Foreign Policy > D-Day

D-Day Reminds Us Who the Real Public Servants Are

Another D-Day come and gone, and another reminder that veterans deserve the benefits that politicians give themselves.

J.B. Shurk | June 7, 2026

Another D-Day anniversary has come and passed, yet the significance of the date lingers with me.  In some ways, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, receives greater commemoration than so many similarly heroic feats.  Americans had been fighting in the Pacific Theater for more than two years before arriving in France, and both the Battle of Midway and the Battle of Guadalcanal in the summer of ’42 saw some of the bloodiest combat and self-sacrifice of the entire war.  

Still, D-Day suitably binds those of us alive today to the brave generations who came before us.  As the largest seaborne invasion in history and the lynchpin to the hard work of overwhelming and ultimately defeating Nazi Germany, thoughts of our fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers storming exploding beaches covered in barbed wire while taking heavy fire from all directions remain indelible reminders that the men who fought for our freedom were of nobler, sturdier stock than most alive today.

Those men were a different breed altogether.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting quite a few over the years, and one of the first things you notice about the warriors from that generation is that they have no interest in singing their own praises.  They do not seek recognition — and certainly not adulation.  Nor do they describe lightly what they witnessed.  I think most would stop talking after merely acknowledging, “I was there.”  I’ve always interpreted that soft declaration as a polite reminder that those who read about history do not know what history feels like when the blood of fallen friends suddenly streaks across one’s face.  It is also, I think, part of an enduring promise to those friends who were lost: that their final moments will be reverently guarded and kept from prying eyes.  The living witnesses remain on duty until their final breath.

It is a very different mentality to the one we often see........

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