The beaches were more interminable, the hedgerows more thickly grown and the cliffs more imposing than my 12-year-old self could have imagined before the trip my dad and I took in 2002 to see the site of the historic Normandy D-Day invasion in France.
Maybe the American, British and Canadian soldiers, who were not much older than me, also shared those thoughts as they landed by sea and air during the “Great Crusade,” as Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower coined it in his pre-departure statement on June 6, 1944.
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