NewYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Programming Warnings: View Fox Nation series “The Last Journey of the Greatest Generation with Martha MacCallum.”
As I write this, dozens of world leaders, including President Biden, Emmanuel Macron, King Charles III and the Prince of Wales, are preparing to visit a place that has deep meaning in our shared history. They will go back beaches of normandy and the endless fields of crosses marking the resting places of our fallen soldiers, sailors and airmen, many of whom were no more than boys. Their bodies lie, as they have for the past 80 years this June, under a soft blanket of bright spring grass and beautiful shade.
But this peaceful place is not the same as they knew it. They, men in their late teens and early 20s, brought more than 150,000 people, some in Higgins boats, some jumping from C-47s. Many climbed the beaches, others climbed the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc using firehouse ladders brought from London. Struggled to keep goingAmidst a fierce shower of fire.
Thousands took their final steps here – on the Omaha, Utah, Juneau, Sword and Gold. Those who reached the spot saw their comrades wounded, dismembered and many lifeless, some with whom they had shared their last meal just hours before.
US Army personnel assemble on Navy landing craft for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, June 6, 1944. (US Navy/Getty Images)
Some were forced to exit the boats, drowning under the weight of their bags, taking what Lincoln at Gettysburg called “the last full measure of surrender” to bring freedom to Europe. A continent most of them had never seen, and a people they had never met.
101-year-old D-Day veteran heading to France to commemorate 80th anniversary of Normandy landings
Last year, at the commemoration ceremony, only a handful of people from the Greatest Generation were able to make the trip. But this year, the 80th, is different. It’s a bigger ceremony, and 150 people are expected to attend.
In 1984, President Reagan And his White House team recognized that 40 years after the war, many of those “boys of Pointe du Hoc” and their band of brothers, who were of retirement age at the time, were likely to make the trip. Reagan addressed them in an impassioned speech as the wind blew over the hallowed spot where the 2nd Ranger Battalion sent 225 young men over the cliffs to fight the Germans. They suffered a 70% casualty rate. Many of those killed are resting in the American cemetery, not far from where the war began.
It’s been 40 years since these heroes were welcomed back to France. Forty years of reunions and big band dances, of landing them off airplanes in memorial ceremonies, of French schoolchildren welcoming them, hugging them and thanking them for the freedom they brought decades ago. But this time, it’s quite likely, they will come to Normandy for the last time, with their stories and often their tears. They are now mostly between 97 and 102 years old.
Joining us in Normandy will be three men who fought in World War II. They are people we’ve come to know through our coverage over the years. 75th Anniversary of D-DayAt Iwo Jima and in our new series for Fox Nation, “The Final Journey of the Greatest Generation,” in which veterans tell the story in their own words. We are honored to call them friends.
American Airlines launches 80th anniversary travel of D-Day in Normandy for WWII veterans
Rondo Scharff and I met in Guam. He wore running shorts and a neon T-shirt over breakfast at the hotel before we boarded a plane for Iwo Jima. He was 92 years old at the time, but he looked no more than 75. His boyish energy and charm belied his age.
In order to join the Navy in 1943 he had the numbers on his baptismal certificate changed, making his age 18 rather than the 16-year-old he was then.
He moved to the Pacific Ocean and became a coxswain at that young age, piloting a Higgins boat, an amphibious landing craft. Off the Shores of Iwo JimaHe was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart.
He has been back to Iwo once and Normandy twice. He told us he comes because of the friends he lost, because he still sometimes has nightmares where they come to him and he offers to switch places for a few days so they can live the life he got to live for a few days.
Army veteran Bud Gahn invited me to his home outside Baltimore, where he lives with his wife, Angela. He was 98 at the time and still an avid traveler, so we had to plan the interview around his recent trip to Europe. He had a photo album at arm’s length, his mind still sharp as he recalled photos of himself with some of the men he fought with in Europe eight decades ago.
As part of the famous “Rainbow Division” he was sent to France in 1944 to counter the German counteroffensive. He received the Bronze Star because the house he and his fellow soldiers were taking refuge in was surrounded by German troops. He fought from that outpost for over two hours and kept the enemy at bay. He killed 10 Germans that day and held the area, preventing the Germans from breaking through the line at Schweighausen.
After that, Bud joined those who liberated the British. Dachau Concentration Camp. He and his men saw some people in the woods. They thought they might be escaping the Nazis, so they prepared to take them out. But on closer inspection they saw emaciated prisoners crawling out of the woods toward them. Bud was left in disbelief at their condition, and choked up when he remembered the man kissing his feet. The next day, Bud was aboard the first American truck to enter Munich.
we met Andre Chapaz, 98 years old near a naval base in California. Born in San Francisco to French parents, his family moved to Paris. But as the Nazis closed in on France, the Chapaz family returned to the United States. He joined the Army in 1943 at age 17. He was sent to the Pacific to help build airfields in Guam and runways in Okinawa, which would be used to allow American planes to reach mainland Japan. A talented artist, he described his time in the military through drawings.
For more Fox News opinion, click here
This week in Normandy, we will honor the attendees as they take a final look at the battlefields that defined so much of their lives and our history. Normandy was the beginning of the battle that would ultimately end years of suffering, fear, and war.
Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower Several hours before the invasion he went out to the people gathered in England and delivered a powerful message.
“Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the great crusade for which we have been striving these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of freedom-loving people everywhere are with you. Together with our brave Allies and our comrades on other fronts, you will destroy the German war machine, end Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and secure for yourself a free world.”
Click here to get the Fox News app
Earl Mills remembers hearing the words at his base in England, A few hours before D-Day“When we jumped into Normandy he was telling us how important it was for us to be successful. And he also told us that many of you here today wouldn’t come back. I’ll remember that well,” Earle said in our series for Fox Nation: “The Final Journey.”
We remember Earl, who died shortly after our interview, and all the people who told us their stories, as we documented them so everyone can hear directly from these heroes. These are the men who pushed back the forces of Hitler and the Empire of Japan to free the world from tyranny and oppression. They are always our heroes. And we salute them on their final journey to Normandy this week.
