Natural Omaha Beach

I grew up on the beaches. When I was a kid, my father took us to Ocean City and Atlantic City in the summer. Then we moved to Florida. As a teenager in the '60s, I spent much of his free time in Cocoa Beach, New Smyrna and Daytona beaches. I thought I knew something about the beaches. Earlier this year, I took my wife to France for our 20th anniversary. I love Scotland. She loves France. We were in Scotland a lot, so I figured I owe to her. That's why I took her to France.

Paris was great. I liked very much. But I really wanted to go to Normandy and see the beaches, where the soldiers of America, Britain and Canada, came ashore in 1944. I was surprisingly unprepared for the emotional wave that swept over me.

My father was an American soldier, mother English girl. They hooked up at the beginning of 1944 in England and had married before they were sent to France as part of the Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944. He was a member of this great army of the United States waiting for orders to invade France and begin a campaign against Germany. He did not land on D-Day. My dad was a supply sergeant, came ashore three weeks after the infantry made their landing on the Normandy coast. I always knew that my father was not the infantry, and was not a war hero. He was a delivery boy, who later became a prison guard, had the job because of all the German soldiers who surrendered in such large numbers as they searched for a way out of the war. Nevertheless, he landed on the beaches of Normandy, and I was able to go out there and see where he is the real heroes of the Second World War went down in history.Read More