In military speak, “D-Day” means “the day.”

The term was used in the context of a super secret operation where only a few knew the actual date of the event. In the planning, folks would say this happens on “D-1,” meaning D minus one or the day before D-Day, or your group will do this on D+3, meaning D plus 3 or 3 days after D-Day. By the use of this D-for-THE-Day parlance, everything could be planned around the day without anyone (or, at most, a very select few) knowing the date for the beginning of the attack.

The most famous D-Day was June 6, 1944.

Seventy years ago, Allied Forces landed their troops on the Normandy coast in northern France. Those beaches were heavily fortified and soundly manned to resist and repel invasion.

Such days are not easily described. I have watched the war movies recreating the landings on those beaches and the fight up the cliffs. The images from those films do not leave my mind. They return late at night to wake me worried from sleep, the sights and sounds before me still. It was, by all accounts, a most horrible day.

The Allied soldiers were from many countries: the United Kingdom (England), the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Free Belgium (“Free” means their country was occupied and the soldiers were in exile fighting to regain their homeland), Free Czechoslovakia, Free France, Free Greece, Free Netherlands, Free Norway and Free Poland.

Against those soldiers wading through the salty waters and slogging across the wet sands waited the occupying armies of the German Third Reich.

Shells exploded, bullets screeched and men fell.

On the shores of France, up the cliffs and into the fields and byways of the surrounding countryside, 20,000 men fell that day and 5,000 did not rise again. They died there, and many more died for many more days after that as the liberating forces pushed ever eastward.

There is in the memory of death a wish to forget. To remember rather the countryside quiet, the birds soaring freely in the sky. To walk between the crosses and realize that wish to forget, as much as we would want it to be, cannot and should not be realized. The blood of brave men is not forgotten, nor should it ever be.

I have never heard of another D-Day.

I think the term fell from use.

Once was enough.

I hope so.

With so many others.

On this, the memory of that D-Day.

I hope so.

Grandpa Jim