Highlights from the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy

OMAHA BEACH, France — French President Emmanuel Macron has thanked Ukraine’s leader and Ukrainians for their courage in their fight against Russian forces, saying: “We are here and won’t back away.”

Macron’s speech, addressing veterans and world leaders assembled on Omaha Beach for an international D-Day commemoration ceremony, referenced the current war in Ukraine as well as what happened on June 6, 1944.

“Faced with the return of the war on our continent, faced with all they (the WWII veterans) fought for being challenged, faced with those who pretend to use force to change the borders, to rewrite history, let’s be worthy of those who landed here,” Macron said.

Addressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he said: “Your presence here, today, Mister President of Ukraine, says it all.”

Thanking Ukrainians for their bravery and “sense of freedom,” Macron added: “We are here and won’t back away.”

OHAMA BEACH, France —French President Emmanuel Macron has awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest order of merit, to three more veterans.

Joseph Miller, Arlester Brown and Richard Rung were among a total of 15 veterans recognized with the honor on Thursday.

Rung, now 99, was 19 when he was assigned to a tank landing craft that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He later headed to the Pacific Theater where he spent the rest of World War II.

Brown, who worked as a Quartermaster engineer, was deployed in various locations across Saint Lo and Normandy, France, Belgium, The Netherlands and the Rhineland area in Germany.

Miller was a medic who landed in Normandy on June 6th, 1944, via glider. Ben’s glider lost both wings during the landing, but all 14 men in the glider made it out safely. He and his fellow medics went to help any infantrymen and paratroopers who were wounded.

OMAHA BEACH — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been greeted with huge applause and cheers as he arrived for a D-Day anniversary ceremony attended by international leaders.

AP Photo/Viginia Mayo

Zelenskyy is joining other world leaders, heads of state and veterans on the promenade along Omaha Beach for the ceremony, set to begin shortly.

British paratroopers who parachuted into the historic D-Day drop zone in Normandy to recreate the airborne part of the battle encountered something soldiers wouldn’t have had to deal with 80 years ago: They had to go through French customs and passport control upon landing.

British paratroopers who landed near the Normandy village of Sannerville assembled their parachutes and walked across a field to a makeshift border post, made up of a desk with a passport scanner and two laptop computers and manned by about half a dozen French border officials.

Since the United Kingdom left the European Union in 2020 Britons have had to go through border checks in France and the rest of the 27 EU member states.

More than 300 British, Belgian and U.S. paratroopers took part in the jump on Wednesday to recreate the events of June 6, 1944.

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

In his speech, President Joe Biden said Ukraine was invaded by “a tyrant” and said Russia’s advance will not stop with Ukraine if the world walks away.

Drawing parallels between what happened during World War II to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Biden said “Ukraine’s neighbors will be threatened” and “all of Europe will be threatened.”

He argued for holding strong against Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying “to surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable” and that to give in “means we’d forget what happened here” on the beaches of Normandy in 1944.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — U.S. President Joe Biden has said that “we will not walk away” from Ukraine’s defense as he addressed a D-Day anniversary event.

“To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators, is simply unthinkable,” Biden said.

“Democracy is never guaranteed. Every generation must preserve it, defend it and fight for it,” he added. “That’s the test of the ages.”

Among those awarded with the Legion of Honor on Thursday are:

Robert Pedigo, a technician who specialized in air weapons. On D-Day, he took part in a strike on a German site near Omaha Beach. He then took part in the bombing campaigns over Normandy and carried out his last combat mission in Germany in September.

Richard Stewart, a communications technician who landed on Omaha Beach in July 1944 and followed his battalion across France, Belgium and Germany.

Hilbert Margol, who arrived in January 1945 in France to join an artillery battalion that operated in eastern France. He is part of American forces that liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

Edward Berthold, a pilot who carried out his three first missions over France in May 1944 before taking part in an operation in Saint-Lo, in Normandy, on June 6, 1944. He took part in 35 combat missions during WWII, including 22 in France.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France -- French President Emmanuel Macron is awarding eleven U.S. WWII veterans with the Legion of Honor, France’s highest distinction, during a D-Day 80th anniversary ceremony.

The men are now 98 to 104 years old.

Macron kissed each of the veterans on both cheeks and warmly greeted them as he pinned a medal on their lapels.

