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As an anti-aircraft gunner, Gordon Hearne, 21, landed at Omaha Beach, Normandy on June 7, 1944. That July, the U.S. Army assigned his battalion to the 28th Infantry Division. He survived five European campaigns unscathed. After the war, Hearne returned to his native Los Angeles. In 1948, for an English course at the University of Southern California, he wrote about his war an essay published for the first time in the May/June 2016 American History magazine. Now 91 and retired from a career in advertising, Gordon Hearne lives with his wife Gini in Encino, California, where he made this recording.