9387

Today is the so-called "day of evil", 06/06/06. Hollywood is even releasing a new version of "The Omen" in mock commemoration. Schools in some areas took steps to increase security, most likely due to jokes disguised as threats. But there's another significant number associated with today--9387.

That's the number of United States servicemen buried in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France seen in the picture below.

For most of us it's impossible to imagine the terror, bravery and toil of that day, but thankfully, the results were pretty obvious:

Don't forget that we accomplished much of this with "inferior" battlefield hardware such as the Sherman tank, which amounted to a tin can compared with the Tiger or Panther tanks used by the Germans. We probably lost a lot of men due to that imbalance, but they improvised, perservered, and did the job anyway.

Thanks go to the D-Day troops and all the others associated with winning that fateful war and defeating ideologies that threatened the planet. Thanks also to those fighting today against modern variants of the same.

Here's a good summary of some other tributes.

MORE 6/6/06

Here's something else we should remember, as it's quite relevent to the threats we face today.