None of my relatives stormed Normandy that I know of. My grandfather had my dad stay home and work the farm while his brothers, my two uncles joined the Army. The older was wounded in N. Africa. He survived OK but walked with a limp the rest of his life. The younger uncle made it through unscathed.

My first step-father was in the Navy in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. He didn't talk about it much, only to say that he and everyone around him ran like hell in a panic when the bombing began until the alarms sounded for all to get to general quarters (battle stations) - if they could find them. He never spoke anything else of it the rest of his life.

My second step-father joined the Marines because that uniform was a "girl getter." It also got him a long ride in the Pacific where he was lucky enough to survive two island invasions with his small artillery crew. He had the fun job of dragging the wheeled cannon off the landing craft and up the beaches where they shelled fortified Japanese positions. Then he got malaria and was shipped to San Francisco and missed the next island invasion where a lot more Marines were killed. The war was about over when he recovered.

He related a funny story of going with my mom to her 40th high school reunion. He wasn't familiar with that part of her background. Mom attended Auburn high school with a lot of Japanese-American classmates (who were interned during the war and lost their farms in the valley). My step-dad said when he walked into the reunion gathering place he couldn't decide if he should start shooting or take cover. I could forgive his long-term racism, mis-directed as it was considering how Mom's Japanese friends and their families were treated during the war.