D-Day Days: June 6th, 1944

The Day of Days, the day the Allies would take the fight to Hitler. Assaulting the beaches of Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Five beaches. Over one hundred and fifty thousand men transported via 4,126 landing ships, from the Allied nations would attempt to establish a foothold in Nazi-occupied France. For combat ships, 1,213 rained fire down on the German fortifications.The morning haze and mist covered the channel. Dim, grey, foreboding. As the thousands of men and tons of steel crossed the narrow gap separating England from Hitler's Fortress Europa, there was an eery calm before the storm. Though the night before troops from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Division had landed and flak covered the skies, the beach was still yet calm...until the very moment that it was not. The bombs dropped, the guns from battleships and cruisers pounded the fortifications. The landing craft made their way through the fog, through that channel mist, their gates dropped. It might as well have been the gates of hell opening before them as German forces poured withering machine gun fire and artillery onto the Allies landing.Men lay broken, dismembered, screaming in agony as the assault continued on. The beach turned a gruesome crimson as the explosions and gunfire continued to rip through the air as if death himself was riding upon each piercing slug. The Day of Days.

Forward, forward they pushed on the "Great Crusade" as General Eisenhower called it. Through blood, through sweat, through death and dismemberment, they strove. They won.The lives of their brothers, the lives of sons, fathers, and husbands...to stop an unfathomable evil, were sacrificed.

We remember this day of days, in which the Allied nations set great men, heroic men, to purpose and held faith in them that they should not fail.Remember this day of days, remember the day in which ordinary men, became the heroes of our time.