Most of the men who landed on the beaches of Normandy never spoke about it. Not to their wives. Not to their children. Not to their grandchildren.\n\nBut a few did.\n\nSFC Walter E. Smith Jr. (Omaha Beach, 1st Infantry Division), interviewed 2003, age 82:\n"I don't remember the beach. I remember the water. The ramp went down and the men in front of me went down and I was in water up to my neck. It was cold. It was so cold. And the water was red. I can't tell you a color that was red. And the tide was coming in and I could feel the bodies under my arms, hitting me, and I knew — I KNEW — some of them were alive because they were grabbing at me. But I couldn't stop. I couldn't look down. If I had looked down, I would have stopped moving. And if I had stopped moving, I would have died. So I just put my head down and walked. I walked into the wire. I walked through the wire. And I walked until I reached a hedgerow. And then I sat down and threw up. That's what I remember. The water was red and I walked through it."\n\nPFC John T. "Jack" Brennan (Utah Beach, 4th Infantry Division), interviewed 2007, age 85:\n"My grandson asked me once what I was most afraid of. I told him I was afraid of the dark for 30 years after the war. Not because of things I saw in the dark, but because of things I remembered in the dark. Every night, when I lay in bed and the room got quiet, I would see the faces of the boys who went in before me. I couldn't save them. Nobody could. And every night I would see them. For 30 years. Then one morning I woke up and they weren't there anymore. I don't know why. Maybe they just knew I had done my best to remember them."\n\nCpl George M. "Mac" MacAllister (Omaha Beach, 29th Infantry Division), interviewed 2010, age 87:\n"I went back to Omaha Beach in 1994 for the 50th anniversary. It was a beautiful day in June. The beach was full of tourists. Children were playing in the water. The sun was warm. And I stood on the seawall and I watched these children playing in the exact same water where I had watched 18-year-olds die. And I cried. I cried like a baby. Not because I was sad. Not because I was angry. I cried because I could not reconcile the world I saw in 1944 with the world I saw in 1994. And then an old French woman who had been watching me came over, took my hand, and said in English, "The water remembers. We all remember. Now there is peace." And I believed her. I still believe her."