. >> thank you, jebtle men. and thank you for being with us here today. we appreciate it. it has now been 70 years, three score years and ten, a biblical lifeti lifetime since the summer of 1944. for many living in the 21st serve ri, the events of the second world war have grown hazy. blurred to black and white images of tankss, artillery, glimpsed, perhaps, on late night tv. for others, world war ii is now a chapter in the history books. as such, some may conclude it was just another war. bigger, bloodier than those we watch on the evening news. but another war, just the same. that is not the case. the second world war was not in any way typical or representative of other wars. this war was not the product of a squabble. the enemy in this war, else specially the enemy in europe, was generally terrible, everyone monstrous. and would have ushered in a new dark age for all of humanity. there were many turning points in the pacific, in north africa, at stalen grad in the bloody and terrible eastern front. but of all of these, it was on the beaches of normandy on the 6th of ju