Robert Young (top left), and his brother Fred as teenagers a couple of years before they left home to serve in World War II. Younger brother, Herbert, went on to serve in the Korean War. They are shown with their mother, Julia, and the family pet. (COURTESY PHOTO)
Robert Young at the Legends of Allied Operations sculpture in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, in the late 1990s. (COURTESY PHOTO)
Robert Young (top left), and his brother Fred as teenagers a couple of years before they left home to serve in World War II. Younger brother, Herbert, went on to serve in the Korean War. They are shown with their mother, Julia, and the family pet. (COURTESY PHOTO)
Robert Young lays a wreath by the American landfall Omaha Beach monument. (COURTESY PHOTOS)
Robert Young at the Legends of Allied Operations sculpture in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial at Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, in the late 1990s. (COURTESY PHOTO)
By June 1944, my father, U.S. Army 62nd Artilleryman Robert Young, a radio operator, was already a veteran of several campaigns in the beginning days of the U.S. involvement in World War II. He was one of thousands who’d prepared for D-Day, billeted in England in a sealed camp, the surrounding countryside and villages evacuated in order to keep secret the planned allied invasion of German-occupied France.
Dad was 20 years old those 75 years ago, and while his youth didn’t impress me when I was a teenager and heard his war stories, now I look at my eldest grandson, who is the same age, and it hits home how very young and vulnerable my father and his companions were, babes in the woods with the fate of the Western world on their shoulders.
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Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
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Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.