Enemy action still raged on Saipan when 10 American Army nurses landed there on July 9, 1944. Major (then Captain) Birdie Daigle was in command of the group, who found an utterly destroyed landscape and 900 wounded civilians.

George Benton Turner joined the US Marine Corps in 1918, but World War I ended before he shipped overseas. When World War II broke out, Turner, now in his early 40s, once again volunteered to fight for his country, this time enlisting in the US Army in October 1942.

One of two remaining WWII Medal of Honor recipients, Charles Coolidge, passed away on April 6, 2021 at the age of 99. He was awarded the Medal for his actions in France in 1944.

This column is the first of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy. 

Historians have debated the logic of fighting to liberate Brest, with some arguing that it would have made more sense to simply bypass the city and isolate the garrison.