OMAHA BEACH, France
(AP) - With silent remembrance and respect, nations honored the fallen and
the singular bravery of all Allied troops who sloshed through bloodied water
to the beaches of Normandy 75 years ago on D-Day, the assault that doomed
Hitler’s Third Reich.
French President
Emmanuel Macron and President Donald Trump praised the soldiers, sailors and
airmen, the survivors and those who lost their lives, in powerful speeches
Thursday that credited the June 6, 1944, surprise air and sea operation that
brought tens of thousands of men to Normandy, each not knowing whether he
would survive the day.
“You are the pride
of our nation, you are the glory of our republic, and we thank you from the
bottom of our heart,” Trump said, of the warriors engaged in the ultimate
fight of good against evil in World War II.
Macron praised
their courage, generosity and strength of spirit that made them press on “to
help men and women they didn’t know, to liberate a land most hadn’t seen
before, for no other cause but freedom, democracy.”
He expressed
France’s debt to the United States for freeing his country from the reign of
the Nazis. Macron awarded five American veterans with the Chevalier of
Legion of Honor, France’s highest award.
“We know what we
owe to you, veterans, our freedom,” he said, switching from French to
English. “On behalf of my nation I just want to say ‘thank you.’”
D-Day was history’s
largest air and sea invasion, involving around 160,000 troops on that day
itself and many more in the ensuing Battle of Normandy. Of those 73,000 were
from the United States, while 83,000 were from Britain and Canada. Troops
started landing overnight from the air, then were joined by a massive force
by sea on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried
by 7,000 boats.
The second day of
ceremonies moved to France after spirited commemorations a day earlier in
Portsmouth, England, the main embarkation point for the transport boats.
Leaders, veterans,
their families and the grateful from France, Europe and elsewhere were
present for the solemn day that began under a radiant sun.
At dawn, hundreds
of people, civilians and military alike, hailing from around the world,
gathered at the water’s edge to remember the troops who stormed the
fortified Normandy beaches to help turn the tide of the war and give birth
to a new Europe.
Dick Jansen, 60,
from the Netherlands, drank Canadian whisky from an enamel cup on the
water’s edge. Others scattered carnations into the waves. Randall Atanay,
the son of a medic who tended to the dying and wounded, waded barefoot into
the water near Omaha Beach, where the waters ran red on D-Day.
Up to 12,000 people
gathered hours later at the ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery,
where Macron and Trump spoke. U.S. veterans, their numbers fast diminishing
as years pass, were the guests of honor.
A 21-gun salute
thundered into the waters below the cemetery, on a bluff overlooking Omaha
Beach, and across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David. The final
resting places of more than 9,380 of the fallen stretched out before the
guests.
Britain’s Prince
Charles, his wife, Camilla, and Prime Minister Theresa May attended a
remembrance service at the medieval cathedral in Bayeux, the first Normandy
town liberated by Allied troops after D-Day. Cardinal Marc Ouellet read a
message from Pope Francis honoring those who “gave their lives for freedom
and peace.”
At daybreak, a lone
piper played in Mulberry Harbor, exactly 75 years after British troops came
ashore at Gold Beach.
“It is sobering,
surreal to be able to stand here on this beach and admire the beautiful
sunrise where they came ashore, being shot at, facing unspeakable
atrocities,” said 44-year-old former U.S. paratrooper Richard Clapp, of
Julian, North Carolina.
Gratitude was a
powerful common theme.
Macron thanked
those who did not survive the assault “so that France could become free
again” at an earlier ceremony overlooking Gold Beach with May and uniformed
veterans to lay the cornerstone of a memorial that will record the names of
thousands of troops under British command who died on D-Day and the ensuing
Battle of Normandy.
“If one day can be
said to have determined the fate of generations to come, in France, in
Britain, in Europe and the world, that day was the 6th of June, 1944,” May
said.
As the sun rose
that morning, not one of the thousands of men arriving in Normandy “knew
whether they would still be alive when the sun set once again,” she said.
Passing on memories
is especially urgent, with hundreds of World War II veterans now dying every
day.
Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau hailed those who sacrificed their lives on the
Normandy beaches for future generations, “for you and me.”
Speaking at Juneau
Beach where 14,000 Canadians landed, Trudeau said they “took a gamble the
world had never seen before.”
He lauded the
resulting world order including the United Nations and NATO that have helped
preserve peace and called it “the responsibility of all Canadians to ensure
that their story and their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
A group of five
Americans parachuted into Normandy on Wednesday as part of a commemorative
jump and showed up on the beach Thursday morning still wearing their
jumpsuits, all World War II-era uniforms, and carrying an American flag. The
group included Clapp, and all five expressed concern the feats and
sacrifices of D-Day are being forgotten.
“If you forget
history, it’s doomed to repeat itself,” Clapp said.
“I have all kinds
of friends buried,” said 98-year-old William Tymchuk, who served with the
4th Canadian Armored Division during some of the deadliest fighting after
the Normandy landings.
“They were young.
They got killed. They couldn’t come home,” he added.
Then Tymchuk teared
up.
“Sorry,” he said.
“They couldn’t even know what life is all about.”
The D-Day invasion
was a defining moment of military strategy confounded by unpredictable
weather and human chaos in which soldiers from the U.S., Britain, Canada and
other Allied nations applied relentless bravery to carve out a beachhead on
ground that Nazi Germany had occupied for four years.
“The tide has
turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory,” Gen.
Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted in his order of the day.
The Battle of
Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord, hastened Germany’s defeat less than
a year later.
Still, that single
day cost the lives of 4,414 Allied troops, 2,501 of them Americans. More
than 5,000 were injured. On the German side, several thousand were killed or
wounded.
From there, Allied
troops would advance their fight, take Paris in late summer and march in a
race with the Soviet Red Army to control as much German territory as
possible by the time Adolf Hitler died in his Berlin bunker and Germany
surrendered in May 1945.
The Soviet Union
also fought valiantly against the Nazis - and lost more people than any
other nation in World War II - but those final battles would divide Europe
for decades between the West and the Soviet-controlled East, the face-off
line of the Cold War.