At the end of the CBS evening news on June 5, Walter Cronkite showed an American veteran kneeling at a comrade’s grave in Normandy, scattering soil from the dead man’s birthplace on the grave, promising the “son of a gun” he would return once more before he died himself. I have seen nothing more moving.
June 6 is an emotional hazard for those of the vintage. There were other dates and places, and I arrived late at the European theater anyway, seeing nothing at sea of the infantry and the artillery and the unsung engineers. But from 1940 the coast of France had been the beckoning line, the symbol of necessary return. Nothing like June 6 in Normandy brings home so hard the passing of the fine young men who saved our civilization.
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