On Omaha Beach 1,000 GIs were killed that day trying to get ashore, yet succeeding waves of Americans continued to enter the deadly maelstrom and the day and the beach was won, by a thread. On Utah beach to the right more effect was achieved the naval bombardment and a bombing run by the Army Air Force and the troops met light resistance and pushed on inland. On the left the three Commonwealth beaches, Gold, Juno and Sword, were being contested and won by the Allies. (The Canadians coincidentally aimed their initial thrust at this unique stand-alone house on Juno Beach, now known as the Canada House.)
Virtually every single father of the friends I had as a boy was a WWII veteran, whether they saw action or not, they served. My uncles served in the Mediterranean, the Philippines, the vast Pacific and my father served on two hard-won islands on the road to Tokyo. (A lonely statue in Normandy a couple of miles off Gold beach of a weary British soldier resting at the end of the fighting on the Longest Day, marking the furthest point inland the Allies reached that day.)
My mother left her home in a small Colorado farming town on the plains as a teenager and went to Sn Diego (and met my father before he was shipped off overseas) to help build airplanes. The Greatest Generation. (Quiet reigns at the Canadian cemetery in Normandy as hushed visitors visit the gravestones of fallen Allied heroes; the American cemetery overlooks Omaha beach and the British cemeteries are scattered about France but the biggest one in Normandy is in Bayeux, largely still looking as it did, a Norman medieval town, because it was the largest city seized by the Allies on that day, the largest city, Caen, took all summer to acquire and it was a pile of rubble when finally taken.)
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