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Centenarian Veterans Gather in Normandy to Mark D-Day’s 81st Anniversary

Veterans in their late 90s and older assembled on Normandy’s beaches to honor their comrades, emphasizing the urgent need to preserve fading eyewitness accounts.

Wally King, a 101-year-old former U.S. fighter pilot who flew 75 combat missions in World War II, and his granddaughter Kara Houser pay their respects Monday, June 2, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, at the Normandy American Cemetery grave of Henry Shurlds Jr., who flew P-47 "Thunderbolt" fighters like King and was shot down and killed on Aug. 19, 1944, above the town of Verneuil-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris. (AP Photo/John Leicester).
American soldiers go ashore during the Normand landing operations on D-Day, June 6, 1944. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
World War II veterans, mostly centenarians, who traveled as a group to France with the non-profit Best Defense Foundation, pose for a photo on Monday, June 2, 2025, at a memorial on Omaha beach, which was one of the D-D-day invasion spots on June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/John Leicester)
A black and white photo that Kara Houser, the granddaughter of a World War II veteran, pinned to her chest during a visit on Monday, June 2, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, to the Normandy American Cemetery shows Fred Mitchell Shafer, who Houser said served aboard one of the landing craft that deposited American soldiers on Omaha Beach during the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France (AP Photo/John Leicester)

Overview

  • D-Day ceremonies on June 6 drew thousands of attendees for parachute jumps, remembrance ceremonies and historical reenactments at Normandy beaches.
  • About two dozen surviving veterans in their late 90s and older returned to Omaha Beach as one of the smallest groups since commemorations began.
  • Only around 1% of the roughly 156,000 British, American and Canadian troops who stormed five Normandy beaches in 1944 are still alive, reinforcing calls to record their testimonies.
  • Volunteers at the Normandy American Cemetery rubbed beach sand onto 9,400 white gravestones to make the engraved names of American war dead more visible.
  • Allied meteorologist Maureen Sweeney’s 1944 forecast from Ireland was credited with pinpointing the brief weather window that allowed Operation Overlord to proceed.