Parachute jump from WWII-era planes kicks off commemorations for the 80th anniversary of D-Day

Paratroopers dropped from World War II planes into the now-peaceful skies of Normandy, where the war once took place, kicking off a week of ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

On Sunday, three C-47 transport planes, a flagship of the war, dropped three long lines of jumpers, their round parachutes opening into the blue sky with fluffy white clouds, to shouts from the huge crown that was bestowed by teeth of Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf while they waited.

The planes circled around and dropped three more jumper poles. Some of the loudest cheers from the crowd came when a startled deer jumped out of the undergrowth as the jumpers landed and ran across the landing zone.

After a final pass to launch the last two jumpers, the planes roared overhead in tight formation and disappeared over the horizon.

A week of ceremonies is planned for the fast-disappearing generation of Allied troops who fought on the beaches from D-Day 80 years ago until the fall of Adolf Hitler, freeing Europe from his tyranny.

All along the coast of Normandy – where then-young soldiers from the United States, Britain, Canada and other Allied nations landed amid hails of fire on five beaches on June 6, 1944 – French officers, grateful survivors of Normandy and other admirers are saying “merci” but also goodbye.

The dwindling number of veterans in their late nineties and older who return to remember fallen friends and their history-changing exploits is the latest.

Dozens of WWII Veterans Are Converging on Francemany perhaps for the last time, to revisit old memories, create new ones, and convey a message that survivors of D-Day and the subsequent Battle of Normandy, and other theaters of the Second World War, repeated over and over again – this war is hell.

“Seven thousand of my fellow Marines were killed. Twenty thousand shot, wounded, put on ships, buried at sea,” said Don Graves, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served on Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater.

“I want the younger people, the younger generation here, to know what we did,” said Graves, part of a group of more than 60 World War II veterans who flew to Paris on Saturday.

The youngest veteran in the group is 96 and the most experienced is 107, according to his Dallas-based airline, American Airlines.

“We did our job and went home and that was it. I don’t think we ever talked about it. For 70 years I didn’t talk about it,” said another veteran, Ralph Goldsticker, a captain in the US Air Force who served in the 452nd Bombardment Group.

Of the D-Day landings, he recalled seeing from his aircraft “a great, great piece of beach with thousands of ships” and spoke of bombing raids on German strongholds and routes that German forces could have used to send reinforcements to push back. . the invasion back to sea.

“I dropped my first bomb at 06:58 in a place with heavy weapons,” he said. “We came home, landed at 9:30. We reloaded.”

Part of the purpose of the fireworks displays, parachute jumps, solemn celebrations and ceremonies that world leaders will attend this week is to pass the baton of memory to current generations who now see war once again in Europe, in Ukraine. US President Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British royalty are among the VIPs France expects for D-Day events.