An Uncle I never got to know rests somewhere among the 9,388 American dead at Normandy. He was the youngest of 4 boys my Grandmother sent off to war. He was barely 19 years old on D Day. He survived the landings but was KIA 6 days later. I was named after him.
I discovered the following song a few years ago. I find myself playing it now every Memorial and Veterans as a reminder of all the lives cut short and all the lives un-lived because of war. The poem this song is based on was found in a prison camp hospital in the Philippines during WW2. The author is unknown. I see it less as a poem and more as a request, directly to Saint Peter, to give those young men a taste of the life they would never live.
As a veteran myself, now age 70, I will always remember.