I tend to resist the term “greatest generation” and the simplistic idolatry it encourages, because the men and women who lived through the Depression and fought World War II were just that: ordinary men and women, and not the uniformly noble, steel-jawed icons we, their descendants, often imagine them to have been. Confronted with enormous and terrifying geopolitical events beyond their control, they responded with the same range of fears, doubts, and uncertainties — the same moral quandaries — that any people experience in wartime. I firmly believe it wasn’t the generation that was exceptional so much as the times in which they found themselves. And I believe many World War II vets would probably agree with that assessment, and say that they just did what they had to do.

Nevertheless, when I think about the D-Day landings — in particular, when I think about the poor bastards who were in the front row when those ramps dropped and the German machine guns opened up — it’s pretty hard not to shake my head in wonder at the immensity of what happened on the shores of France on this day in 1944, at the audacity of trying to retake an entire continent with little more than manpower and sheer determination. Or perhaps resignation would be a more appropriate word. With more landing craft coming in behind, there wasn’t any going back, so they had to move forward if they were going to survive, let alone succeed. It’s impossible to think of the scenario and not wonder how I — how anyone — would behave had we been there.

I hope with all my heart nobody ever has to find out again. And I wish I could shake the hand of every man who did.