D-Day Recalled in Rite at Cemetery Near Omaha Beach
OMAHA BEACH, France — Gray-haired American veterans, officials and townspeople gathered here Tuesday on the 45th anniversary of D-Day to honor the dead and recall the terrors and triumphs of history’s greatest amphibious landings.
“We’re here to remember what was done in this place; we’re here to thank the living and honor the dead,” Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh Jr. told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered around a reflecting pool at the memorial in the American military cemetery.
The cemetery contains the remains of 9,386 Americans killed in the assault.
Along a 50-mile stretch of the coast, 180,000 American, British and Canadian soldiers stormed ashore at dawn on June 6, 1944, assaulting German positions at beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword.
The assault marked the beginning of the liberation of German-occupied France and of the long drive across Europe that led to the destruction of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
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