D-Day explains the baby boom

The bravery and valor of young American men is usually what I take from memorials of D-Day. This year, something else has struck me like never before: the gratitude of the French for these men who liberated them of the Nazis before liberating the rest of Europe.

For freedom.
Eternal gratitude to our Allies. pic.twitter.com/MReXM8y8iv
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 6, 2024

This has to be the longest standing ovation for anyone or anything I have ever witnessed.

4000 high school students in Normandy, France standing to honor our World War II veterans.

This area in northern France has not forgotten the events of 80 years ago.

Honored and humbled… pic.twitter.com/RdZqhzpuyH
— Jack Carr (@JackCarrUSA) June 5, 2024

D-Day today.
My grandma was 11 when her village was liberated by the Americans.
Until her death at age 89, she cried when she recalled Liberation day – seeing boys that didn't look much older than she was, who had been willing to cross the ocean to free a land that wasn't theirs.
— Louise Lorent 🦬🦬 (@LorentLouise) June 5, 2024

At first, these expressions of gratitude caught me off guard. (I know that’s stupid, but back in 2003, when I picked up a college-aged French hitchhiker in Galway and asked if he had ever visited the States, he said, “French do not go to America.”) But this immense gratitude is fitting, of course.