Remember.

Ten years after he participated in the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach as a lieutenant colonel in the 2nd Ranger Infantry Battalion, Major General James Earl Rudder returned to Pointe-du-Hoc with his 14 year-old son ...

“It sure is pretty now, with the waves and everything,” the boy said. “You’d never think there was any fighting here,” The late-morning sun had finally started to eat through the haze, and you could begin to feel its warmth. It was quiet on the deserted beach. with just the soft rhythmic slur of the waves and the occasional cry of a wheeling gull.

“I want you to try to picture this. Bud,” Rudder said, turning again to look along the length of the beach and sweeping it with his right arm, “A lot of American boys died here.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“You’ve got to picture this whole beach covered with all kinds of equipment, with boats and trucks and jeeps and tanks, a lot of them wrecked, and with American soldiers, and the Germans firing into them from the high ground and a smoke haze over everything.”

Rudder paused, and then said to the boy,”You remember General Cota, Bud?”

“Yes, sir.”

Major General Norman D. Cota, of Philadelphia, was assistant commander of the 29th Infantry Division and took the 116th Regiment into Omaha on the right flank of the 1st Infantry Division. Later he became commander of the 28th Infantry Division. and Rudder led the 109th Regiment, under Cota, through the Bulge and on to Germany.

“Here’s where he did his good work, getting the boys up off the beach,” Rudder said. “A lot of them just froze from the horror of it, and he got them up.”

“Is he the one gave me that toy watch?” the boy said.

“His wife gave it to you.”

“I remember.”

They walked along the beach together, not saying anything, the boy swinging the mask at his side and watching the white waves slush up on the sand. Then the father turned back toward the smooth white stones at the foot of the sea wall and the boy followed him. When Rudder reached the stones he kneeled down. With one hand he began to pore among them, to the smaller stones underneath. “Here,” he said, handing three or four to the boy. “Put these in your pocket.”

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