Paris: In a stellar display, several parachutists jumped from World War II-era planes into now peaceful Normandy skies in northern France as part of commemorations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when thousands of young soldiers from Allied countries waded ashore through hails of fire on June 6, 1944, to fight Nazi German troops during the Second World War. Several ceremonies have been scheduled to pay tribute to soldiers who fought against Adolf Hitler's forces.
Soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied countries took part in the airborne assault and the landing operations at Normandy for the liberation of France from Nazi Germany. The Allied troops fought against heavy fire from encampments, mines and other lethal obstacles, resulting in thousands of casualties. This week, the veterans in their late nineties are coming back to now peaceful Normandy to remember their fallen friends.
Part of the purpose of fireworks shows, parachute jumps, solemn commemorations and ceremonies that world leaders will attend this week is to pass the baton of remembrance to the current generations now seeing war again in Europe, in Ukraine. US President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British royals are among the VIPs that France is expecting for D-Day events.
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The C-47 aircraft began dropping as many as 70 jumpers all clad in WWII-style uniforms to kick-start the commemorations. Their round chutes mushroomed open in the blue skies with puffy white clouds. A huge crowd many thousands strong whooped and cheered as the jumpers approached the drop zone. Neil Hamsler, 63, a former British army paratrooper, said flying the aircraft was like time-travelling back to D-Day.
“I thought that would have been the last view of England some of those lads of 1944 had,” he said. While theirs was a daytime jump Sunday, unlike for Allied airborne troops who jumped at night early on D-Day, and “no one’s firing at us,” Hamsler said: “It really brought it home, the poignancy.”
Two of the planes, christened “ That’s All, Brother” and “Placid Lassie, " were D-Day veterans, among the thousands of C-47s and other aircraft that on June 6, 1944, formed part of what was the largest-ever sea, air and land armada. Allied forces landed first day early on D-day to secure roads, bridges and other strategic points inland of the invasion beaches and destroy gun emplacements.
Sunday’s jumpers were from an international civilian team of parachutists, many of them former soldiers. The only woman was 61-year-old Dawna Bennett, who felt history’s force as she exited her plane into the Normandy skies. “It’s the same doorway and it’s the same countryside from 80 years ago, and it’s like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so thankful I’m not doing this at midnight’” she said.
Survivors recount D-day experience
Dozens of World War II veterans converging on France to revisit old memories are looking to reinforce a message they have repeated time and again - that war is hell. "Seven thousand of my marine buddies were killed. Twenty thousand shot up, wounded, put on ships, buried at sea," said Don Graves, a US Marine Corps veteran who served in Iwo Jima in the Pacific theatre.
The youngest veteran in the group is 96 and the most senior is 107, according to their carrier from Dallas, American Airlines. “We did our job and we came home and that’s it. We never talked about it I think. For 70 years I didn’t talk about it,” said another of the veterans, Ralph Goldsticker, a US Air Force captain who served in the 452nd Bomb Group.
Of the D-Day landings, he recalled seeing from his aircraft “a big, big chunk of the beach with thousands of vessels,” and spoke of bombing raids against German strongholds and routes that German forces might otherwise have used to rush in reinforcements to push the invasion back into the sea. "I dropped my first bomb at 06:58 a.m. in a heavy gun placement. We went back home, we landed at 09:30. We reloaded," he added.
(with inputs from AP)
