Power Line points to this excellent OpinionJournal piece, Too Much, Too Late - Baby boomers heap insincere praise on the "greatest generation." It really is excellent. Just a taste:

Do read it all, it's not long.

They also point to this piece by S.L.A. Marshall, "First wave at Omaha Beach." Also a good read.

I was going to try to come up with the type of longer post a day of this magnitude deserves, but the inspiration didn't hit. The average, everyday life stuff of a non-professional writer intervened. A little drive and some shopping to get my three-year-old out of the house and out of my wife's hair. A trip to the book store to look through the kid's books, we pick up a child's Disney picture dictionary and I point to the pictures and say, "A is for..."

"Airplane!" she says. Very good. And she is...getting good. Her vocabulary is getting better by the day in English and Japanese. My wife is amazed that our daughter suddenly comes up with words she doesn't remember ever teaching her. It's started. Who knows where it will all end up?

I did manage to watch some of the D-Day specials on the History Channel just now. Lots of footage, a lot in color. I've read the books and seen the movies, too. Trying to imagine what it was like...it's tough. Some of those guys were in training for a year before that day came. Now I've trained myself for things before, sometimes pretty hard, physically and mentally, too, but never for anything that I knew would have a pretty good chance of getting me killed at the conclusion. I've been pretty well scared to death, having my life pass before my eyes, too. I remember this one time, now don't laugh, I was flying into Hong Kong. Now, I had no idea what to expect, but the plane comes in over the mountains, then it does some pretty serious banking for a big airplane, and you're way down low, down to the point where you can see the tall-buildings right down on your level and you're banking around. I've never been on a plane that did this kind of maneuvering. I had no idea that that's what it was supposed to do. I'm used to long, easy descents. So I figured, "Hmmm...shit, this can't be right. This is bad. I guess we're going down. Well...OK, then..." (I asked you not to laugh!)

But we lived.

And everyone around me was calm, and no one was getting blown up, and I had had no time to think about it or prepare for it, either. So while I thought I might be gonna die, that sure wasn't the same as hitting any beaches at Normandy.

I've known some pain, but shit, I've never even had a broken bone before (/knock on wood), and anyway, I always know help is a phone call away. That's a big psychological help.

And I've been in situations where I was nervous and somewhat fearful of personal injury - like when I was entered in a karate tournament or promotion, and had to fight someone I didn't know, or was in a class and had to fight someone I did (sometimes worse, depending on the person!), but still, on its worst day that's just a game. An ounce of perspective and you can see, even at the time, that it ain't that bad.

And too, I've seen dead people, but the quiet, peaceful death of the funeral, not the violent, noisy, filthy death of the battlefield.

So I guess what I'm saying is, that even as I read the history, and watch the films, and try to put myself in their place and imagine what it's like, and though I've prepared for difficult things, felt pressure, known pain, been at fear for my life, still...I can't even imagine what it must have been like on those beaches 60 years ago today.

I do know, however, that I am grateful, as grateful as it is possible to be from this remote place with nothing to give in proof of payment for that gratitude than a few easy words on a computer screen, grateful for the life of relative leisure that that day on the beach has afforded. And I hope as my daughter grows older, and that day on those beaches passes out of living memory, that I can teach her to be grateful, too.