73 years ago today, their courage overcoming their fear, men and women in their teens and twenties from France, England, Canada and America floated on silken parachutes and dropped noiselessly in gliders through an inky, black night laced with tracer fire into an unknown land and the epic battle for Freedom. Hours later, queasy from the swells of the English Channel, amidst the smell of diesel, death and gun powder other young soldiers–the Greatest Generation–poured from landing craft on Juno Gold, Sword, Utah, and bloody Omaha Beaches along the coast of Normandy in defense of Freedom. We salute them. We thank them. Now, it is our turn. We will not let them down.