D-Day: Over Normandy

Funding for this program provided by... What's important to me -- and Jess's dad helped remind me of that the first year that Jess worked for us -- one of the best moments of their life was when Jess got her first paycheck, and they went out to dinner, and this young lady paid for it.

[ Voice breaks ] That's what's important.

Additional support provided by... My name is Bill Belichick.

I've been very fortunate to be a professional football coach for many years now.

It's a career I continue to feel very passionate about and one that I became interested in at a very early age thanks to my father.

The biggest influence in my life has been my dad, Steve, who played in the National Football League and was also a football coach for 50 years at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

That's where I grew up and learned much about the game.

Like millions of other men of his generation, my father, who passed away in 2005, served his country in World War II.

Dad was in the United States Navy.

He spent time in both Europe and the Pacific.

The men and women of the World War II generation, such as my father, are responsible for all we have today, including my own opportunity to be a professional football coach.

The following is the story about one day in World War II, June 6, 1944, D-day... a time of both heroics and horror experienced by teenagers and young men.

Many locations still show the marks of battle decades later.

This film brings us unique views of the landscape of Normandy, France.

Intertwined are the stories of the men who fought on these beaches and among these French villages to preserve our freedom.

On June 5 on the southern coast of England in towns, villages, seaports, and airfields, tens of thousands of men are about to board planes and ships, ready to begin the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis.

We'd had briefings for several days, and so we knew that this was the invasion of Normandy.

General Eisenhower visited our unit down in the marshaling area.

We were in a compound behind barbed-wire fences, couldn't talk to anyone.

In our training, we were told, you know, the old story -- "Look to your right.

Look to your left.

Only one of you is going to survive."

I'm only 18 years old.

What the hell did I know about anything?

And so I really...

I had no idea that this... how big an invasion this was.

The paratroopers were among the first to leave, heading across the English Channel in the late hours of June 5, taking a route that would drop them over Normandy's Cherbourg Peninsula.

Below them, thousands of ships filled with American, British, Canadian, and other Allied landing troops, were also headed for France.

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory!

I was sitting where I could look out the door, and as far as I could see, there were ships -- battleships, cruisers, PT boats.

I told someone, I said, "I swear, I think they were even some canoes in the bunch."

Everything heading towards France.

Everything England had.

And then when I could look up, the sky was full of airplanes.

Yeah, see, looks like you could walk over there on the ships.

When we went on the plane, there was very little noise.

No talking whatsoever.

You hear people say, "Well, I wasn't scared."

Don't let them kid you.

When your life is on the line, everybody's scared.

The pathfinders were the first to jump on D-day.

Over 300 of this special force parachuted around villages and towns with names like Chef-du-Pont, Amfreville, Sainte-Mre-Eglise.

and Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

Men such as the 88nd Airborne's Bill Hannigan headed for fields and villages behind Utah Beach in support of one of D-day's first missions.

The early arrivals jumped into Normandy to help guide in C-47 planes carrying their fellow paratroopers in the early morning hours of June 6.

They just told us it would be a dangerous mission.

And a pathfinder goes in a few hours ahead of the rest and sends up a homing device.

It's a device that you put in the ground.

And when you put it in the ground and set it, you can't see it, but the pilots could in the distance.

We came in low and fast -- too fast and too low -- and we hit the ground quickly, which we liked, but it was dangerous.

This is not a fuzzy arrangement.

This is the real McCoy.

And you wonder if this was your wisest move.

Maybe it wasn't.

[ Dramatic music plays ] One vital objective on D-day for American paratroopers was the 11th-century French town of Saint-Mre-Eglise, which was a key road junction.

Henry "Duke" Boswell of the 82nd Airborne was bound for the town, as was fellow paratrooper Emmett Nolan of the 101st Airborne Division.

It needed to be taken to prevent German counterattacks from reaching Utah Beach to disrupt the eventual troop landings there at 6:30 a.m. Just before we got to Sainte-Mre-Eglise, they had a big cloud bank thousands of feet high, and all the planes just disappeared into it.

The pilots that were flying us, this was their first mission.

Our original drop zone was Sainte-Mre-Eglise.

We parachuted into Normandy, landing about 2:00 in the morning not too far from Sainte-Mre-Eglise.

I jumped, and of course, you jump with a group of people.

But then when you started coming down, you're all by yourself.

