D Day 74 years ago today

Feb, 2007 I was privileged to spend 2 days in Normandie and surrounding towns. Definitely was not enough time. I don't care what your political leanings are, when standing in the midst of all those graves at Colleville-sur-Mer, you can't help but be moved by the sacrifice of all the "young" people from several different countries.

The statistics vary, depending on your source, but using Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day", the US KIA's (1465) and MIA's (1928) for the 24 hrs of D-day; a total of 3393 Americans that lost their lives. Do the math: for 24 hours, 141 died every hour.

I have many items in my collection from various countries & wars, and I do enjoy having them, but they are just tools. The really important & valuable thing, is/ was the the people who used those to safeguard our liberty, and the unselfish price that they all paid for us.

106 in one day.I remember not thinking about getting killed much, it was pure luck anyway. We'd check the back of the Stars and stripes and look at the list of KIA and see if anyone we knew had died. There was another list "Died not as a result of hostile action ". These were the plane crashes, truck wrecks, suicides, disease, gunfights with ****ed off husbands. These guys were just as dead as the others. I just wanted out of there, I was drafted and that was the mindset for every draftee I saw, just do your time and get the hell out of that place. 6 June 68 I had been home and out of the Army for a year. 22 1/2 months with a 72 day early out. You think about what it was years later.

Dave,

Good for you, you missed 1968 and Tet. The year of the most deaths 16,899 or 29%.

I pushed my luck, my three tours had 59.5% of the deaths.
1968 (16,899 deaths) 29%, 1969 (11,780 deaths) 20%, 1970 (6,173 deaths) 10.5%.
I was very fortunate and made it home.

Guys didn't want to talk about not coming back to the world. But is was on the back of everyone's mind.

I go down to Coronado each year to honor those of my unit who gave all. And I'll admit to tearing up each time.

I admire you Jim. I never wanted to go into the Army in the first place but made a commitment to try and give it my best effort. I was the only draftee in my platoon and finished #2 in the company. I was offered SF and OCS turned them down on both but almost bit on the OCS. Luck would have it, I sat next to an Infantry Capt who had just returned from the Ia Drang and he told me "If you do this you will die" . I should have kissed him. Six months later I was in Vietnam anyway.

























squad leader the whole time and got my promotions right on time. When I was leaving Capt Bell told me he'd make me a Sergeant if I reupped. I told him