My grandfather, Charles “Charlie” Truman, didn’t think he would ever see his pregnant wife again when he and 150,000 other Allied soldiers arrived in Normandy on June 6, 1944, in an effort to rid France and the rest of Western Europe of the Nazis.
However, the choice he took the previous evening proved to be life-saving.
At the age of 26, he was one of the first 150,000 Allied soldiers to land on Sword Beach as part of Operation Overlord, the historic invasion of northern France that would ultimately signal the start of the Second World War’s end.
Troops were told to leave their bags behind when they climbed aboard the landing craft the night before the assault.
Despite the overwhelming uncertainty of his future, my grandfather, or grandpa as I called him, chose to hold onto one item: a silver frame with a photograph of his wife Joyce.
My aunt, their first daughter, was due in five months.
A few hours after making that snap choice, at dawn, he was running hard and fast, landing on the Normandy shore and heading inland.
The German bunker complex, known as Hillman, was their target.
