My late father-in-law was a man called Jack Hillman. He was a navigator on an LST with the navy's Scouts & Raiders And he was there.
Jack didn't talk much, if at all, about his war time with his kids (my wife is the youngest one of four). Some with his eldest (also passed away now), but not much otherwise.
I have a Bill Mauldin print, drawn by the man himself, of a beach front landing with flack flying and grunts running. Joe (the one with the big nose) has dug a hole and Willie has apparently just asked what he's doing. The answer is "I'm digging for turtle eggs, junior." After all, why dig a hole on a beach being strafed and bombed?
One day, after I was married, and after his first stroke, we were waiting in the living room and he saw this. "Do you know why that's funny?", he got out after some effort. "Yes.", I said (and I have an academic idea why). And he told me this:
After coming in to Omaha beach to clear mines and land Rangers, his LST was tagged to remove wounded. On the way out, they his an uncleared mine. The ship swamped, and he was wounded. The already wounded in the loading area all drowned as the ship went down. He refused the purple heart. And he blamed himself.
He was at every major invasion you care to read about in WWII. He went into the ministry, probably for the guilt he felt over that mine. How many stories are waiting? How many stories are lost already? How many cautionary tales?
We must remember.