{"id":573891245,"date":"2019-06-06T22:35:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T02:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573891245"},"modified":"2019-06-27T10:43:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T14:43:06","slug":"the-75th-anniversary-of-d-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2019\/06\/06\/the-75th-anniversary-of-d-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The 75th anniversary of D-Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A good friend of ours is a US Army officer, a paratrooper. Five years ago, he had the opportunity to jump into France as a part of the 70th anniversary ceremonies commemorating D-Day. <\/p>\n<p>He jumped with this flag, which hangs in my office.<\/p>\n<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/photo\/june19\/june02.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a video of his jump. He went out the door of a German plane on a beautiful day over Normandy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"vimeo-player\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/98187350\" width=\"800\" height=\"438\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>That view makes it difficult to imagine jumping into the dark, knowing the enemy you&#8217;ve been training for is waiting below.<\/p>\n<p>Ernie Pyle came ashore soon after and helped people back home understand what the men and boys in Europe were up against:<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;Pyle\u2019s first column about the D-Day landings, published on June 12, 1944, gave his readers an honest accounting of how daunting the invasion had been&#8230;&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Ernie Pyle&#39;s desk is one floor below me. His personal effects are two floors away.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NAcikTWrMn\">https:\/\/t.co\/NAcikTWrMn<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/HD2jienjzK\">pic.twitter.com\/HD2jienjzK<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kennysmith\/status\/1136272756037836801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 5, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>And then, of course, Ronald Reagan talked about some of those famous exploits at the 40th anniversary:<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;We&#39;ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent&#8230; The strength of America&#39;s allies is vital to the United States and the American security guarantee is essential&#8230;&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/8IHYFfryBt\">https:\/\/t.co\/8IHYFfryBt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kennysmith\/status\/1136659130683469824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 6, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A good friend of ours is a US Army officer, a paratrooper. Five years ago, he had the opportunity to jump into France as a part of the 70th anniversary ceremonies commemorating D-Day. He jumped with this flag, which hangs in my office. Here&#8217;s a video of his jump. He went out the door of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,32,6,10,15,31,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573891245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-history","category-memories","category-photo","category-thursday","category-twitter","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573891245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573891245"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573891245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573891248,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573891245\/revisions\/573891248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573891245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573891245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573891245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}