If you’ve ever been to Normandy in early June of any given year, you probably saw something that’s not all that common. Around the anniversary of the D-Day invasion on June 6, the whole place turns into a love-fest for America. Or at least it used to. After what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did on his visit this year, I’m not sure that will ever happen again.
I’ve been there during the annual commemorations, and it’s a very moving experience. If you’ve seen movies like “The Longest Day” or Saving Private Ryan,” you have some idea of what it was like, but when you personally come in by boat and sail along the coast near the beaches where the Allied troops landed 82 years ago, it really hits home. It must have felt like a suicide mission but they did it anyway. There were more than 10,000 casualties among the Allied troops who stormed the beaches that day, with about 4,400 killed, 2,500 of them Americans. The best estimates of German casualties are between 4,000 and 9,000 killed or injured.