There's no one right near you.

The wind scatters you.

By the time you got dropped, 15 men traveled probably from half a mile to a mile.

So, we were strung out all over that Cherbourg Peninsula.

They were shooting at us.

Machine guns, antiaircraft.

We could see the tracers coming up.

I got out of my chute.

I got my rifle assembled.

And we missed Sainte-Mre-Eglise.

I can remember, when I landed, I landed in a tree.

And I didn't know...

It was pitch black.

I understand that we were the only unit that landed on our correct drop zone, the 505.

The others had missed theirs, some by a little, some by a lot.

Scattered all over, soldiers from different divisions, regiments, and units gathered into small groups and headed out for the nearest objective.

And we were involved in a battle right away with the Germans.

One of the companies had jumped right over Sainte-Mre-Eglise.

And they came down over the town.

Some of them landed in the trees.

They were shot by the Germans, who were right there, before they could get out of the harness.

Walked into Sainte-Mre-Eglise and saw John still hanging on the tower.

I thought he was dead.

He had been wounded, and they later got him down.

At 4: 30 in the morning, the battalion commander raised a flag over Sainte-Mre-Eglise, over the city hall, so that was quite an accomplishment.

So we had that town liberated.

Then we had to hold it.

Our job was to block the crossroads and the bridges and keep more Germans from getting down to the beach to drive our people off.

There were several attacks on Sainte-Mre-Eglise by the Germans.

And the 3rd Battalion, the '05, was able to repulse the attacks.

All around Sainte-Mre-Eglise and the small hamlets and towns of Normandy were what the French called the bocage, also referred to as the hedgerows.

The majority of villages in the region were surrounded by farmland.

And these ancient hedgerows, dense vegetation, and trees growing up from mounds of soil sometimes rose to 30 feet in height.

Dating back to the 16th century, the hedgerows were natural borders that kept the cows in the fields and defined property lines of the farms.

They were so thick, you couldn't see anything.

The bocage in Normandy was so dense that an American paratrooper could be standing just a few feet away from a German soldier on the other side and have no idea each other was there.

It was an unnerving way to fight.

You had to fight your way through a century or two of growth on them.

82nd Airborne paratrooper Bob Chisolm was bewildered by the bocage.

The hedgerows was quite difficult, and our intelligence hadn't really briefed us on it, so I don't think they even knew about it.

Morley Piper of the 29th Infantry Division found the hedgerows to be an unexpected adversary.

We didn't understand the bocage.

Knew it was there, but we didn't know... the density of the... how hard it would be to penetrate it.

The Germans did.

They understood it.

They'd been there four years.

So...great for the defense, but very hard to attack.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Among the hedgerows and just about 5 miles from Sainte-Mre-Eglise was another key landing zone for the American paratroopers -- the ancient village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, which provided key exits off Utah Beach for the landings.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Dominated by a church that dates back to the 11th century, the village was a key objective of the 101st Airborne on D-day.

Like nearby Sainte-Mre-Eglise, Sainte-Marie-du-Mont had been occupied by the Germans since 1940.

It needed to be taken to prevent German counterattacks when the beach landings began.

Unknown to Allied planners on D-day was the location of four German 105-millimeter cannons just outside of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont at a place called Brcourt Manor.

Brcourt Manor dates back centuries and to this day is still owned by the de Vallavieille family.

It remains a working farm.

On D-day, the four German guns were located along this hedgerow facing toward Utah Beach.

As the landings got under way, the German guns began blasting away.

They needed to be silenced.

The difficult mission was given to 1st Lieutenant Richard Winters of 101st Airborne Division.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Winters led 11 other soldiers in the initial attack to knock out the guns defended by roughly 100 Germans in and around this field.

A trench that once ran along the hedgerow was the only route to attack the guns.

It was early on D-day mornin "Take out those guns" is the way it was put to me.

The first thing I did was go off by myself, crawl out this one hedgerow to scout it out.

After I scouted it out, I could see where a machine gun was, and I thought there was a gun in that hedgerow there.

I knew enough about where the trench was and where these guns were.

Came back and gave my orders with, "Compton, you go up this hedgerow, and I'll go up this hedgerow.

We'll split up what we have here so that if we do get pinned down, we both won't be pinned down at the same time."

