D-Day 2024

The 80th anniversary this week of D-Day brings mixed emotions for French survivors of the Battle of Normandy. They remain grateful for their liberation from Nazi occupation in World War II but cannot forget its steep cost in French lives. Some 20,000 Normandy civilians were killed in the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion and as the landing forces fought inland. Soldiers from the United States and other Allied nations are remembered for their exploits, kindness and sacrifices. One Normandy survivor who was 6 in 1944 says, "They will always be gods to me." But also seared into survivors' memories are Allied bombing raids that pulverized Normandy communities.

Ken Hay's part in the invasion of Normandy lasted just a few weeks, but he wants to make sure the experiences of those who fought and died to end the Nazi grip on Europe live forever. The British Army veteran was captured a few weeks after the D-Day landings in Northern France when his patrol was surrounded by German troops. Now the 98-year-old Hay visits schools whenever he can to tell his story. He doesn't want the battle to liberate France and defeat Nazi Germany to become a dusty relic of history like the Greek and Roman wars he read about as a child.

On D-Day, The Associated Press had reporters, artists and photographers in the air, on the choppy waters of the English Channel, in London, and at English departure ports and airfields covering the Allied assault in Normandy. As men on either side of him were killed, AP correspondent Roger Greene waded ashore on June 6, 1944. Sheltering with his typewriter in a bomb crater, Greene pounded out the first AP report from the beachhead. He wrote: ""Hitler's Atlantic Wall cracked in the first hour under tempestuous Allied assault." The dead in the ensuing Battle of Normandy included AP photographer Bede Irvin, killed as he was photographing an Allied bombardment.