Thursday’s 80th anniversary of D-Day likely marked the final major ceremony to be attended by survivors of the Juno, Omaha, Gold, Utah, and Sword beach landings. Precious few veterans of history’s largest amphibious invasion will be present for the 90th. As they leave us, we lose the knowledge of the last Americans to experience firsthand what it took to win a war between global powers.

It took guts to invade Hitler’s Fortress Europe. At Normandy, Allied boys found a toehold in Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, 40 million tons of concrete stretching 3,200 miles. Manned by 300,000 soldiers and bristling with 15,000 bunkers, the Atlantikwall remains among the largest construction project ever undertaken by mankind. (RELATED: MORGAN MURPHY: The Left Have Stuck Their Claws Into The Military — But House GOP Is Fighting Back)

That toehold soon enabled men and matériel to flow into France. The United States and the nations of the British Commonwealth flooded the newly-captured beaches with all the industrial might that capitalism and democracy could produce. By June 30th, 1944, the Allies landed 148,803 vehicles, 570,505 tons of supplies, and 850,279 men in Normandy.

I had the honor of befriending one of those men: an Army tech sergeant who had been there. Like thousands of other G.I.s, Alfred Valenti entered Europe through Utah beach. The young G.I. from Bairdford, Pa., maintained Jeeps and half-ton trucks for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Army, as it massed supplies to liberate Paris and fight into the heart of Germany. “Fred,” as I called him, remembered nearly every detail of his time with the Army, from the hedgerow........

© The Daily Caller