(Trigger warning) Depressed and unable to hide his increasing infirmity, Beethoven wrote on October 6th 1802 a document entitled "The Heiligenstadt Testament":
“O how harshly was I repulsed by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing...
... and yet it was impossible for me to say to men speak louder, shout, for I am deaf. Ah how could I possibly admit such an infirmity in the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection...
(...) I must live like an exile, if I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, a fear that I may be subjected to the danger of letting my condition be observed.
An LCVP disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944.