''You came here to make France a free nation. You’re back here today at home, if I may say,” he told them.

OMAHA BEACH, France — Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Normandy, France, to commemorate the anniversary of the D-Day invasion with Western leaders.

Zelenskyy said on X that he is going to attend important meetings aimed at strengthening his nation at war, and that he is honored to be participating in the D-Day commemoration with President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and others.

“This event and day serve as a reminder of the courage and determination demonstrated in the pursuit of freedom and democracy,” Zelenskyy said.

“Allies defended Europe’s freedom then, and Ukrainians do so now. Unity prevailed then, and true unity can prevail today.”

VERS-SUR-MER, France — French President Emmanuel Macron has bestowed a Legion of Honor award on a 103-year-old female British veteran officer who created detailed maps that guided the crews of landing craft on D-Day.

Ludovic Marin/Pool via AP

Christian Lamb sat in a wheelchair as Macron bent down to pin the medal on her and kissed her on both cheeks.
He told her she was one of the “heroes in the shadows” as he described how she was studying in Normandy in 1939 when her father, a Royal Navy admiral, called her back to London on the eve of World War II.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Lamb recalled creating maps that “showed railways, roads, churches, castles, every possible feature that could be visible to an incoming invader and from every angle,” Lamb.

“It was intense and exciting work, and obviously detail was vital. It was crucial that the maps were 100% accurate,” she said.

SAINT-MARIE-DU-MONT, France — The prime minister of Denmark, has referenced Russian bombing of Kharkiv in Ukraine as she unveiled a monument for Danish nationals who joined the Allied war effort in World War II.

Mette Frederiksen called Kharkiv “a city like any other in Europe but right now a city at the frontline of freedom.” She pledged long-term aid for Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

“Too little too late is not an option,” she said. “There is no alternative to victory.”

Danish King Frederik Christian X pulled away a draped parachute to reveal the Danish memorial inland of Utah Beach.

JUNO BEACH, NORMANDY — Prince William has praised the bravery and sacrifice of Canadian troops as he addressed a D-Day anniversary ceremony on Juno Beach.

The royal was joined by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and Canadian D-Day veterans.

Some 14,000 Canadians were part of the 150,000 Allied troops who landed or parachuted into Normandy in 1944.

“Far from home they stormed these very sand dunes behind me, shoulder to shoulder with thousands of British troops,” William said.

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — U.S. President Joe Biden has met with American veterans of D-Day as he marked the invasion’s 80th anniversary.

Veterans who could stand were helped out of wheelchairs to pose for photos with the president and first lady Jill Biden. One hugged Biden, another saluted.

When Biden learned it was one of the veterans’ birthday, he led the audience in singing happy birthday.

The first lady clutched the arm of another veteran, Robert Gibson, to help him stand next to Biden as they shook hands.

“Don’t get old,” the 100-year-old man joked to the 81-year-old president, who was a toddler when D-Day took place.

Steve Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the Hollywood heavyweights behind movies and television shows about World War II, were nearby.

VER-SUR-MER, France — Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the opposition leader, Keir Starmer from the Labour Party, both took a break from campaigning for Britain’s July 4 election to travel to France for the D-Day ceremony.

Sunak paid tribute to veterans, saying their “actions freed a continent and built a better world.”

“You risked everything and we owe you everything,” he told the audience. “We cannot possibly hope to repay that debt but we can and we must pledge never to forget.”

King Charles III and Queen Camilla have led commemorations at the new British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer.

Camilla wiped away a tear as actor Martin Freeman read words by 99-year-old D-Day veteran Joe Mines, recalling that “I was 19 when I landed, but I was still a boy. I don’t care what people say, I wasn’t a man, I was a boy. And I didn’t have any idea of war of war and killing.”

Welsh singer Tom Jones, 83, sang his song “I Won’t Crumble With You If You Fall,” before the king addressed the audience in French and English.

Charles said that while the number of living veterans was dwindling, “our obligation to remember what they stood for and what they achieved for us all can never diminish.”

Speaking in French, Charles paid tribute to the “unimaginable number” of French civilians killed in the battle for Normandy, and the bravery and sacrifice of the French Resistance.

Because freedom is worth celebrating and passing on to children, too, Alexandra Hamon, 35, drank champagne and shared the sunrise with her boys, Karl and Neils, both 13, as the day dawned Thursday over the beaches where Allied soldiers landed on D-Day.