And we got everybody together and set up the two machine guns we had to lay down a base affair and had Compton pop by when -- and Malarkey go out there and try to put some hand grenades on them so that... with the instructions, "As soon as you throw those hand grenades, we'll all charge," which we did, and we were fortunate enough to get in there as those hand grenades are going off.

And we got on top of them, and we got in the trench.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Just a short distance from Brcourt Manor where the four German guns were silenced is a monument recognizing Richard Winters' bravery and leadership on D-day.

The Richard D. Winters Leadership Monument was dedicated in 2012.

The monument not only honors Dick Winters' own D-day efforts, which resulted in the Distinguished Service Cross, but those of all American junior officers who displayed so much courage on June 6, 1944.

Damian Lewis played Dick Winters in HBO's "Band of Brothers."

[ Suspenseful music plays ] Around 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, the Allied beach landings got under way.

Utah Beach, on the very western end of all the invasion beaches, was the objective of the American 4th Infantry Division.

Both Philip Miret and Jim Gaff were in on the first wave as the Navy began approaching the beaches and began to receive fire from German gun emplacements and pillboxes.

Everything seemed calm until all of a sudden you were taking troops to go to the beach.

Hard to look back out there and think that we brought our boats in as close as that.

Here is a special bulletin.

The long-awaited British and American invasion began... They were everywhere.

[ Chuckles ] I mean, all kinds -- LCIs, LCTs, LSTs, destroyers.

And they were...

It was just covered with ships.

We interrupt our program to bring you a special broadcast.

Eisenhower's headquarters announces Allies land in France.

This is D-day.

Allied troops began landing on the northern coast of France this morning, strongly supported by naval and air forces.

My LST was just loaded with wounded soldiers, and the tank deck was full of cots.

A landing was made this morning on the coast of France.

When you think about it, an entrenched enemy and pillboxes looking down on the beach with machine guns and cannon -- and those soldiers crossed that beach.

It took an awful lot of guts.

The British-American landing operations against the western coast of Europe from the sea and from the air are stretching over the entire area between Cherbourg and Le Havre.

[ Dramatic music plays ] Today, a museum dedicated to the Utah Beach landings stands just off one of the key exits soldiers took on June 6, 1944, to move inland from the beach.

The Utah Beach Museum, built from an old German bunker that faced out towards the English Channel, was the vision of Michel de Vallavieille, wounded on D-day as a teenager during the fight around his family-owned Rcourt Manor.

At about the same time the landings were going on at Utah Beach, 30 miles to the east, two American divisions were also coming ashore on Omaha Beach to secure that part of the Normandy coast.

Walter Szura was with the 1st Infantry Division.

Mort Caplin was a Navy beachmaster tasked with traffic control.

The eastern end of Omaha was the responsibility of the 1st Infantry Division.

Yeah, it scared you.

You tighten up, but you don't think...

I didn't think about it.

I says, "What happens happens."

Several hundred yards of open beach and murderous German fire awaited their arrival.

A lot of firing.

Ships, planes -- strafing.

Well, how are you going to explain it?

And machine guns coming from the beach.

Climbing across little fences, things of that sort.

There was something in the water, bodies, which had been cut in pieces.

I saw a lot of bombardment on this shore.

And after the second day, we served as a hospital ship and carried casualties off of this beach into London, England.

Then there was a cement wall.

When you hit the beach, is the cement wall still there, part of a cement wall?

Lot of us guys hid there.

We were lined up in there.

And that's where I headed for.

Today, a monument to the 1st Infantry Division's heroism stands guard over the eastern end of Omaha Beach.

Nearby, the remnants of several German bunkers and machine gun nests stare coldly back at this part of the beach.

On the western end of Omaha Beach, the fighting was just as fierce as it was on the eastern end.

Hal Baumgarten of the 29th Infantry Division came ashore in the second wave.

The inexperienced 29th fought their way in just below the French village of Vierville-sur-Mer.

Crossing 300 yards of open beach was the challenge facing Baumgarten and his fellow soldiers on their preassigned landing zone on Omaha.

I got shot in the rifle.

It vibrated.

I turned it around.

My seven bullets in the magazine section saved my life.

And so I didn't get wounded until... after I hit the ground, I looked up at the pillbox number 73 on the right flank, and an 88 went off in front of me.

Ripped this cheek off.

Ripped the upper jaw off.

