Where battles for freedom were fought . . .

 My father served during World War II and was stationed in Germany after the war. He met my mother there who had fled on an American troop train to escape the Russian occupation of her German birth place in East Germany. I grew up knowing about the war and my parents shared their memories. The full impact of the final days of the war really made an impact, however, when my son and I visited the Battlefields of World War II a year ago. In the pictures are the overgrown rocks and bunkers above the beaches where the Allied troops attacked so many years ago. The battle scars are still visable and my son was able to climb, crawl, and run through the pits made by the bombs, touch the massive cannons, and see the view of the climb up from the beach made my the allied troops. It certainly made our Memorial Day more meaningful this year having stood on the ground where so many soliders died or were wounded.