Why we should always be inspired by the heroes of D-Day

June 6, 1944, is a date that will live forever in the annals of human history. As Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Crawford writes, D-Day remains to this day the largest seaborne assault in history. Thousands of Allied troops were killed and thousands more were wounded, but the Nazis’ days were numbered.

After listening to radio reports about the landings while hiding in Amsterdam, the then 14-year-old Anne Frank wrote in her famous diary of a “great commotion in the Secret Annexe!” “Hope is revived within us. It gives us fresh courage, and makes us strong again,” she added.

Land craft, barrage balloons and ships at Omaha beach shortly after the invasion in June 1944 (Picture: Three Lions) | Getty Images

Heartbreakingly, she and her family were arrested just two months later and she died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in February the following year, just one victim out of tens of millions who lost their lives in the Holocaust and the wars of conquest launched by Hitler’s foul tyranny.

The soldiers who helped rid Europe of such evil must always be remembered. Their bravery in a most noble cause inspired the world then and should still do so today.