June 6: 75th anniversary of D-Day.
The heroism of the 1944 invasion of Normandy is remembered in the classic film The Longest Day, which includes a depiction of Father Francis Sampson, the “Parachute Padre,” who was among the 15,500 soldiers who jumped behind enemy lines. “Probably no chaplain, Catholic or otherwise, saw more of the horrors of the hedgerow campaign than Francis Sampson,” wrote Father Donald Crosby in Battlefield Chaplains: Catholic Priests in World War II.
Also, look for the 75th anniversaries of the Liberation of Paris on August 19-25, 1955, and the Battle of the Bulge, which began December 16, 1944.
+© Coast Guard photo by CPHOM Robert F. Sargent | PD