Something To Think About Thank you, 6/6

Seventy years ago my uncle, Sergeant Hugh A. Merrell, of the 12th InfantryRegiment, 4th Infantry Division came ashore on Utah Beach, Normandy France.  Before leaving England a future president addressed my Uncle and his comrades.  I don't know if my uncle ever saw him, but  the success of the landing on Utah Beach owed much to the son a former president, General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who famously declared, after discovering that the troops had landed about a mile South of their intended target, "We'll start the war from right here." I don't know, I'd like to think Uncle Hugh Allen was near enough that he could have heard Capt. Kaye.  Kaye was reading his New Testament, when one of the soldiers said, "If what you're reading is any good, how about sharing it with us?" Kaye did.  He read from John 14, "Let not your heart be troubled . . ." Uncle Hugh Allen was likely involved in the "Hedgerow war," as the troops literally slogged through a patchwork of lowland fields surrounded by massive, ancient hedgerows, when his baby brother, my dad, Audley N. (Doc) Merrell enlisted.  Some of those who came ashore with my uncle, fought along side my dad about half a year later.  The middle brother, Uncle Mc, Horton  McNeely, had already been in Olive Drab for a year-and-a-half.  He was taken prisoner of war about the time my dad was being deployed.  He emerged with Tuberculosis, and failing eyesight that soon led to total blindness.  It is almost certain that Uncle Mc(arm behind back) and my Dad (smiling) entered the European Theater of Operations across the Beach their brother had helped secure.  If they had known, and been able, they likely could have gotten to their brother's grave in an hour or two.  Until a year ago, when my brother, some of his family, and I visited Uncle Hugh Allen's grave, that was as near as any family had ever been. One history of the Normandy Campaign records,  "On 6 July, General Collins threw in the 4th Division, on a front mainly west of the Carentan-Periers highway. A 500-yard advance brought the 4th Division up to the first of three enemy MLR's [major lines of resistance]."  I assume that it was in this offensive that Sergeant Hugh A. Merrell died.  Less than a week later, General Roosevelt died from a heart attack.  He, Uncle Hugh Allen, and 9,385 others, are buried in the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach.  Another 1,557, who died, but whose remains were not recovered, are also memorialized there. To those who gave so much, THANK YOU. It's STTA.