COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France – They came by the thousands, back to the hilltop overlooking the sea.
On a sunny afternoon in late spring, World War II veterans in the winter of life, many of them using wheelchairs or supported by canes, returned alongside President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and other dignitaries to remember a bloody day that changed the world.
From the hallowed ground where many of their fallen comrades rest beneath French soil, they honored the dead and commemorated the events of June 6, 1944, which the world now knows as D-Day.
"You want to know the price of freedom? Come here to Normandy," said Biden, who, at 81, was just a toddler on the day of the D-Day landings.
Eighty years ago, some 160,000 troops from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and other allies descended upon these shores in Normandy by air, land and seat to liberate Nazi-occupied France.
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The fighting was brutal and the casualties enormous – more than 4,400 Allied troops were killed – but the unprecedented show of unified military power would mark the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany’s grip on Europe.
“It is difficult to underestimate or undersell the significance of D-Day and what happened on D-Day,” said Charles Djou, secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which manages and operates 24 American military cemeteries abroad. “Everything in this world turned on that day. And the fact that we succeeded on that day has made America and the world, the West, what it is.”
The heroes of D-Day "kept freedom alive," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
"You saved the world. We must only defend it," he said. "Gentlemen, we salute you."
Some of the veterans who came back to France on Thursday for ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day had been among the first to arrive and fight. A crowd estimated at 10,000 to 12,000 attended the ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery, including four-star officers, more than 150 members of Congress and dozens of members of the French Parliament. Other ceremonies also were scheduled and were expected to draw 25 heads of state.
An ocean breeze floated across the American cemetery, fluttering the small American and French flags on each of the graves of nearly 9,400 Americans killed in the war. Sunlight lit the white marble crosses and stars of David that mark each burial site.
Just off the shore, Navy battleships stood guard in the English Channel. Men in military fatigues looked out over the sea from the grassy hillside where allied soldiers advanced and encountered German machine-gun fire.
One by one, Biden and first lady Jill Biden met with veterans ahead of the ceremony from a glass-backed gazebo overlooking Omaha Beach, where many of the soldiers came ashore eight decades ago. Biden saluted, took photos with each and handed them a coin that he said had been especially minted for the event.
During the ceremony, Macron bestowed the Legion of Honor, France's highest award of merit, to 11 veterans from the United States and one from Britain in recognition of their sacrifice. The French president pinned the medal on the lapel of each and then lightly kissed them on each cheek.
In his remarks, Biden drew parallels between the Allied troops who fought to free Europe during World War II and the alliance of nations that has banded together to defend Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Those who fought in World War II “did their duty,” he said, but “that does not absolve us of what we have to do.”
"In memory of those who fought here, died here, literally saved the world here, let us be worthy of their sacrifice,” Biden said. “Let us be the generation that, when history is written about our time … it will be said, when the moment came, we met the moment."
As he spoke, some veterans held up their cellphones and recorded his remarks.
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Beyond the powerful symbolism of Thursday's events was the sobering reality that for many of the veterans, the ceremony would be their last. The youngest World War II veterans are in their mid-90s, and many of them are well over 100.
Of the 16.4 million Americans who served in the war, just 119,000 – less than 1% of them – are still alive, according to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. They are dying at a rate of 131 per day.
Some veterans who attended the ceremony said they did so out of a sense of obligation. Others said they came because they again wanted to see where so many of their friends and brothers had died to preserve freedom.
“I’m not a very emotional guy," said John Gleeson, an Army Air Corps veteran from Honolulu, but "I do things that I feel needs to be done."
Gleeson, who is 100, said fighting to defend American culture during the war had meant a lot to him. "It still does," he said, which is one of the reasons he flew more than 7,000 miles to the events.
More:On D-Day, they changed the world. 80 years later, an incredible journey takes them back.
Les Schrenk, a 100-year-old veteran from Bloomington, Minnesota, said D-Day is "a part of my story. It's a story I've lived all these years."
Schrenk, who joined the Army Air Corps the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was a gunner aboard a B-17 that was hit by German anticraft fire over the English Channel. The crippled plane made it to land over Denmark, but Schrenk and other crew members were forced to parachute to safety. Waiting for them on the ground were German soldiers, who captured him and took him as a prisoner of war.
For years, Schrenk wondered about the German pilot whose gunfire had shot and disabled his B-17. Who was he? Why didn’t he finish off the Americans while they were still over water?
With the help of a friend, Schrenk tracked down the pilot, Hans Hermann Muller, in 2012. The two wartime enemies met in Heidelberg and formed the unlikeliest of friendships. Schrenk finally got an answer to the question that had haunted him for years.
“He said, ‘Yes, I could have shot you down, but why should I,’” Schrenk recalled.
If he had shot the plane down over the water, Muller explained, the Americans would have had no chance of survival. Every one of them would have died.
“He spared my life,” Schrenk said.
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @mcollinsNEWS.
