The D-Day ceremony was met with the overwhelming sound of gunfire and men’s screams to honor those who fought for freedom in the largest naval, air, and land operation in history during World War II.
Many came to Omaha Beach on Tuesday to mark the 79th anniversary of the assault that led to the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi control, clutching bunches of flowers and waving American flags.
In France, service members and civilians honored D-Day veterans remembering the efforts of the service members who scaled the cliffs at Normandy in 1944.
D-Dayremainsthe largest amphibious military operation in history. The invasion which took more than two years to plan,involved156,115 troops, 6,939 ships and landing craft, 10,440 aircraft, 450,000 tons of ammunition, and 17 million maps.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first discussed a large-scale invasion of Europe shortly after the United States entered the war.
Despite the urgency, the invasion took place in December 1943 when Dwight D. Eisenhower was named Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force after months of rehearsal.
However, the invasion, which was named “Operation Tiger“, ended in a disaster when German boats spotted and attacked the Allies convoy, killing over seven hundred servicemen.
Despite the massacre, history was made from the bravery and heroism that Allied forces displayed on D-Day, storming the beaches of Normandy and scaling its cliffs.
Four thousand Allied troops, including 2,502 Americans were killed during the quest.
Some movies such as The Longest Day,Overlord, andSaving Private Ryan, as well as in the TV seriesBand of Brothers, have tried to convey the events, but nothing can equal living it outright.
If you want to learn more about every American who fell on D-Day, you can read their stories here, thanks to Don Milne, a retired bank employee from Louisville, Kentucky working with nearly one thousand volunteers from all fifty U.S. states and more than a dozen countries.
