It was 65 years ago today…

It was 65 years ago today that the Allied forces launched the invasion of Normandy. The D-Day Invasion was the major turning point in WWII.

So this got me thinking. With the passing of the majority of the Greatest Generation how long will we continue to mark the years of this event? Why do we celebrate the passing of death and destruction? Just asking…

I was also thinking about my grandpa Steve. He was a US Marine Corps in the Pacific during WWII. Grandma Kay was having a wild and crazy time in Chicago, in case you were wondering. Here was this farm kid from Wisconsin, who during the Great Depression road the rails to find work (one time all the way to Hoover Dam, but he was too young so they would not hire him and his uncle who was traveling with him was too old to be hired), out in the middle of the Pacific and a long way from home. He once said that he would get promoted in rank and then he would do something stupid so he would get in trouble and demoted.

Below are some photos of him and grandma from the 1940s and some money that he brought back. How he got German and French money is anyone’s guess (perhaps a relative- his brothers were also in the service, but then perhaps out in the Pacific- money does make the world go around, especially during a war). He did not talk about the war that much, there were other things to talk about like his garden or fishing or baseball, but once he told me that he saw some Kamikaze pilots and actor Tyrone Power.