CARENTAN-LES-MARAIS, France (AP) — Paratroopers jumping from World War II planes launched Sunday into the now-peaceful skies of Normandy, where the war once took place, heralding a week of ceremonies for a generation of Allied soldiers. which is rapidly disappearing. fought on the beaches of D-Day 80 years ago, until the fall of Adolf Hitler, helping to free Europe from his tyranny.
All along the coast of Normandy — where then-young soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied nations washed ashore amid hails of fire on five beaches on June 6, 1944 — French officials, grateful survivors from Normandy and other admirers are saying “merci” but also goodbye.
The dwindling number of veterans in their late nineties and older who are returning to remember fallen friends and his history-changing exploits are his last.
Part of the purpose of the fireworks shows, parachute jumps, solemn celebrations and ceremonies that world leaders will participate in this week is to pass the baton of remembrance to current generations who now see war again in Europe, in Ukraine. President of the USA Joe BidenUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British royalty are among the VIPs France expects for D-Day events.
On Sunday, three C-47 transport planes, a flagship of the war, launched three long series of jumpers, their round parachutes opening in the blue sky with fluffy white clouds, to cheers from the huge crowd who were regaled by the songs by Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf while they waited.
The planes circled around and dropped three more jumper poles. Some of the loudest cheers from the crowd came when a startled deer jumped out of the undergrowth as the jumpers landed and ran across the landing zone.
After a final pass to launch the last two jumpers, the planes roared overhead in tight formation and disappeared over the horizon.
Dozens of Veterans of the Second World War are converging on France to revisit old memories, create new ones, and deliver a message that survivors of D-Day and the subsequent Battle of Normandy, and other theaters of World War II, have repeated over and over again – that war is hell.
“Seven thousand of my fellow marines were killed. Twenty thousand shot, wounded, put on ships, buried at sea,” said Don Graves, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served on Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater.
“I want the younger people, the younger generation here, to know what we did,” said Graves, part of a group of more than 60 World War II veterans who flew to Paris on Saturday.
The youngest veteran in the group is 96 and the most experienced is 107, according to his Dallas-based airline, American Airlines.
“We did our job and went home and that was it. We never talked about it, I don’t think. For 70 years I didn’t talk about it,” said another veteran, Ralph Goldsticker, a captain in the US Air Force who served in the 452nd Bombardment Group.
Of the D-Day landings, he recalled seeing from his aircraft “a big, big piece of beach with thousands of ships,” and spoke of bombing raids on German strongholds and routes that German forces could have used to send reinforcements to push the invasion back to sea.
“I dropped my first bomb at 06:58 in a place with heavy weapons,” he said. “We returned home, landed at 9:30 am. We recharge.”
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Associated Press writer Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed to this report.
