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sixty years ago today, the free world held its breath. in America , daily life paused

almost completely, subdued by the news that the invasion of Europe has begun. from the 21st

century, we try to imagine the scale of what went forward in that gray dawn after years of

preparation--the ships and men and materiel, the reserves of willpower and determination.
what we sometimes forget to imagine is the almost prayerful nature of the day , the

profound investment of hope and fear it entailed. it was a day in America and in Europe

when civilians as surely as soldiers felt the whole of their lives concentrated on the

outcome of a few hours. there has not been another time like it, when we knew that history

was about to turn before our eyes.
in a way , D-Day sums up for us the whole of World War 2. it was the frontal clash of two

ideas, a collision between the possibility of human freedom and its nullification. even

now, we are still learning what to make of it , still trying to know whether we are

dwarfed by the scale of such an effort or whether what happened that day still enlarge us.

it certainly enlarges the veterans of Normandy and their friends who died in every zone of

that war.
it tempting to politicize the memory of a day so full of personal and national honor, too

easy to allude to the wars of our times as if they naturally mirrored World War 2. the

iconic starkness of the forces that met on the beaches of Normandy makes that temptation

all the greater. but beyond the resemblance of young soldiers dying in wars 60 years apart,

there is no analogy, and that is something we must remember today as well. D-day was the

result of broad international accord. by d-day , Europe had been at war for nearly five

years, at profound cost to its civilian population. America could go it alone.
we may find the heroics of d-day stiring in the extreme. we may struggle to imagine the

special hell of those beaches, the almost despairing lurch of the landing craft as they

motored toward France. those were brave times. but it was a bravery of shared sacrifice, a

willingness to rise to an occasion that everyone prayed would never need to come again.

this is a day to respect the memory of 60 years ago and, perhaps, to wonder what we might

rise to if only we asked it of ourselves.
(from New York Times,June 6,2004)
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