Overlord+63

Dr. Stephen Ambrose wrote:

"In one night and day in June 1944, 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armored bulldozers, were transported across sixty to a hundred miles of open water and landed on a hostile shore against intense opposition. They were carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes. It was as if the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha Wisconsin, were picked up and moved--every man, woman and child, every automobile and truck-- to the east side of Lake Michigan, in one night."

"It all came down to a bunch of eighteen-to-twenty-eight-year-olds. They were magnificently trained and equipped and supported, but only a few of them had ever been in combat. Only a few had ever killed or seen a buddy killed. Most had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were citizen-soldiers, not professionals."

"They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not hand grenades, shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were the men of D-Day. And to them we owe our freedom."

Sixty-three years ago the future of freedom in Europe and ultimately the rest of the world was in the hands of these young brave American, British, Canadian and French fighters. And for a big part of the day of June 6 1944 it looked as if the invasion might fail. Casualties were atrocious. Sacrifices were immeasurable.

Our debt to them is unpayable.

Along with Airborne troops seizing and holding bridges and roads inland, quite literally the future of the entire world came down to that battle on that beach on that day. It is the single most important day of the 20th Century.

Remember it with reverence and thank those who fought for and won our freedom.