Speaking with Harry Swartz of Fostoria, Ohio, was one of a number of highlights working on this 75th-anniversary D-Day story with our friends at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. I was able to find Harry through the kindness of Lee Adams, whose grandfather is a Normandy veteran and who helps coordinate the D-Day re-enactment every August in Conneaut, Ohio, on Lake Erie. Please consider visiting both the museum and that event. Harry was there as a scout on the shores of western France early June 6, 1944. Speaking with him viscerally connected me to those hours: the incessant German machine guns on the ridges, the beach barricades set by Rommel’s Atlantic Fortress crew, the swirling cold water. His heroic fight for survival that morning, and that of his comrades, ensured the survival of democracy, of us and our children.
