Joe Picard perched atop a precarious mound of 300-plus-pound high-explosive shells as his ship churned toward Normandy's beaches. The teenager had been at sea only once before, to cross the Atlantic, and now he was sailing across the English Channel to pile into the breach that Allied forces had opened in Hitler's defenses weeks earlier, on D-Day. Smoke from the fighting still rose on the horizon, but Picard's eyes scanned the gray water below for signs of German U-boats. 'You know,' he told the soldier next to him, 'if we ever get hit with a torpedo here, they won't ever find a trace of us.' More than 80 years later, few men like Picard remain: those who participated in the boldest military operation of the 20th century and can lay claim to membership in the 'greatest generation.' Less than 0.5 percent of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War II are still alive. Before long, the great invasion of France that began on June 6, 1944'and the Second World War...
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