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Message: [QUOTE="Bonpland, post: 3986057, member: 6000"] My uncle jumped with the 101st that day. Never talked about the week he spent behind enemy lines before meeting up again with American troops. Never talked much about anything over the years. He and his two brothers were fighting in Europe at the same time. Hard on my grandmother. Twenty-five years later I trained with the 101st at Fort Campbell but I wasn't Airborne. Near the end of training I volunteered to a drill sergeant I met in a commissary the information about my uncle. He listened and then gathered a group around and we all drank beer until after I was due back in the barracks. Those Airborne Rangers wanted to know everything they could about any man that survived that day at Normandy. They talked about what they had already been through in Vietnam and then told me (in other more direct language) not to get me manhood shot off while wandering around with my head in the clouds. My father was a Marine in the South Pacific and as they say once a Marine always a Marine, but the 101st can give any group a run for the money when it comes to being loyal to their unit. They knew what we all should know about the men of that Greatest Generation who fought and lived and died on that beach and in its waters that no more heroic action has been taken by soldiers anywhere. It was "hopeless" but they persevered. None should be forgotten. [/QUOTE]