My hats off to all the 20 somethings that June 5, 1944, In 1984, I invited my mom and Dad to take a cruise with my wife and I, from New York City to London England, on to Normandy France. My father had told me his story of D day. Like so many other men he had been in England training, his unit an infantry unit had been boarded on the transport June 3, moved out to clear space in the port for other ships loading men. They anchored on the English side of the channel in storm tossed seas many men becoming seasick in the storms chop. The 4th came and went, they all expected to go on the night of the 4th for an invasion on the morning of the 5th, the original date for the landings. The evening of the 5th they heard the ships anchor being raised. Life started early by 4AM morning of the 6th, still feeling seasick, he had coffee and some toast. The started loading into the landing craft a 5:AM he told me that was when he realized how weak he felt and had issues moving down the rope netting to get into the landing craft, several men had slipped and fallen to their death. The landing craft circled and maneuvered in the 4 to 6 foot chop trying to get aligned and organized to establish their line of assault on the beach. My Dad was in the second line of craft hitting Omaha beach, as they approached, world had already been passed back from the first assault boats not the drop the ramp but go over the sides. Which is what he did. He got into shallow water pretty fast, the undertow sweep out the sand under his feet, made it hard to stand and he first touched the beach crawling on his hands and knees. Later when we walked Omaha beach together, he showed me where he came ashore and pointed up the beach beyond the shall wall to a place that on June 6, 1944 had taken him 5 hours to reach, most of it on his belly, we covered that distance in 6 minutes.
