In the spring of 1984, 1 went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, the massive and daring Allied invasion of Europe that marked the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. I was well prepared with research on the planning for the invasion - the numbers of men, ships, airplanes and other weapons involved, the tactical and strategic errors of the Germans, and the names of the Normandy villages that in the midst of battle provided critical support to the invaders. What I was not prepared for was how this experience would affect me emotionally.

As I walked the beaches with the American veterans who had landed there and now returned for this anniversary, men in their 60s and 70s, and listened to their stories in the cafes and inns, I was deeply moved and profoundly grateful for all they had done.

These men and women came of age in the Great Depression, when economic despair hovered over the land like a plague. They had watched their parents lose their businesses, their farms, their jobs, their hopes. They had learned to accept a future that played out one day at a time. Then, just as there was a glimmer of economic recovery, war exploded across Europe and Asia. They left their ranches in Sully County, South Dakota, their jobs on the main street of Americus, Georgia, they gave up their place on the assembly lines in Detroit and in the ranks of Wall street, they quit school or went from cap and gown directly into uniform.

They answered the call to help save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs.

When the war was over, the men and women who had been involved, in uniform and in civilian capacities, joined in joyous and short-lived celebration, then immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They were mature beyond their years, tempered by what they had been through, disciplined by their military training and sacrifices. They married in record numbers, and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor and faith.

They helped convert a wartime economy into the most powerful peacetime economy in history. They made breakthroughs in medicine and other sciences. They gave the world new art and architecture. They came to understand the need for federal civil rights legislation. They gave America Medicare.

There on the beaches of Normandy, I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives are laced with the markings of greatness. At every part of their lives they were part of historic challenges and achievements of a magnitude the world had never before witnessed.

During NBC's coverage of the 50th anniversary of D-Day, I was asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press my thoughts on what we were witnessing. As I looked over the assembled crowd of veterans, which included everyone from Cabinet officers and captains of industry to retired schoolteachers and machinists, I said, "I think this is the greatest generation any society has ever produced."

I am in awe of them, and I feel privileged to have been a witness to their lives and sacrifices.

~