by Maya Girimaji, Josh Weimer & Jennifer Zhan, staff reporters

JUNE 6, 1944 — It’s 6:30 a.m. The weather is far from ideal. You’ve heard the sound of bombs for the past six hours. You’re a member of the 29th Infantry Division, assigned to storm Omaha Beach at the crack of dawn.

Problem #1: you’ve landed way off of your intended position. Problem #2: the beach is awfully heavily defended. Those two factors combined mean that you’ll have to wade through up to 100 yards of neck-deep water WHILE UNDER FIRE just to make it to your initial destination. The fire’s coming from the cliffs, so you can’t do anything to defend yourself. You’ve just got your wits and your legs. Are you up for it?

Below is a playlist created by asking “what song’s playing in your head as you head ashore?”  We’ve included links to all the songs and you can find an 8track playlist here.

“Centuries” – Fall Out Boy

Freshman Peter Simmons. “I want to go down in history.”

“Icky Thump” – The White Stripes

Junior Ester Araujo. “Because it is so hardcore.”

“I Lived” – OneRepublic

Junior Swathi Kommein. “I’m probably about to die, and that’s kind of a reminiscent song about life.”

“The Final Countdown” – Europe

English teacher Daniel Posey. “I would need something to pump me up and remind me that life is fleeting.”

“Shake It Off” – Taylor Swift

Freshman Joy Fu.

“Toes” – Glass Animals

Senior Ravina Patel. “It talks about a guy who’s kind of twisted because it’s dark times.”

“We’ll Meet Again” – Johnny Cash

Sophomore Yanichka Ariunbold. “He’s talking about going to heaven. I’d think about my loved ones, like ‘we’ll meet again.’ And then there’s a lyric — ‘as I go, I was singing.’

“No music, because you’d want to hear what was going on if you were about to storm a beach.”

Sophomore Benjamin Lamb.

Want to learn more? Read the Wikipedia article here.