During my junior year of high school, I got the same question everyone got at that age: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Under their feet were the sands of Omaha Beach, and in their rheumy eyes, tears that inevitably flowed from being on the revered shoreline in Normandy, France, where so many American young men were cut down 80 years ago on D-Day.
“The invasion of Normandy was like a red letter in my life. It was the same as when they attacked Pearl Harbor,” said Seaman First Class Willie Clemons Jr. “There are things worth fighting for, although I wish there was another way to do it than to try to kill each other. But sometimes you’re called upon to do something and you just do it. You know? That’s it. These people looked death in the face and just kept right on coming,” said Walter Stitt, who turns 100 in July and fought in tanks, surviving the destruction of three of them.
On the bluffs above Omaha, at the Normandy American Cemetery with 9,387 immaculately tended graves, 100-year-old Bob Gibson paid tribute to comrades who fell on D-Day, when he landed on the other, less-bloody American landing beach, code-named Utah.President Biden bound for France to commemorate D-Day Haley Bull 7:16 PM, Jun 04, 2024 “You don’t want other people to go through the same thing,” he said. “Because I’ve seen a lot of these boys that never even made the beach, believe me.
Back at base on the evening of D-Day, Pedigo was told the Allies had suffered thousands of casualties.
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