For many it will be the last great commemoration. The last reunion.
Eighty years after Allied armies invaded the beaches of Normandy, marking a definitive turning point in World War II, those veterans who are still alive and healthy enough are expected to return to France this week from the United States, Britain and Canada to commemorate the moment. – cautiously, slowly, happily.
There are less than 200 of them. Their average age is about 100 years.
When some of the veterans arrived Monday, stepping off a huge 767 onto the tarmac at Deauville’s small airport, sometimes aided by several attendants, many of those there to greet them cried amid their bursts of applause.
For a place steeped in the history of that great landing, when some 156,000 Allied troops came ashore and began to expel the German occupiers from Normandy and then the rest of France, there is a deep feeling of nostalgia.
“It’s very emotional,” said airport director Maryline Haize-Hagron, who, like most Normandy natives, has an intimate history of D-Day. Her grandfather Henri Desmet, after watching American paratroopers land on swamps near his farm on June 6, he used his flat-bottomed boat to row dozens to dry land so they could continue fighting.
“It is a great honor to be able to welcome you back,” he said.
Mr. Desmet, like most of the witnesses, is already dead. And this anniversary comes at a time that seems darkly critical: there is a war in Europe, far-right movements are gaining ground across the continent, there is a shifting politics of anger.
Veterans, for their part, have individual reasons for returning. Some come to honor their fallen comrades. Others want to enjoy the spectacle of it all, one last time.
“These people love us very much. It’s overwhelming,” Bill Becker, 98, said moments after he arrived at the tarmac, where he was greeted by a large crowd of children and dignitaries, including France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron.
Mr. Becker was a top turret gunner on covert missions for the newly created U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA. His crew delivered supplies and secret agents to Resistance members behind enemy lines, flying a black B-24 Liberator on moonlit nights. .
His suitcase had been stored in his bungalow in a retirement community in Hemet, Southern California, for months, a totem of hope that he would return to France, despite his myriad health problems.
“I made it,” he said with a tired smile.
If this is to be the last major commemoration of the fallen – and celebration of freedom – in which so many veterans will participate, then it will also be the largest. The program for the week of events on a 50-mile stretch of beaches runs to more than 30 pages, with concerts, parades, parachute drops, convoys and ceremonies. President Emmanuel Macron of France will preside over eight commemorations over three days. Two dozen heads of state are expected, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On the Deauville rink, a U.S. Army band played jazz-swing classics and members of the Fourth Infantry Division formed an honor guard. A group of World War II history enthusiasts stood by their vintage military jeeps, dressed in 80-year-old uniforms. Children at a nearby elementary school waved American and French flags.
Upon exiting the plane, each veteran was introduced to the crowd through a megaphone. Some saluted. Others greeted.
“I’m going to be 100,” one shouted triumphantly.
A battalion of wheelchairs awaited the arrival of the veterans.
“This will be the last hurrah,” said Kathryn Edwards, who, along with her husband, Donnie Edwards, runs the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit that guided 48 American veterans to Normandy for a nine-day memorial trip.
“With everything we do now, we want to blow them away,” Ms. Edwards said.
The first time Edwards brought four World War II veterans to France to commemorate D-Day, in 2006, they climbed into the back of his rented van, climbed stairs to castle rooms, and ate anywhere. restaurant they could. find. At the time, Mr. Edwards was a professional football player for the San Diego Chargers and enjoyed attending World War II battle reenactment camps during the offseason.
Watching crowds cheer as veterans paraded through small towns in Normandy and the Netherlands, he decided he needed to bring others back.
“All vets need to come back and experience this,” Edwards said. “Knowing what they did is still a respect and an honor.” He continued for years to do it out of his own pocket. Then in 2018, he and his wife founded the foundation.
Over the years, the Edwardses have had to make changes. No more vans. No more stairs. No more last-minute restaurants, where the food could upset a 100-year-old constitution.
This year, the veterans will be accompanied by a medical team of 15 people, including a physical therapist and a urologist.
Each veteran has a personal caregiver. The schedule has been lightened to offer more rest time.
The French government’s intention was to reduce the ceremonies to one hour to make them less strenuous for centenarians, said Michel Delion, a retired army general who is helping to run the anniversary program, called Mission Libération.
Even for France – whose president has an official “commemorative advisor” – the expanse of land along the landing beaches takes commemoration to a higher level. The sides of the narrow roads are dotted with memorial plaques, statues and funerary markers. The rotundas are decorated with antique tanks and other war equipment. The young faces of fallen soldiers look down from the lamp posts.
This week, locals have taken down their D-Day decorations. Even more flags (American, British, Canadian, French) are flying.
Each small town has its own dead and its own story of liberation.
In the relatively small region of Calvados, where four of the five landing beaches are located, 600 commemorations are planned, according to Stéphane Bredin, the top government administrator there.
“This is the last time these places will welcome their veterans,” Bredin said.
Many worry about what will happen once the old soldiers are gone.
“It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves for a long time,” said Marc Lefèvre, who, as mayor of Ste.-Mère-Église for 30 years, witnessed numerous joyful encounters between locals and American veterans who had fought nearby. . The answer? “Honestly, I don’t know,” he admitted.
But given the density of memorial sites and museums in the area, he said he hoped the story of June 6, 1944, would endure.
Denis Peschanski, a historian who heads Mission Libération’s 15-member scientific advisory board, said D-Day was so woven into France’s identity that the memory would remain even after the veterans were gone.
“There is the revolution,” he said, referring to the overthrow of the old regime in 1789, “and the landing during World War II, when we worked together to fight the Nazis. It’s fundamental”.
Veterans’ memories are increasingly disjointed and fade over time. Many did not talk about the war until years later, if at all.
Becker was sworn to secrecy until the 1980s, when information about his unit, known as the Brats, was declassified.
When he landed at Harrington Airfield in England in early 1945, about 10 months after D-Day and after months of training in the United States, he and his crew were taken to a room.
“They told us, ‘If you leave here and say something, they will shoot you,’” he recalled. Flight plans into enemy territory were so delicate that only the navigator and pilot knew where they were going. Becker’s job, from his vantage point, was to protect against enemy aircraft and anti-aircraft guns, essential as the crew flew only 400 to 600 feet above the ground and navigated by moonlight.
His plane sometimes returned with bullet holes and tree branches in its belly. His second flight was so terrifying that he grew his first white hair. “My knees were shaking,” he said. She was 19 years old at the time.
Mr. Becker never told his wife or three children exactly what he had done during the war. Now that he can talk about it, he wants everyone to know about the brats.
This is his second voyage to take part in the commemorations in Normandy, and is particularly poignant as he is joined by the only other remaining member of his crew: 99-year-old Hewitt Gomez.
For months, Becker has been talking about buying a bottle of champagne to share. A reunion within a reunion.
“I feel really good that I did something to help win the war,” Becker said. “We did something in this world that made it better.”