Hole in the roof of the mouth.

Teeth and gums on my tongue.

[ Somber music playing ] The men had not seen combat yet, and consequently, you know, they had that innocent... innocent high morale, and exceptional training, and if anybody could do it, they knew they could.

And it was interesting because they combined that rawness with their planning partner to the east, the 1st Infantry Division, which was exactly the opposite, and... You know, they had already been in two amphibious assaults and were highly, highly experienced.

And so it was a good combination of the two units because they brought two different perspectives to the whole operation.

All these guys that you knew as your friends -- you trained with them -- and there they're laying dead.

When I look at Dog Green sector, I see all the bodies.

It's...

So, it's kind of sad each time.

For example, on Dog Green sector, you know, we lost 85% casualties in the first 15 minutes.

As is the case on the eastern end of Omaha, time stands still on this part of the beach, with German gun emplacements and bunkers still intertwined with the landscape.

While the Americans fought their way ashore on Omaha and Utah, over on Gold Beach, the British began to land close to 7:30 that morning.

Frank Amalfatano was an American assigned to a landing craft responsible for bringing British troops into Gold Beach.

Well, I can remember, in front of us was a big hill.

Then there was a lot of resistance up in front of us.

And then we got into trouble that the soldiers didn't want to get out of the boats.

We used some rough language, but then we finally got them off.

Within range of Gold Beach and Frank Amalfatano's British troops were the large German gun emplacements at Longues-sur-Mer.

And there was a lot of booming, banging going on.

And I... think to myself that we were 18 years old, and we didn't know what the heck we were doing and what was going on.

By 6: 20 that morning, three of the four long-range guns had been knocked out by British naval fire.

The fourth would not be silenced and captured until June 7.

Roughly halfway between Omaha and Utah Beach in the American sector lies the 100-foot-high cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.

George Klein was with the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

And in the end of March of '43, they asked for volunteers to join the 2nd Ranger Battalion, for which I volunteered.

And seeing as I was a graduate [ Chuckles ] of the 2nd Army Ranger School, I became company commander [ Chuckles ] of Fox Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.

Klein was prepared for his mission.

Immediately before and after D-day, the Allied air effort was concentrated against military and communications targets in northern France and the lowlands.

Direct hits are scored on the target.

On D-day, George Klein and 224 of his fellow Rangers were facing what was considered to be a suicide mission -- climbing the cliffs under German fire to eliminate six big guns believed to be on the Pointe.

The mission was called the most important on D-day by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, as the enemy cannons had Utah and Omaha Beach and the ships in the English Channel within range.

Thanks to the air force prior to D-day and then shelling by Allied ships in the Channel on June 6, the Pointe is forever scarred with massive craters.

What I really wanted to see was whether or not time has worked its...its wonders on the landscape.

And it has.

I mean, it looks a lot different.

Decades later, 2nd Ranger George Klein has returned to bomb- and artillery-pocked Pointe du Hoc.

Returning to Pointe du Hoc opens up a reservoir of memories and vivid recollections about D-day.

We knew that this was not going to be anything like training.

He's the one who saved us.

On this day on top of Pointe du Hoc, Ranger George Klein finds John Siewert.

Here comes my lifesaver.

George?

Yeah.

Pleasure.

My pleasure.

Ah.

You remember what we... You remember what you did?

Oh, yes.

Huh?

Yes.

You do, huh?

You knocked the hell out of that machine-gun nest.

Took care of an antiaircraft battery gun.

We used everything we had that first day.

Siewert was a helmsman on the USS Satterlee on D-Day.

The Satterlee saw the struggles of the 2nd Rangers in getting up the cliffs.

The destroyer pulled to within 400 yards of the Pointe and pounded German positions.

I was telling somebody if... any commander had the guts to bring his ship within 400 yards of the shore today, he'd be court-martialed.

[ Chuckles ] But...it was wonderful seeing them there.

Yeah.

We were getting grenades thrown at us.

We were shooting up at whatever we could see up here, whether we could see anybody or not, until the fellas started going up the cliff.

The climb, even with a ladder, was pretty tough.

As we got up here, there were no Germans in sight except the few who were lying on the ground, and some of the Rangers were already on the ground -- wounded or dead.

We were running as...not as Fox Company.

We were running as individuals.

And I think that every...

I know that every single Ranger knew exactly what we were supposed to do.

