Jim Shepperd didn't know, he said, until he sorted through his late brother's discharge papers.

It was there in ink that Warren Shepperd, only a few years after graduating from Coeur d'Alene High School, had been among the first wave of soldiers deposited on the shores of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Better known as D-Day.

"I knew he was in D-Day, but I didn't know he was on the first wave," said Jim, Coeur d'Alene native who served in the Navy in World War II. "The first wave, that's when everything happens. That's when it all starts."

Reminiscing at the Coeur d'Alene VFW on Tuesday morning, Jim recalled that during the war, service men like himself in the Pacific theater had considered the Normandy invasion unexceptional from other bloody and immense battles.

But now he can appreciate how the swarm of 150,000 Allied troops on the French shore turned the tide of World War II, a harbinger of Hitler's defeat.

"We weren't all that positive we were going to win," Jim remembered of his own service in the war. "We almost came home speaking Japanese or German."

His brother, who passed away in 2000, never spoke of D-Day, Jim said, except once when he recalled the hordes of soldiers being transported to the invasion site.

Jim simply knew his brother was "so happy to be home" after he returned from war, he said.

But the experience clearly left Warren changed, he added.

"He didn't act like the guy next door," Jim said, noting that Warren never married and lived with his parents until his mid-30s. "It did affect him his whole life."

Even though no events are planned in Coeur d'Alene today to recognize D-Day, Jim didn't mind the lack of celebration.

Many pivotal events from the war are overlooked, he said, pointing to the battle of Saipan that was also fought in the summer of 1944.

Jim still holds pride in Warren's Bronze and Silver battle stars, he said. Above all, in the arrowhead he received, designating participation in a first wave invasion.

And a historic invasion at that.

"All of a sudden we land on (Normandy), and we were starting to win the war," Jim said.