How You Can Honor Our D-Day Veterans

Quick answer: How can we honor D-Day veterans?

John suggests learning their stories and sharing them with younger family members, attending commemorations, visiting memorials and the Normandy beaches, supporting organizations that preserve their history, and seeking out living veterans to thank them in person while we still can.

Seventy-nine years after June 6, 1944, John reflects on walking the five Normandy invasion beaches, where the scale of what young men faced as they charged sea walls or jumped into the dark still feels unreal. Thousands didn't survive the day. As the veterans' numbers shrink, he offers practical ways to honor them. Learn the history yourself, then share their stories at your own dinner table so the next generation hears them. Attend commemorations in your community or in Normandy. Visit memorials and cemeteries, and support the organizations that record and preserve veterans' accounts. Most of all, he urges, seek the veterans out. With the 80th anniversary a year away, he writes, soon we won't be able to look them in the eye, shake their hands, and thank them for what they did for us.

Why it matters for leaders: Honoring veterans is most meaningful when it happens in person, while they are still here to hear it.

Q: What were the five D-Day beaches?

A: Utah and Omaha (American), Gold and Sword (British), and Juno (Canadian).

Q: When is the D-Day anniversary?

A: June 6. The landings in Normandy began on June 6, 1944.

Read the full article on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-you-can-honor-our-d-day-veterans-john-fenzel

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation