They Fight to Liberate

I still remember how quiet and still this place was as I looked out onto the English Channel.

I would say it was the most peaceful place I have ever been.

However, what Omaha Beach is know for is certainly not peaceful.

I stood there with my Grandma. I remember her saying as we gazed out onto the English Channel, "Can you imagine those young boys climbing up these cliffs?"

I could not image, but I wanted to. I wanted to appreciate their bravery, honor their sacrifice and think on what the soldiers had to endure.

And they were young. The average age of a solider in WWII was 26.

This made me wonder who was the youngest solider at D-Day, which will be having its 75th anniversary on the 6th of June.

And the youngest solider who witnessed D-Day was Joseph Argenzio, Jr. He was just 17 years old.

Argenzio joined up at the age of 16, even changing his birth certificate to show that he was 18.

The first combat he saw was on that day June 6th 1944. He was on the first wave at the landing on Omaha Beach. He saw soldiers in front of him killed instantly by German machine guns. To avoid the same fate, Argenzio jumped over the side of the landing craft. In the process, he lost his weapon and helmet.

He eventually made it to the beach and he was able to find an enemy gun and helmet. The helmet went down to his nose.

Argenzio and his unit struggled to make it up a hill, dodging enemy fire, mortal shells and mines. They were able to flank a couple of German machine gun stations and destroy them. They eventually were able to take the hill.

After D-Day, Argenzio fought at the Battle of the Bulge and helped free prisoners at a Czechoslovakian concentration camp.

Throughout his life he continued to be honored for his service. For his two years in WWII combat, Argenzio received two Purple Hearts, a Combat Infantry Badge and two Bronze Stars. He lived to be 82.

Joseph Argenzio, Jr. and the soldiers of D-Day were certainly a remarkable group of human beings.

D-Day was costly and devastating, plans went wrong, friends were killed in front of friends, men had to advance across the fallen as freedom and victory lay ahead of them.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt said of them, “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate.”

Now, when I picture standing at Omaha Beach I imagine Joseph Argenzio, Jr. and the countless other soldiers, young and old, out in the distance of the English Channel huddled in a landing craft not knowing what lay ahead of them, but willing to go forward.