"D" Day

I actually should have wrote this blog yesterday but too much to do and so little time. Did you know that yesterday was the anniversary of "D" Day, June 6, 1944, was the invasion of Normandy beach of World War II. The war planners expected a loss of life at 75%. The General told these kids these boys these fathers...most of you will not be coming back. These men knew the odds..they knew and yet they did not turn away from the call of duty, honor, service to their country, the greatest country in the World! It was impossible to make a frontal assault so most these brave soldiers were paratroopers landing behind the enemy (some easily picked off) or had to climb the rocky cliffs as the Germans at point blank range killed future generations. Here are just a few snippets from a most powerful and riveting story by Tom Brokaw. Why Theresa would I care? Because had it not been for those brave men and women. My husband's Grandfathers. Both my Grandfathers. I would not be blogging today. I would not have had the freedom to take my daughter out last night. Or live in a society that I can openly worship my Lord. Thank you is so inadequate. The same freedom those men gave their lives for to allow us to live in the 2008 world also gives us multiple avenues to blast the same men and women who today are in all parts of the world putting their lives and giving their lives in the most ultimate sacrifice of service. No matter what you think of war...remember someone son and/or daughter is waking up today not sure if this will be his or her last day on earth. Missing their children, their parents...missing home. Thank you is so inadequate. I know this is not my normal blog of the Balentine world but yet it is. Without the sacrifice..who knows...there may not have been a Balentine family. May we never forget!

At beaches code named Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah and Omaha, German machine gunners and artillery tried to hold back the invasion force. At Omaha, they almost succeeded, costing the Allies more than two thousand casualties in the opening hours.

In so many ways, D-Day was a metaphor for America: commanded by a man from a small town in America's heartland, it was a bold stroke that depended on the courage and innovation of forces still in their teens and early twenties led by senior officers in their thirties and early forties, almost all of them in combat for the first time and they were up against a battle-hardened German army that had been fighting for five years.

Still, for all of the successes and good fortune of that day, the fighting in Europe would go one for almost another full year and it would be brutal, day in and day out. Many of the men who waded ashore at Normandy were in the thick of it for the next 12 months.

D-Day, June 6, 1944, a day that will live famously for as long as historians record the determination of free people to liberate the oppressed.