Overlord

Today marks the 68th anniversary of the launch of Operation Neptune, the beach landing portion of "Overlord," the largest invasion ever attempted in human history. The operation marked the true beginning of the end for Hitler's European domination plans, as Allied forces grabbed a toe hold in France and began rolling up the Nazi carpet one machine gun nest and Panzer at a time.

Let us not forget, however, that the D-Day assault was not necessarily a slam dunk, resounding success. In fact, the attack ground to a complete halt for several hours on the most important beach of the day, Omaha, where many men met a shockingly bloody death at the hands of rapid-fire German machine guns and heavy artillery. Many more men lay terrified and psychologically helpless at the edge of the water or at the sea wall, huddled down to escape the almost certain death slicing the air overhead.

In the end, the beachheads managed to link up only because individual men seized the initiative and decided it was better to die taking out a German gun emplacement than lying prone at the edge of the rising tide.