The family was among a crowd several thousands strong that stretched for kilometers along Utah beach — one of the five beaches along the coast of Normandy where Allied troops landed. Utah and Omaha were taken — at the cost of hundreds of lives — by American forces, with the others stormed by troops from Britain and Canada, also killing many hundreds, plus others from France. The other code-named beaches are Juno, Sword and Gold.

Karl sat perched on the hood of their 1943 Dodge truck, lovingly restored by her husband, Enogat, as the family from Saint Malo, a French coastal city that was badly damaged in major fighting about two months after D-Day, stared out across the English Channel.

The waters Thursday were still and peaceful — unlike on that fateful day that helped change the course of WWII and precipitate Adolf Hitler’s downfall 11 months later.

“It’s indescribable, just imagining the chaos. Now it’s peaceful, almost festive, we try to imagine but I think it’s unimaginable,” she said.

“You think of all those guys, everything they went through,” she added of the fast-dwindling D-Day veterans. “They say they aren’t heroes. But they are, they are. Those guys really should never die. I imagine the boats, the guys arriving, the sounds. It must have been horrible, yes, horrible.”

UTAH BEACH, France — As the rising sun took the night’s chill off Utah Beach, Christophe Receveur, 57, from Thionville in eastern France, unfurled a Stars and Stripes he bought in Gettysburg, PA, six months ago specifically to honor the Americans who fell on D-Day.

“To keep alive the memory of the soldiers who died for our freedom,” he said. “To forget them is to let them die all over again.”

Receveur and his daughter, Julie, 28, carefully folded the flag into a tight triangle after their quiet, reflective homage on an empty stretch of the beach, busy with hundreds of people strung out along the sands.

Receveur said the Ukraine war was on his mind, too, as he honored the fallen of WWII. His great grandfather fought in WWI, his grandfather was a prisoner of war in WWII, and his father was a veteran of France’s war in former North African colony Algeria.

“I don’t want our freedom, for our kids, our grandkids, to be hit by … I don’t want to say a madman,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “So a lot of respect for these people who died and for those who are still dying,” he said of the WWII dead and those in Ukraine.

He said the D-Day sacrifices have to be remembered. “Lots of emotion that all these troops came to liberate a country that they didn’t know for an ideology — democracy, freedom — that is under severe strain now.”

UTAH BEACH, France — As the golden sun pierced low clouds over the seas that were thick with landing craft approaching Normandy on D-Day, Becky Kraubetz peered across the English Channel toward her native Britain, her eyes filled with tears as she thought about the scene 80 years ago.

“It’s so historic and we just have to remember the sacrifices of everybody who gave us our freedom,” said Kraubetz, whose grandfather served with the British Army during World War II and was captured in Malta.

“It gives you goosebumps, everything that happened here. Imagine just jumping into the water, freezing cold,” said the 54-year-old who now lives in Florida, as the rays of the morning sun started to warm the hundreds of people who’d waited through the night’s chill for dawn’s break.

“The bravery, the courage, for people to face that is just unbelievable — very, very humbled to be here.”

World War II veterans from the United States, Britain and Canada are in Normandy this week to mark 80 years since the D-Day landings that helped lead to Hitler’s defeat.

Few witnesses remain who remember the Allied assault.

“Thank you, guys. Thank you.” Sitting in a wheelchair in front of the graves of fallen comrades at the Normandy American Cemetery, D-Day veteran Jake Larson wanted to let them know out loud that they are the real heroes for giving their lives for the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi Germany — not him.

The 101-year-old American, best known on social media under the name “Papa Jake,” with more than 800,000 followers on TikTok, Larson said “I’m a ‘here-to.’

▶ The Associated Press spoke to veterans about their role in freeing Europe from the Nazis, and what messages they have for younger generations.

UTAH BEACH, France — As the sun sets on the D-Day generation, it’s rising again over Normandy beaches where soldiers fought and died exactly 80 years ago, kicking off intense anniversary commemorations Thursday against the backdrop of renewed war in Europe, in Ukraine.

Ever-dwindling numbers of World War II veterans, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, make this anniversary particularly meaningful, mixing poignant remembrances for D-Day sacrifices with an Allied show of solidarity for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, among the guests.

