On November 11, 1999 The Washington Post reported: “Two weeks ago Captain Earl R Fox learned that he is the last world war II veteran still on active duty in the US armed forces.” The Post wrote that Fox described himself as “the last direct physical link between today’s military and the warriors of Midway, Normandy and Iwo Jima.”
In August of 1944 the allies were rushing to "cork the bottle" of the Falaise pocket. For the men of the First Polish Armored Division, Normandy was not merely a campaign to liberate France; it was a personal reckoning with the regime that had shattered their homeland.