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We always called him Cousin Richard, but he wasn't really my cousin. He was one of those relatives so distant on the family tree that you wouldn't even know he existed, if he wasn't living a few blocks away while you were growing up. He was born in 1918. He was one of the Greatest Generation. He didn't win any high-ranking medals; he committed no great feats of heroism. But he wore his country's uniform and helped save the world, along with all the others. When it was over, he brought home a Canadian girl, and last September they celebrated...

Sleepless nights Posted: June 30, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Burt Prelutsky © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com It used to be that if I couldn't get to sleep, it was usually because I'd had coffee with dinner. How I miss those halcyon times when it was simply caffeine that had me awake at 3 a.m. Nowadays, it's all the imponderable mysteries that have turned me into the poster boy for insomnia. One night, not too long ago, I found myself pondering how it was that the Greatest Generation of Americans had come to have such sluggard kids and grandkids. How can the men and women...

Defying age and the advice of local authorities, six US World War II veterans parachuted into this northern French village with youthful vigour to remember the invasion of Normandy 60 years ago. Four of the octogenarians had parachuted into Sainte-Mere-Eglise as part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, making it one of the first villages to be captured by the invading Allied troops in a daring and famous assault behind the enemy lines of Nazi-occupied France. Sixty years on, on a glorious summer afternoon, the six parachutes unfurled against the clear sky at around 4:00 pm local time...

Tristram Hunt, one of Britain's leading young historians, joins veterans on Gold beach, Normandy, as the heroes of D-Day mourn their fallen comrades and remember how they won the Allies' greatest strategic gamble They arrived at 07.25 hrs With a swelling sea beneath and 16-inch artillery shells overhead, the first wave of 6,000 British troops stormed on to this broad, sandy beachhead designated Gold. Yesterday, it basked in the morning sun, serenely stretched out between the fraying Normandy villages of Arromanches and Courseulles; 60 years ago this seascape stood as the front line between the Allied Armada and Hitler's Third...

OPINION - 20 years ago Sunday, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of D-Day, President Ronald Reagan concluded his speech at Omaha Beach saying, “We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.” This Sunday it will be 60 years since the Allied Forces stormed the beaches and took the cliffs at Normandy in what was the defining moment of the 20th century in the battle against tyranny. Each 10-year anniversary of that day grows more important as it becomes more distant. In fact, it grows more important...

My political credo is simple and many people share it: I am against phonies. A cultural establishment that (on the whole) doesn't give a damn about World War II or its veterans thinks it can undo a half-century of indifference verging on contempt by repeating a silly phrase ("the greatest generation") like a magic spell while deploying fulsome praise like carpet bombing. The campaign is especially intense among members of the 1960s generation who once chose to treat all present and former soldiers like dirt and are willing at long last to risk some friendly words about World War II...

Can my generation ever repay the sacrifices made by our parents and grandparents? Yes, and no. We baby-boomers can never completely understand the suffering our grandparents and parents endured during the Great Depression. Trying to feed their families anyway they could, men would sweep the streets and clean toilets. They would do anything they had to do to buy milk or bread for their children. Yet, through these troubled times, the crime rate was low, dispelling the notion that poverty is the cause of crime. Never had so many Americans felt poverty like that experienced in the years leading up...

Statement by Maj. Dick Winters Former Commander of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne Division(title edited for length) WASHINGTON, DC - Maj. Dick Winters (U.S. Army Ret.) issued the following statement regarding the President's support of men and women serving in the armed forces: "The President's actions on behalf of our servicemen and women show his deep respect for all who wear the uniforms of our armed forces. President Bush has overseen a 21 percent increase in military pay since taking office and has ensured that our troops in the field have what they need to win the...

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas - Surrounded by a group of veterans who have come to be known as the "greatest generation," the Marines' top officer praised America's soldiers in Iraq on Sunday as being made of the same right stuff. "Once again another 'greatest generation' has stepped forward," Gen. Michael Hagee, the commandant of the Marines, said in a ceremony at the National Museum of the Pacific War on the 62nd anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. "They don't want to die, but they are willing to," continued Hagee, who grew up in this small Hill Country city. "That is true honor....

The D-Day Speech--History Revised? On the 40th Anniversary of D-Day, President Ronald Reagan addressed a group of World War II Veterans at Pointe du Hoc, France. This speech is available all over the web in what I believe may be incomplete form.  I have decided to post it on my web site in it's "unabridged" state.  I have taken my copy from National Review's American Classics, copyright 1998 by National Review.  In my opinion, what has been left out of the speech almost universally on the Web (and speculation about why) is more interesting than the version you find on...