We knew what our mission was, and it didn't make any difference whether it was being led by a company commander, a platoon leader, a platoon sergeant, or a PFC.

The mission was... mission was the same.

We could see the observation bunker, and that was the only way we were able to locate the various gun positions because our gun position was the farthest south.

We had guns number one and guns number two were our mission, along with the machine-gun nest that was behind them.

For the first time since D-day, 2nd Ranger George Klein finds himself approaching Pointe du Hoc via the English Channel.

The memories of June 6, 1944, return in waves.

For some reason, down here it's an easier feeling than it is up on top.

The memories down here are not like the memories up there.

From this distance, we were not shooting back.

Can't see anything to shoot at.

I don't know what...

If I look up there, I don't know if those are people or if that's bushes and so forth.

And that's what we saw.

As we got closer, then it was a little bit different because then we could start shooting back.

Those things look...

They look as tall as they did before, and as I said, the closer you get, the taller they get.

It turns out the guns the 2nd Rangers had been after had been moved inland to a nearby apple orchard.

Eventually, they were discovered and taken out, completing the Rangers' original D-day mission.

Of the 225 Rangers assigned the mission, 135 were dead or wounded after two days of battle.

Today, a monument on top of Pointe du Hoc recognizes the Rangers' courage and sacrifice.

Back behind Utah Beach, another fight was raging.

Just outside of Sainte-Mre-Eglise in the tiny hamlet of La Fire, Ted Morgan, a medic in the American 82nd Airborne Division, found himself right in the middle of the fierce battle.

La Fire and this bridge and causeway along the Merderet River had become some of the most important real estate in Normandy.

I think we had to be there on the scene to understand what a major objective that was.

Where the Germans were trying to get across and we were trying to push them back.

The Germans needed the 1,600-foot-long causeway to send reinforcements towards Utah Beach and the American landings there.

The 82nd Airborne was fighting to prevent that from happening.

Because that was the major bridge over which the Germans could send in reinforcements, and they weren't able to do that once we secured the bridge.

I've heard it described as one of the most important battles of the Normandy campaign.

And they lost quite a few people.

There was artillery fire, small-arms fire.

Disabled German tanks symbolize the fierce fight going on to hold the bridge.

With their weaponry, they had a...

This 88 was just an amazing weapon.

We had to be covered.

We had to take cover.

But eventually, with the reinforcements, with tank reinforcements from the beach, we were able to secure the bridge.

But it took two or three days to do that.

It wasn't a simple task.

The fields surrounding the causeway had all been flooded by the Germans to prevent paratrooper and glider landings.

Some of our men became casualties.

They drowned in the water that had flooded the fields.

The destruction of the local manor and the surrounding buildings was extensive.

Across the causeway on the German side, the ancient church in the hamlet of Cauquigny was leveled.

The entire area had become the focus of a fight that may very well determine the success or failure of the Utah Beach landings.

There was one of our troopers injured on the side of a road going to the bridge.

I remember taking care of him, and while I was taking care of him, there was a German tank coming toward us.

And he kept saying, "Morgan!

There's a tank out there!

There's a German tank coming toward us!"

And I wasn't about to leave him.

I couldn't carry him.

And I just didn't pay much attention.

And all of a sudden, the tank drew up beside us, and a German head popped out of the turret.

He looked down at us, and the casualty -- he says, "They're going to kill us, Morgan.

They're going to kill us both."

All of a sudden, the head went back down.

The tank cover closed.

The tank took off up the road... which was probably a miracle, I guess.

But that was...

I remember that vividly.

Finally, on June 9, after three days of savage fighting and hundreds of casualties, La Fire and Cauquigny were in the American hands.

Today, a monument to the fight stands near the Merderet River just yards away from the bridge.

It features an Airborne paratrooper, referred to as Iron Mike.

22 miles away from La Fire is the French village of La Cambe.

La Cambe is inland near the ancient French town of Bayeux and behind the Omaha beachhead.

Just outside of the village can be found over 21,000 German war dead from the fight in Normandy.

The German cemetery here is a quiet and somber place... men and young boys who died because of Adolf Hitler's vision for Germany.

[ German accent ] He managed to call upon some nationalist ideas.

You know, there was a First World War, which the Germans lost.

But the general feeling was that we had been unjustly treated.

