Eighty one years today thousands upon thousands of brave young men landed on the beaches of Normandy in order to fight back against a morally repugnant Nazi horde that had squashed large parts of eastern and western Europe under its jackboot. These young men, some not even old enough to qualify for an HGV licence these days, disembarked from heaving, stinking landing craft to face machine gun and mortar fire, mines and bombs. Many of these young men didn’t make it up the beach and some didn’t even manage to survive exiting the landing craft.
Without these brave men from Britain, the United States, Canada and elsewhere there would have been no pushback against the Germans on western European soil. They died and suffered so that we might live.
We must remember what they did for they did it for us.
On the sixth day of the sixth month we shall remember them.