Of all the many commemorative speeches about D-Day, perhaps the most famous was delivered by President Ronald Reagan on June 6, 1984—his ode to “The boys of Pointe du Hoc.”

God knows, those Rangers were young. And yet, Reagan continued, they were the men who took the cliffs, the champions who freed a continent, the heroes who defeated Hitler. Intriguingly, their commander, thick in the action, Lt. Col. James E. Rudder , was just 34.

That’s a key reason why the Greatest Generation was so great. They learned early on to grapple with serious matters. Dealing with life and death, they grew up fast, and that maturity propelled them to success in later life. <span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" clas

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