D-Day was a great achievement. They knew that. But somehow it did not seem cause for celebration, or not exactly, or not yet. Going to church was the only way they could think of to honor the tragedy and loss, which they sensed though they did not yet know the full extent: the Allied soldiers bobbing facedown in the water, drowned under their packs; the Rangers shot down as they dug handholds with their knives to scramble up the cliffs; the bodies on the beaches; the pilots who crashed in the fog and the smoke; the parachutists who drowned in marshes. It was the only way they could think of to
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