By JOHN LEICESTER, SYLVIE CORBET and DANICA KIRKA Associated Press
Updated
Across Normandy, France, where the largest-ever land, sea and air armada punctured Adolf Hitler's defenses in western Europe on D-Day, Allied veterans of World War II are the VVIPs of 80th anniversary celebrations this week. Veterans, many of them centenarians and likely returning to France for one last time, pilgrimaged Tuesday to what was the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches on June 6, 1944. Veterans are remembering fallen friends, reliving the horrors of combat and blessing their good fortune for surviving. They're also mourning the ultimate price paid by those who didn't and hoping generations following them don't forget.
The D-Day invasion that helped change the course of World War II was unprecedented in scale and audacity. Veterans and world dignitaries are commemorating the 79th anniversary of the operation. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on the shores of Normandy at dawn on June 6, 1944. Several thousand Allied troops and German forces were killed on that single day alone. More than 2 million Allied soldiers, sailors, pilots, medics and other people from a dozen countries were involved in the overall Operation Overlord. That was the code name for the battle to wrest western France from Nazi control that started on D-Day.