So he was welcomed by the majority as a leader who takes us out of that misery after this First World War.

And by the time some people became aware which way he was going to lead us, he had enough power so the resistance was very difficult to organize.

One German soldier that I was treating hauled out a wallet and took a photograph out.

And it was of his family -- his wife and kids back in Germany.

And I thought then, and I, to this day, I felt sorry for him.

He didn't want to be there.

You know, he was forced to be there.

And here he is seriously wounded.

About 10 miles from the German cemetery, at La Cambe, outside of the village of Colleville-sur-Mer and rising above the cliffs overlooking Omaha Beach is the Normandy American Cemetery.

Over 9,300 white crosses and Stars of David mark the resting place of American soldiers -- fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands who also died in the fight for Normandy, many on D-day.

It is meticulously cared for by the French.

I'd like to say it's a very peaceful place.

But it certainly isn't the result of peaceful...in the way it is so meticulously laid out.

It's...row upon row.

Such a waste.

If there's such a thing as a waste for a good cause, this is... this is what it looks like.

And...

Anybody who thinks that... war is glorified should come here and spend some time.

He was a good soldier.

He was a rifleman.

Uh...

He was killed about 30 feet away from me by a sniper.

I'm not a hero.

Those are the heroes.

So, when they say...

I have a hard time responding to "Thank you for your service" because...thank them for their service.

I'm here.

And they... Their young lives ended a long time ago.

I remember some of the good times we had, and...

I hope they're enjoying their sleep.

Bonjour.

Hello.

Comment allez-vous?

They just wanted to thank you.

Thank you.

I think it's wonderful.

I mean, those... Really, that's tomorrow.

And if they're brought up right and taught right, I have no fear for the future of the world tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[ Speaking indistinctly ] I'm proud, proud to see that today.

It's because of what you see around here -- the crosses and the Jewish Stars.

Going back there and standing, you know, beside those crosses and knowing who is buried there -- even to this day, it's heart rendering, really.

You think of those guys.

You remember them as if it were yesterday.

It's a sad...

It's a sad occasion just to go there to visit.

I represent them.

I'm not sure that's probably the right term.

Remember them, for sure, and remember the deeds and... that -- how they died, where they died.

Yeah.

They don't grow old like we grow old.

Forever young.

Yeah, it is the common sentiment that every man you take back to Normandy says -- you know, "The only heroes are in the cemetery."

And, you know, it's...

It's unspoken, but the predominant theme when they return is that it's an honor to the men who never got a chance to grow old.

When I got out, I had to go back to high school, finish high school, and then I had to get to college.

And those were the key things that I needed to do in my life to get on with it.

The thought never comes to your mind, "Well, I'm going to do this because I'm a hero."

It's something you do because it's what you're trained to do.

It never, ever entered my mind that I was a hero.

I was just doing what I was supposed to do, what I was trained to do.

Well, you were proud of your outfit 'cause you lived up to the tradition of the outfit, you know what I mean?

Satisfaction because we had accomplished our mission.

If I contributed just a little bit to the success, you know, I'm proud of that.

There was no way that I was going to let my personal feelings or my fear interfere with completing the mission that we were given, and especially if it had anything to do with my fellow troopers.

I was not going to let them down.

The fear of letting them down was more of a fear than getting wounded or getting shot.

I was proud to be a military man during World War II.

I earned one Silver Star, two Bronze Stars for valor, and six Purple Hearts.

It was an experience that I knew would probably be...

The most important thing I did in my entire life would be part of that invasion.

The legacy of the men who fought on D-day and served in Europe and the Pacific, as my own father did, still resonates today.

Their courage, determination, sacrifice, and belief in their country and fellow man is unrivaled in our history.

Despite the passing of my dad and more and more World War II veterans each day, I hope what they humbly accomplished will always resonate with future generations.

The men and women of World War II won as a team, and that's a lesson for all of us as we too try to accomplish great and noble goals in our own lives, both personally and professionally.

Men like my father and millions of others gave so much to make sure we have that opportunity, both on June 6, 1944, and during the other momentous days of World War II.

Funding for this program provided by... What's important to me -- and Jess's dad helped remind me of that the first year that Jess worked for us -- one of the best moments of their life was when Jess got her first paycheck, and they went out to dinner, and this young lady paid for it.

[ Voice breaks ] That's what's important.

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