Once again,Dave Winer is taking on the integrity of professional journalists. (This article has been consolidated into the story, Man Bites Dog, film at eleven.

In 1944 on this day, my grandfather went ashore in the first wave at Omaha Beach. His company took over 50% casualties that day.

My grandfather landed on Omaha Beach as a platoon sergeant. Shortly afterward, he was battlefield-commissioned; he was a first lieutenant by war's end, and took a medical retirement.

I never was able to get my grandfather to talk much about that day; most of the wartime stories he told were about when he returned to the US, where he spent the last days of the war in an Army hospital. The closest he got to talking about D-Day itself was about how he met his brother a few days later.

I had often wondered why he didn't say more about the war; that is, until I got little tastes of it myself in the Navy. And then I saw “Saving Private Ryan,” and I understood all too well.

My grandfather died a couple of years ago of congestive heart failure. He took his stories with him. I don't think he could ever find the words to let them out.