Coming up in a few days is an interesting date. “June 6, 1944 is a day of days …”  Years ago, I used to ask my front office person what this date meant to the world in front of my Greatest Generation patients. 

Seventy years ago on June 5, Airborne dropped behind enemy lines in Normandy ahead of the landings on the 6th. On June 6 at 6 a.m., the bombings of the beaches by the Navy began. The Rangers, Marines and Army units poured onto the beaches of Utah, Omaha, and the Americans to pushed back the under-prepared German regiments. All while Hitler was still asleep in Germany with no one wanting to wake him up. He was so terrified of Patton’s fictitious First Army, with cardboard boxes painted up like tanks at the quick channel crossing instead of the farther Normandy, that Hitler left the Panzers up north for weeks, of whom could have turned the tide of the landings. 

To all the men of the U.S. Military on the beach that day – We thank you for your sacrifice 70 years ago.