re: D-Day: June 6, 1944

Fun fact: most WWII vets hate the greatest generation title

My Uncle fought in the Bocage.

Wish I knew how to post pics here ... my grandfather was a pilot on D-Day over Normandy. One of a handful selected to fly with the Royal Air Force; flew a Spitfire.

eta: someone posted the true fact that the mission was to be for June 5. My grandfather was sick with some type of ear issue ... had it taken place on the 5th he wouldn't have flown but he was patched up and released for flying and was able to fly June 6.

I have the prayer book of my grandfather's brother ... they were apparently all given one prior to being shipped out. Pretty cool thing to have.

My grandfather was a lineman in the European theater. He came in after D-Day and ran communication lines.

ETA: I don't know much beyond that because he passed while my mom was still in high school.

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Pretty cool thing to have.

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My grandfather brought one of the Japanese Cavalry sabers back home with him. He gave it to me when I was 16, because he said I was the only grandchild to ever ask him about the war. Its in pretty bad shape. My dad and uncles used to play with it when they were kids and one day they broke the end off the scabbard. So my grandfather put it in the attic. It sat up there for years and got pretty rusty. He took it down after they had all grown and moved out. The leather strap is gone, but the Japanese writing on the hilt guard and the serial number on the machined blade are still visible.
[link=https://www.japaneseswordindex.com/civilian] Japanese military swords[/link]
ETA: I can't seem to get the link right, but it's a link to a page with different Japanese military swords

Wow 35 missions that's rare. For him and his crew

I like the story of Teddy Roosevelt's son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.

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Roosevelt was the only general on D-Day to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At 56, he was the oldest man in the invasion,[28] and the only one whose son also landed that day; Captain Quentin Roosevelt II was among the first wave of soldiers at Omaha Beach.[29]

Brigadier General Roosevelt was one of the first soldiers, along with Captain Leonard T. Schroeder Jr., off his landing craft as he led the 8th Infantry Regiment and 70th Tank Battalion landing at Utah Beach. Roosevelt was soon informed that the landing craft had drifted more than a mile south of their objective, and the first wave of men was a mile off course. Walking with the aid of a cane and carrying a pistol, he personally made a reconnaissance of the area immediately to the rear of the beach to locate the causeways that were to be used for the advance inland. He returned to the point of landing and contacted the commanders of the two battalions, Lieutenant Colonels Conrad C. Simmons and Carlton O. MacNeely, and coordinated the attack on the enemy positions confronting them. Opting to fight from their present location rather than trying to move to their assigned positions, Roosevelt's famous words were, "We’ll start the war from right here!"[32]

These impromptu plans worked with complete success and little confusion. With artillery landing close by, each follow-on regiment was personally welcomed on the beach by a cool, calm, and collected Roosevelt, who inspired all with humor and confidence, reciting poetry and telling anecdotes of his father to steady the nerves of his men. Roosevelt pointed almost every regiment to its changed objective. Sometimes he worked under fire as a self-appointed traffic cop, untangling traffic jams of trucks and tanks all struggling to get inland and off the beach.[33] One GI later reported that seeing the general walking around, apparently unaffected by the enemy fire, even when clods of earth fell down on him, gave him the courage to get on with the job, saying if the general is like that it can't be that bad.[citation needed]

When Major General Barton, the commander of the 4th Infantry Division, came ashore, he met Roosevelt not far from the beach. He later wrote:

While I was mentally framing [orders], Ted Roosevelt came up. He had landed with the first wave, had put my troops across the beach, and had a perfect picture (just as Roosevelt had earlier promised if allowed to go ashore with the first wave) of the entire situation. I loved Ted. When I finally agreed to his landing with the first wave, I felt sure he would be killed. When I had bade him goodbye, I never expected to see him alive. You can imagine then the emotion with which I greeted him when he came out to meet me [near La Grande Dune]. He was bursting with information.[34]

By modifying his division's original plan on the beach, Roosevelt enabled its troops to achieve their mission objectives by coming ashore and attacking north behind the beach toward its original objective. Years later, Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic action he had ever seen in combat. He replied, "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."

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He was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Wiki

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Barbellthor

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True and back then it was the Army Air Corp, no air force yet......

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Actually it was the "Army Air Force" by the time we entered WWII. It was changed from "Army Air Corps" to "Army Air Force" in June 1941. It was still a part of the army until 1947 when it became it's own independent branch under the name US Air Force.

Both of my granfathers and many uncles served in WWII.

I have a Japanese sword my grandfather brought back with him. I'm not sure I needed to ask how he got it. Neither ever spoke about the war except the day they toured the WWII museum, right before both died. One of the coolest days of my life.