For Americans of a certain age … perhaps those born before 1960 … June 6 is an important day.

D-Day. In 1944.

It is not as important as we thought it was, once upon a time. But significant.

It was the day the American, British and Canadian invasion forces landed on the beaches of the Normandy Peninsula, in northwestern France. Breaking into Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” and dooming the Third Reich — which probably was already doomed, but more about that in a minute.

It has pretty much always been an event that Americans have liked to revisit, for several reasons.

–World War II remains the “Good War”, with few gray areas. The Axis needed to be brought down, and we were the guys to do it, and D-Day was a big part of it.

–The whole of it was a tribute to American organizational skills. The greatest invasion in history. All those ships and troops and parachutists delivered in a small area, with a fair degree of accuracy. So many moving parts!

–The real, if not profound, chance the Germans and their allies could throw the invasion back into the sea, at great loss. Dwight Eisenhower, overall commander, had prepared a “failed invasion” announcement in which he took all blame.

–The media surrounding it. The movies, like The Longest Day — which I have seen about 25 times. And the books. The TV.

I distinctly remember watching, with my grandmother, who had been born in 1890, a CBS production — on June 6, 1964 — entitled “D-Day Plus 20 Years”.

I tended to spend a night a week at her house, and she indulged me (root beer floats!) and I hope I provided some decent company. Anyway, she may have known that I was already a history fanatic, and she had CBS up when the D-Day show came on.

(I know it was CBS because I remember Walter Cronkite‘s voice. And I remember this wonderful music, which I immediately liked, and didn’t hear again for a few years, and it was the final swell of Aaron Copland‘s Appalachian Spring.)

So, yes, back then we knew D-Day well. We knew about particular units involved. (The Fourth Division, the 29th Division, the Big Red One, the 101st Airborne, the 82nd Airborne.) Many  of us knew someone who had gone ashore that day, in 1944.

In 1964, they were in the primes of their lives.

Now, only a few survive, and even the youngest are nearly 90.

I consider it important enough to have visited the Normany beaches, as so many Americans have done. Been to the cemetery and stood on the heights commanding Omaha Beach.

What we better understand, in the half century since 1964, when we thought D-Day was a major, major, major event, is that the Soviets were by then far advanced in the destruction of the Third Reich.

D-Day shortened the war; it was over barely 11 months later, in part because that second front was opened in France. But the Soviets almost certainly would have gotten it done without us. Before the first men hit the beaches of Normandy, the Soviets were approaching Germany’s borders.

Still, it is an important day. A day when a noble deed was carried out with skill and precision.

America has had better days, but not many.