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Today marks the 78th anniversary of D-Day. I don’t need to explain what D-Day is to any of you. If you’re a wargamer of any age, you know all about this great and important day.

You’ve probably seen movies like Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day, or watched the HBO series Band of Brothers.

You may very well have played out the battle on the tabletop, either in small battles like the Bolt Action’s Band of Brothers scenario, or in moderate scale like Memoir ’44, or in very large scale like in the video I’m showing at the bottom of this post.

And while I don’t mean to change the tone of this wargaming website to something more serious, I do think that it’s important to take the time today to remember this day of days, to remember the sacrifices of the men who parachuted into Normandy, who ran up Omaha Beach, who drove toward Caen. Because if you were the youngest you could be (legally) to be in the war at that time, you would be 96 years old now, and there are few alive who remember, who were really there.

My grandpa went ashore at Omaha Beach, but not on D-Day. He landed there on November 1st, 1944, with the 333rd regiment of the 84th Infantry division. He would go on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Germany as a sergeant. But he wouldn’t have been able to take a boat to the great cement mulberry harbors that formed the makeshift port if hadn’t been for the fifty thousand men who fought on June 6th.

I know there are people who don’t think that it’s right to play historical wargames, or, at least, wargames where someone’s grandpa fought. I’ve written a lot about that. I personally don’t have a problem playing out such games–I got my start in wargaming through a set of Wargames Illustrated’s rules for a Vietnam War scenario. For me, it’s easy to detach myself from the reality of D-Day as it is for me to play Call of Duty and detach myself from modern warfare. I honestly don’t know if that’s healthy or not.

I do think that it’s important to, once in a while, think back on war and recognize that real people fought real battles and shed real blood.

Anyway, I’m not eloquent.

Suffice it to say that I’m grateful for the men who fought to end the tyranny of fascism. I’m grateful for the men and women not on the battlefield but very much a part of the war. And I’m grateful that there are people right now who are fighting against fascism and that many countries have learned from World War Two about how important it is not to appease but to stand up against cruel nations. It’s appalling that we have had to dust off the Lend Lease Act to aid another country in their fight for sovereignty–but I’m glad we did it. And it’s appalling that there are modern-day Neville Chamberlains who would sacrifice people to bully dictators in exchange for tenuous peace. But here we are.

Today is not a day off for much of anyone. Most people won’t even realize that today is special. I think that’s part of what I like about wargaming, though. Sure, I know silly facts about which Primarch beheaded which. But I also feel like I have a connection to the past that I may not have otherwise. I understand how close we were to losing to Hitler, how close the North was to lose to the South, how close Europe was to lose everything to Napoleon. And for that I’m grateful.

Today, may I direct you to this magnificent wargame of D-Day, put on by Little Wars TV. It’s enormous in scope and full of surprises. And it will remind you of how things could have ended very very differently.