70 years ago today, my maternal grandfather, Bart Davis, came ashore with the first wave of American soldiers at Omaha Beach, on D-Day. He was part of a unit of engineers, tasked with trying to clear the obstacles on the beach, to prepare the way for the troops & vehicles coming up just behind him. Wounded by flying shrapnel as the Nazis in the cliff bunkers targeted these engineers specifically, he lay on the beach until he went back to England on a hospital ship. He returned to his unit just in time for the Battle of the Bulge. Though he was only in his early twenties, other guys in his unit called him "old man", because he had a wife and a little boy.
My grandfather was interviewed for Cornelius Ryan's famous book on D-Day, "The Longest Day". If you've never read this amazing, detailed work
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