IN THE EERIE glow of a foggy morning, just before dawn on June 6, 1944, thirty American soldiers stood huddled together in a rectangular plywood boat. Cold spray splashed the men’s faces as the small craft, which had no roof and looked a bit like an open shoebox, rolled up and down in the choppy waters of the English Channel. The men had just eaten breakfast and many began to feel seasick. Others hunkered down under their netted metal helmets, trying to keep calm as they waited for first light to accomplish their mission.

The number painted on the side of the boat was PA26-24. That meant it was twenty-fourth of the small landing crafts lowered into the water that morning by the USS (APA26), a huge attack transport ship anchored eleven miles offshore. PA26-24 was one of 839 Higgins boats filled with young soldiers who would soon storm the beaches of Normandy, France. World War II was in its fifth year, and people all over the world wondered if it would ever end. More than 5,000 Allied boats and ships waited in the water with PA26-24. The Allied mission was to liberate France from Nazi Germany.