Seventy-five
years ago
June
6, 1944
They
went across the Channel
And opened
the door
To the
liberation of France
And the
defeat of Hitler’s Germany
But D-Day
on the beaches
Was a
close thing in Normandy
American,
British, Canadian forces
Were
involved that day
Plus
Free French elements
All going
into the fray
In
the British-Canadian sector
The beaches
were Sword, Juno, Gold
That’s
where their troops came ashore
So youthful
and so bold
The
beaches were Utah and Omaha
In the
American sector
Utah
wasn’t too bad
Omaha
was almost a disaster
In the
first wave on Omaha was
The First
Infantry Division, the Big Red One
Veteran
of North Africa, Sicily,
And a
few wars later Vietnam
The
other first wave division
At Omaha
that day
Was the
Twenty-Ninth Infantry
The Blue
and the Grey
A
National Guard Division
Far away
from home
From
Maryland and Virginia
The Old
Line State and the Old Dominion
So
set aside a few moments
On this
anniversary
And imagine how it was
Wading ashore on Normandy
