64 years ago on a beach in France...

At just 17 years old, two young men from different states and with different futures waiting for them made the same decision, they left their junior year of high school and signed up for the Navy. Although they wouldn't meet each other for decades, they were both on the same beach on the same day as young men. The place was the northern coast of France, and the date was D-Day, June 6, 1944.

Both men know they were fortunate to survive that day. About 10,000 Allied casualties were recorded on the sixth day of June 66 years ago. Nearly half of those were incurred on the five mile stretch of sand known as Omaha Beach, Where Robert Giguere of Laconia and Bob Barnard of Alton, members of different companies within the 6th Naval Beach Battalion, a group trained in beach assault, experienced their first taste of combat.

Barnard grew up in New Jersey and had always wanted to join the Navy. He did so in February of 1943, on the day he turned 17 years old.

The morning of the invasion saw the young men in an already weakened state. For starters, they didn't sleep at all out of anticipation. They had no idea what combat would be like, and it didn't help that the weather was terrible, which made the English Channel rough. Many men were severely seasick on the personnel carriers, but they had no idea of the hell that awaited them on the shore.

From the personnel carriers, Barnard and other soldiers climbed down cargo netting onto the smaller landing crafts, which organized into a wave and then set off for the hour-long trip to the shore.

As they drew near, they started to understand that things weren't going as planned. "All of a sudden, as I approached the beach, there was small arms fire — there wasn't supposed to be small arms fire, the cruisers were supposed to take care of that," Barnard remembered. Then they hit the beach and saw what had happened to their comrades who had landed before them. "As we got closer, we could see the devastation — bodies, body parts everywhere."

German anti-aircraft batteries — 88s — were positioned near the shore. But during the invasion, the guns were firing at their lowest trajectory on the beach. Most of the casualties were caused by the shells that bounced off the hard-packed sand and exploded in the air over the soldiers' heads.

"Our first thought was — get to the dune line. But at low tide, the dune line was a hell of a long way off," said Barnard. "As you went up the beach... tripping, stumbling over bodies... you could hear those shells going over you."

The Germans had dug artificial tidal pools into the beach to disable tanks. These pools filled with the bodies of men who died trying to cross them. The soldiers had been issued inflating tubes that they were supposed to wear under their armpits, but many wore them instead around their waists. When they hit the water, their heavy packs caused them to flip upside down in the water and drown.

Crossing one of the pools, called "runnels," Barnard said his rifle became tangled in what he thought was rope, but he was horrified to realize it was an intestine.

He never made it to the dune line.

One of the artillery shells exploded just behind him. Another soldier had been following behind him. "The guy behind me was just gone — he must have taken the whole blast." Barnard was knocked to the ground, tried to get up, and then lost consciousness. He had been hit with two pieces of shrapnel. One lodged in his cheek, the other in his hip.

It didn't take long for Giguere to get wounded, either. His landing craft hit a mine in the water, which caused the ramp to drop. Then his craft was pummeled machine gun fire, decimating the soldiers unfortunate enough to be first in line.

Giguere, whose experience was described in this paper on June 7, 2005, caught a bullet in the shoulder. He made his way to shelter where he dressed his wound, then continued to participate in the invasion. Under cover of smoke, he crawled through a minefield to the base of a machine gun turret, into which he lobbed several grenades.

Giguere, who was separated from his unit as soon as he hit the beach, tagged along with a group of Army infantrymen as they ambushed a German patrol. He then made his way back to the beach to try to find his unit, where he was wounded a second time by a mortar shell. He came to in an English hospital on his 18th birthday.

The unconscious Barnard was rescued by a medical officer, who dragged him into a ditch with a number of other wounded soldiers. Cold and wet, he kept asking for a blanket, which there were none. So, to keep him from going into shock, medics gave him another dose of morphine whenever he was conscious enough to ask for a blanket.

Eventually, he was transported to a "hospital ship" anchored in the channel, where the wounded soldiers were brought. The ship was filled with as many cots as it could hold, and Barnard found himself in the company of the enemy. "All of them I could hear were speaking German — what shocked me was how young they looked."

After the two men recovered from their injuries, they remained in the Navy for the duration of their three-year service, transferring to the Pacific theater. Barnard was training for another beach assault that might have made Normandy pale in comparison. He was one of the many soldiers preparing for an invasion of mainland Japan when the news broke that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. His initial reaction was intense relief that the war would soon be finally over.

Afterward, the two men went back to their lives. After each finished their education, Barnard made a career in insurance, while Giguere found good work as a machinist. Their paths crossed again last week, when Giguere was visiting a friend at Genesis Healthcare in Laconia. Barnard was also there, visiting his wife Pat, and he recognized the Beach Battalion's insignia on Giguere's hat. Although they hadn't met, they shared an experience as teenagers that few others would understand.

Every year, about this time, memories of the experience come back to them. They think about what the went through, and those who didn't make it through to the other side. Giguere said, "I think about the guys who weren't as lucky as I was — I always feel that they were the heroes, not me."