WoodElves

Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day.

That was the day that thousands of Allied troops - our grandfathers and great uncles and friends - parachuted into or ran up the beaches of Normandy, France in the greatest invasion of all time.


We spent some time last night watching veterans' interviews on YouTube and talking about D-Day. (See, we're even still homeschooling ourselves!)


Ambrose Redmoon has said that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.


"I heard guys say they weren't scared, but I say everybody was at least a little bit scared."

Thankfully for us, our troops at D-Day decided that freedom and the truth that no one race is higher than another was more important to them than their fear.

No matter how much we read about D-Day or watch videos about it or see museum exhibits, we don't have any concept of what it must have been like to be there.

To parachute into enemy territory while being gunned down and entire planes above you bursting into flames, risking landing in trees or worse, water...



To have the door go down on your LSI and find yourself immediately under the fire of hundreds of guns shooting down from the high ground, weighed down with all your gear in water past your knees...


To navigate through mines and bullets and the bodies of your friends...

To make your way up the beaches through constant firing, to eventually take those German guns on the ridge, to take the towns in France one at a time, to eventually sit through a frigid, bloody winter at Bastogne...



While I can't imagine what it must have been like to be there and have all of those events be my own memories, we are profoundly grateful to and reverent of the men who were.

Thank you.