On June 6

Wednesday, June 6, 2012—Today is the 68th anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy.  It would be fitting on this day for every American to spend some time in prayer for the brave men who died, and for those who survived, and in thanksgiving for the freedom they bought us with their courage and their blood.

It would also be fitting to spend some time reading, not about the entire operation, but just one part of it.  There are too many stories to list, but here are a few: the floating tanks that failed and drowned their brave crews, the Navy destroyers that moved in on their own initiative, scraping their bottoms to provide fire support, the generals who led frightened soldiers in dashes across the beach.

D-Day was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe, but only the beginning.  There would be weeks of hard fighting to break out of Normandy, including an actual bayonet charge.  There was the war of the hedgerows.  And there was the beginning of the massive logistical effort that was still never quite enough, struggling to keep up with the armies that would soon move across Europe.

The Greatest Generation failed us in one way.  In their modesty, they failed to teach us about what they had endured, what sacrifices they had made, and why.  And so when the 1960s came, the Left was able to drive a wedge between that generation and their children.  It is time now for us to step into that breach, and reconnect the youth of our country with the free Constitutional Republic that Chesterton called "the only nation ever founded on a creed."  For ourselves and our posterity, we owe that generation nothing less.