But host France hasn’t invited World War II ally Russia, citing its “war of aggression against Ukraine that has intensified in recent weeks.”

▶ Read more as anniversary commemorations kick off.

UTAH BEACH, France — Hundreds of people, some in WWII-era uniforms, arrived before dawn to stretch out across the now peaceful sands of Utah Beach, one of the five Allied landing zones on D-Day where troops waded into cold seas through hails of fire exactly 80 years ago.

“It’s our way of paying homage, and better understanding what really happened in the 1944 landings,” said Dimitri Picot, a 33-year-old from the nearby Normandy town of Carentan who works as a rat and pest catcher.

Picot said he often dives on a wrecked ship that was hit and exploded, its wreckage visible Thursday as night gave way to day. Growing up amid the June 6, 1944, landing zones, he said he has become accustomed to seeing walls still pockmarked by bullets, shrapnel and other reminders of that fateful day.

But on the 80th anniversary “to think that they liberated us” hammered home the emotion, he said.

The history of D-Day is often told through the stories of the men who fought and died when the Allies stormed the beaches of northern France on June 6, 1944.

But behind the scenes were hundreds of thousands of military women who worked in crucial non-combat roles such as codebreakers, ship plotters, radar operators and cartographers. Often overlooked, their contributions have come into sharper focus as the number of living D-Day veterans dwindles and the world prepares for the 80th anniversary of the landings.

▶ Read more about the women of World War II.

United States President Joe Biden will mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in France as he tries to demonstrate steadfast support for European security at a time when some allies fear Donald Trump threatens to upend American commitments if he wins another term in the White House.

The trip comes as the deadliest fighting on the continent since World War II continues in Ukraine and allied countries struggle to find ways to turn the tide against Russia, which has recently gained ground on the battlefield. It is also set against deepening cracks between the U.S. and many European allies over how to manage the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Biden arrived in Paris on Wednesday morning, and he was welcomed by French officials and an honor guard. On Thursday, he’ll visit hallowed ground near the beaches of Normandy, where rows of bone-white headstones mark the graves of U.S. soldiers who died to bring an end to World War II.

Under their feet, the sands of Omaha Beach, and in their rheumy eyes, tears that inevitably flowed from being on the revered shoreline in Normandy, France, where so many American young men were cut down 80 years ago on D-Day.

Veterans of World War II, many of them centenarians and likely returning to France for one last time, pilgrimaged Tuesday to what was the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches on June 6, 1944. They remembered fallen friends. They relived horrors they experienced in combat. They blessed their good fortune for surviving. And they mourned those who paid the ultimate price.

They also bore a message for generations behind them, who owe them so much: Don’t forget what we did.

▶ Read more about veterans of World War II.

When Associated Press correspondent Don Whitehead arrived with other journalists in southern England to cover the Allies’ imminent D-Day invasion of Normandy, a U.S. commander offered them a no-nonsense welcome.

“We’ll do everything we can to help you get your stories and to take care of you. If you’re wounded, we’ll put you in a hospital. If you’re killed, we’ll bury you. So don’t worry about anything,” said Maj. Gen. Clarence R. Heubner of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division.

It was early June 1944 — just before the long-anticipated Normandy landings that ultimately liberated France from Nazi occupation and helped precipitate Nazi Germany’s surrender 11 months later.

▶ Here’s how the day unfolded for The Associated Press reporters, artists and photographers in the air, on the choppy waters of the English Channel, in London, and at English departure ports and airfields.

Parachutists jumping from World War II-era planes hurled themselves Sunday into now peaceful Normandy skies where war once raged, heralding a week of ceremonies for the fast-disappearing generation of Allied troops who fought from D-Day beaches 80 years ago to Adolf Hitler’s fall, helping free Europe of his tyranny.

The 80th anniversary of the June 6, 1944, Allied invasion on D-Day that punched through Hitler’s western defenses and helped precipitate Nazi Germany’s surrender 11 months later brings mixed emotions for French survivors of the Battle of Normandy.

They remain eternally grateful for their liberation but cannot forget its steep cost in French lives.

Some 20,000 Normandy civilians were killed in the invasion and as Allied forces fought their way inland, sometimes field-by-field through the leafy Normandy countryside that helped conceal German defenders. Only in late August of 1944 did they reach Paris.

▶ Read more about survivors’ mixed emotions.