“I shall never forget that beach,” Corporal William Preston, who had come ashore at dawn in an amphibious tank, wrote to his family in New York. Nor would he forget one dead soldier in particular who caught his eye. “I wonder about him,” Preston added. “What were his plans never to be fulfilled, what fate brought him to that spot at that moment? Who was waiting for him at home?” Destiny had also sorted them, and would sort them again and again, until that hour for which they were born had passed.
