Every June 6, and every Dec 7 for that matter, I try to do a little thinking about why those dates are significant. Just take a few minutes to remember the sacrifices made for us in these later generations. Sometimes I look at a book about the events of those dates, or see if any of the cable channels are running documentaries I haven't seen. This year, thanks to this spiffy new buz.mn site, I got to hear my old Saturday morning TV buddy from the late 50s, newsman Robert Trout, read initial reports coming "from German sources." Eerie sort of, especially when they describe Allied landing craft observed around the Normandy peninsula. I was getting flashes from the first 30 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan" at that point. Despite the pondering of the network's military analyst that these reports might be a Nazi ruse, we know enough today that "landing craft" and "Normandy" and "June 6" used in the same paragraph eventually spell lights out for Hitler. What a terrific way to touch base with the events that make this day of monumental historic importance. Thank you!

Congratulations to Mr. Lileks (new editor!) and thanks for that wonderful recording from D-Day. Out here in Hawai'i the big historical news is the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, which avenged Pearl Harbor and was the turning point in the war against Imperial Japan.

There is at least one Hawai'i connection with D-Day. At Pearl Harbor, the battleship Nevada sank near the entrance to the harbor after being hit by numerous torpedoes and bombs. There is a memorial to her dead in the harbor now.

She was salvaged and returned to the line of battle in 1942. On June 6, 1944, Nevada's 14-inch guns opened fire on German positions in support of American troops landing at Utah Beach.

I saw an item elsewhere that said XM radio was doing a real time D-Day broadcast, using the original news reports from NBC radio. No XM for me, but it would have been interesting listening.

I take my father-in-law to reunions of his WWII unit--437th Air Transport Wing, the guys who took the 82nd Airborne to Normandy by glider and parachute on D-Day. Interesting men, to say the least. One glider pilot spoke of "how lucky" he was, being in the first wave, before daylight, because the later-arriving gliders could be seen better and really got hammered. Sounded like his landing 50 yards from a German machine gun was a cakewalk, until he casually mentioned, "my co-pilot was dead" and some other details. This guy also spoke of landing a small observation plane on a tennis court in Paris to meet some girls who had waved at his plane. (He was getting in his mandatory monthly flying time between glider landings.) He and a buddy partied with the girls took down several tennis nets and had the girls hold the tail of the plane in the air--so they just might make it airborne. They bounced off a tree into the air instead of crashing. He told the stories with equal understatement. To make tale more intersting, the guy at the next breakfast table inquired about the reunion and said, "I'm the last member of the Flying Tigers." More stories. The 437th guys also were over Bastgone when the weather cleared, dropping supplies to the 101st Airborne Division on the ground.