What Free Men Will Do: 75 Years On, Lessons From D-Day for Today’s Army
Col. Cole C. Kingseed, U.S. Army retired
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Seventy-five years ago, the Allies stormed the Normandy beaches to confront Nazi totalitarianism and liberate Europe. D-Day, June 6, 1944, was a watershed event in World War II and arguably the defining moment of the 20th century in the West. To paraphrase Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: American soldiers, in conjunction with America’s allies, came for one purpose only, not to gain anything for themselves, not to fulfill any ambitions that the United States had for conquest, but to preserve freedom—systems of self-government in the world … to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world. It just shows what free men will do rather than be slaves.
By any standard, D-Day was the most complex and daring military operation in the history of Western warfare. By the time the full moon rose above the blood-stained French beaches, nearly 156,000 Allied soldiers had been deposited on the Continent. It was the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany. But why is D-Day relevant to today’s American Army? What lessons can our fighting force derive from what Eisenhower termed “the Great Crusade�
https://www.ausa.org/articles/what-free-men-will-do-75-years-lessons-d-day-today%E2%80%99s-army
