By REBECCA SANTANA Associated Press As the wave of troops sailed toward Omaha Beach in the early morning of June 6, 1944, Frank DeVita could hear the German machine gun fire striking the outside of his landing craft . His job was to lower the ramp when the craft got to the beach and then ...
CARENTAN, France (AP) — Parachutists are jumping over Normandy again, just as soldiers did 75 years ago for D-Day — but this time without being shot at. Engines throbbing, C-47 transport planes dropped group after group of parachutists, a couple of hundred in all - including a 97-year-old ...
By JOHN LEICESTER Associated Press LUDRES, France (AP) — After decades of searching, Andre Gantois had lost hope. The retired French postal worker figured he'd likely go to his grave without ever knowing who his father was, unable to identify the U.S. serviceman who had fought his way ...
By CATHERINE GASCHKA and SYLVIE CORBET Associated Press SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE, France (AP) — At 10 years old, Henri-Jean Renaud watched U.S. paratroopers landing through the window of his Normandy home in the early hours of D-Day. Like other French who lived through the war, he's trying to ...
By JEFFREY SCHAEFFER and JULIAN STYLES Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Seventy-five years ago, Hollywood director George Stevens stood on the deck of the HMS Belfast to film the start of the D-Day invasion. The resulting black-and-white films — following Allied troops through ...
By RAF CASERT Associated Press ON OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — All at once, Charles Shay tried to stanch the bleeding from a ripped-open stomach, dull the pain with morphine and soothe the mind of a dying fellow American army medic. It was a tall order for a 19-year-old who had just set ...
The men who fought on D-Day, June 6, 1944, are now in their 90s or 100s, wrinkled and often moving with the help of a cane or wheelchair. Their hands often tremble and their voices shake as they labor to speak. But 75 years ago they were young men, many in their teens, preparing to go to ...
By RAF CASERT Associated Press COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Side by side the presidential sons lie, separated by two world wars, united in their fervor for the freedom of France. Quentin Roosevelt was a daredevil pilot shot by Germans close to Champagne country during World War I. ...
By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press LONDON (AP) — George Skipper was in a hurry. Having overslept, the D-Day veteran gunned his mobility scooter across the quad at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the tail of his scarlet coat flapping as he raced to an interview about the Allied landings in ...
By JAY REEVES Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Filled with paratroopers, a U.S. warplane lumbered down an English runway in 1944 to spearhead the World War II D-Day invasion with a message for Adolf Hitler painted in bright yellow across its nose: "That's All, ...
By ALAN SUDERMAN Associated Press BEDFORD, Va. (AP) — Marguerite Cottrell remembers the summer day 75 years ago when a Western Union telegram was delivered to her family farm as her mother was hanging clothes on the line to dry. Her mother read it, sat down and wept. Cottrell's older ...
By ANGELA CHARLTON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — One more funeral, one less witness to the world's worst war. Bernard Dargols lived almost long enough to join the celebrations next month marking 75 years since the D-Day, 75 years since he waded onto Omaha Beach as an American soldier ...