but I cannot forget the efforts of the other units who landed in Normandy that day.