I was so fortunate to be in school in Germany in 1994. I ended up running around Normandy with my adopted grandfather, a D-Day paratrooper, hearing stories and seeing what the land looked like. seeing the hedgerows in person made it a lot easier to understand why getting from the drop zone (planned or otherwise) to anywhere was so hard at first.
That sounds like a tremendous experience. My wife has always regretted that she and her father never got to take the trip back to Germany that he always talked about wanting to take with her.
I was so fortunate to be in school in Germany in 1994. I ended up running around Normandy with my adopted grandfather, a D-Day paratrooper, hearing stories and seeing what the land looked like. seeing the hedgerows in person made it a lot easier to understand why getting from the drop zone (planned or otherwise) to anywhere was so hard at first.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
That sounds like a tremendous experience. My wife has always regretted that she and her father never got to take the trip back to Germany that he always talked about wanting to take with her.
ReplyDelete"The Great Crusade"- capitalized even. Hard to imagine any leader using that kind of language today.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the radio broadcast that FDR did- possibly the largest mass prayer in history- on the night of D-Day.
I was always deeply moved by the letter Eisenhower drafted "in case of failure" of D-Day.