The parachutists who jumped from the World War II aircrafts hurled themselves, in now peaceful Normandy sky where once the war was raging, marking a week of ceremonies for the fast vanishing generation of Allied soldiers who fought on D-Day beaches eighty years ago to Adolf Hitler’s downfall, freeing Europe from his tyranny.
All along the Normandy coastlines – where young soldiers from different parts of America, Britain, Canada and other Allied countries landed on five beaches under hails of bullets on June 6, 1944 – French officials are saying “thank you” and also goodbye to grateful survivors in Normandy and admirers.
They are mostly those veterans over ninety years old or even in their late nineties’ coming back to honor fallen comrades and their world-shaking acts.
As he watched southern England coastline recede on Sunday through one of three C-47 transport planes flying him and other jumpers across to their drop zone in Normandy over the English Channel , Neil Hamsler went back to D-Day for 63-year-old former British army paratrooper looking out at that view. It felt like travelling back in time.”
“I thought that would have been the last view of England some of those lads of 1944 had,” he said. Although it was day-time parachute drop yesterday unlike night-time ones by Allied airborne troops early morning on D-Day when there was ‘no one firing at us,’ Mr. Hamsler said: ‘It really brought it home, the poignancy.’
Particular reason behind this week’s fireworks displays, parachute jumps, stately commemorations and ceremonies with participation by global political leaders is not just about remembering but passing remembrance down to new generations now seeing war again in Europe –in Ukraine. These include U.S. President Joe Biden , Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as British royals who will be among prominent visitors from France to attend D-Day events.
In succession, one after another, the C-47s released strings of jumpers in WWII-style uniforms – 70 persons in all. They blossomed open in a sky that was cloudless except for puffy white clouds. With Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf playing on as they waited, a huge crowd many thousands strong whooped and cheered. The loudest applause was for a frightened deer that bounded out of some bushes as jumpers were touching down then raced across the drop zone.
Two of the planes were named “That’s All, Brother” and “Placid Lassie,” being among D-Day veterans along with several thousand other C-47s and aircrafts on June 6, 1944 which made up history’s greatest ever armada by sea, air as well as land. The primary purpose behind their landing first early morning on D-Day involved securing roads, bridges plus other strategic points inland of invasion beaches while eliminating gun emplacements that had been raining deadly fire on sandy shores and vessels.
The aircraft left Duxford today for a ninety-minute flight to Carentan on Sunday. Paratroopers jumped into gunfire in the dark that scattered many of them widely off target during the Normandy operations of 1944.
Sunday’s team members included parachutists from different countries who are mostly ex-soldiers. Dawna Bennett at sixty-one was the only female among them; when she stepped out into the Normandy skies it seemed like she could sense all its laden history.
It is the same entrance and it’s the same countryside from 80 years ago, and it’s like, “Oh God! I’m so glad I don’t have to do this at midnight” she said. “They keep saying that it’s the best generation and I truly believe that.”
Dozens of WWII veterans are headed for France to remember old times, make new ones as well as drum home a message that D-Day and subsequent Battle of Normandy survivors and those in other World War II theatres have repeated until they are blue in the face – 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 USMC veteran who fought on Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater.
“I want the younger people here—the younger generation—to understand what we did,” Graves told a group of over 60 World War II veterans who flew into Paris on Saturday.
According to American Airlines from Dallas as quoted by their carrier. The carrier from Dallas reports that its youngest member is aged 96 while its oldest is 107.
“We did our job then came back home; end of story. We never talked about it I think. Seventy years went by without me talking about it,” added another veteran Ralph Goldsticker who was an Air Force captain with the U.S. Air Force during his service time for the 452nd Bomb Group.
He remembered seeing “a big chunk of beach with thousands vessels” from his plane during D-Day landings as well as bombing German strongholds and preventing them from using those routes where they could run reinforcements into Normandy through Calais or create impromptu airfields behind invasion lines in order to drive us back into ocean depths.
“I dropped my first bomb at 06:58 a.m., and it fell on a gun emplacement,” he said. “We came back, we landed at 09:30. We reloaded.”
