I share this photograph from photographer, Robert F. Sargent onto my Facebook page every Memorial Day, but it is such a powerful image and it pretty much says it all. Imagine being an 18-20 yr.-old kid with your whole life ahead of you and heading into what must have seemed like hell on Earth. We have all seen “Saving Private Ryan” and these were the first soldiers to land on Omaha Beach in Normandy during WWII. They had to run across a beach the length of three football fields with thickets of barbed wire, 5,000 defensive obstacles and 20,000 land mines while dodging well fortified German positions. The Germans had five MG-42 gun turrets on Omaha Beach which fired 25 bullets a second, that is 125 bullets every second zig-zagging down on the beach, let alone all of the other artillery, grenades and gunfire. I don’t know how they did it, but they did and their courageous heroism changed the world as we know it. So much respect for these young men and what they had to endure. May they all rest in peace and know they will never be forgotten.