D-Day

Today is the 66th anniversary of D-Day. For two years the allied forces had been gathering and training troops for an invasion of Nazi occupied France. If this invasion failed, it would be difficult for the allies to gather enough trained troops and equipment to try again.

The allies used trickery to make the Germans believe that the invasion would happen at Calais and they assembled enough men to attack the Germans at Normandy that they could “afford” to lose a large portion of them to make sure the invasion was successful. The goal was to put so many troops on the beach at one time that the Germans could not kill them all.

How do we calculate acceptable losses? The soldiers in the European Theater of Operation did not want to be part of the “acceptable losses” but they went anyway. They landed on the beaches of Normandy, they watched as their friends died beside them, yet they continued to attack the Atlantic wall of defenses prepared by the Germans.

What drives people to sacrifice their lives to protect the greater good? What makes people sacrifice anything for the greater good? It is a sense of right and wrong. It is the belief that things will be worse if the sacrifice is not made.

Today, I want to thank the families of the people who have made the ultimate sacrifice and I want to thank soldiers who are away from their families serving our country. I also want to ask that we, as individuals in the nation, look at what we are doing individually and how we are behaving politically, socially and economically to make their sacrifices worthwhile.