June 6

June 6 commemorates D-Day, the invasion to liberate Europe from the Nazis. It also commemorates the Battle of Midway, where the US Fleet crippled Japanese navel power and turned the tide in the Pacific. But it is also the commemorates the Battle of Belleau Wood, the pivotal WWI battle when the Marines stopped the German advance on Parris in 1918, while losing more Marines than in the whole history of the Corps to that date. (The battle went on until June 26.) It is where Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly led his Marines into the machine gun fire with the cry, "Come on you sons of bitches--do you want to live forever!" (Typo corrected!)