Parachutists jumped from World War II-era planes into now peaceful Normandy to kick off a week of ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
American D-Day veteran Anthony Pagano arrives at Charles de Gaulle airport, Saturday, June 1, 2024 in Roissy, north of Paris. More than sixty American veterans arrive for ceremonies marking D-Day 80th anniversary.
On Sunday, three C-47 transport planes, a workhorse of the war, dropped three long strings of jumpers, their round chutes mushrooming open in the blue skies with puffy white clouds, to whoops from the huge crowd that was regaled by tunes from Glenn Miller and Edith Piaf as they waited. “Seven thousand of my marine buddies were killed. Twenty thousand shot up, wounded, put on ships, buried at sea,” said Don Graves, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater.
The youngest veteran in the group is 96 and the most senior 107, according to their carrier from Dallas, American Airlines.
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