Last year was a major remembrance of D-Day because of the human tendency to lend additional significance to anniversaries divisible by ten. We seem to favor the ones representing quarters and halves of centuries, too.

This is one of the oddball years: 81 of them since Allied troops surprised German war planners as well as ground forces by staging a massive invasion on the beaches of France's Normandy region. These were the first steps of British, Canadian and American forces on their way to victory over Nazi Germany. Other Allied nations were there, too, such as Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, Norway and more.

Every step onto those shores came at a brutal price, an investment in........

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