♪ GENERAL EISENHOWER: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.

The eyes of the world are upon you.

♪ DON: D-Day was something that I think every one of us share this moment that we went through something very special.

♪ It was pitch dark, and we started to load all the troops up.

ROBERT: I had the job of using high explosives.

We were going to be the initial assault wave on D-Day.

RICHARD: we were all a bunch of kids, 23, 24, 25 year olds.

We had the mission of taking out these guns that were pointed at old Mile High Beach, U-Town Beach.

♪ RICHARD: We were instructed not to bring anybody back except the wounded or the dead.

ROBERT: And pretty soon we were taking water in.

RICHARD: As I was going into the beach, I could hear the bullets on the side of the boat.

[guns firing] TOM: The 88's start coming at us and tracers are going over our head.

[explosions] I know the crew that I took in, there was about 36 soldiers and there wasn't one of them that made it.

I yelled up at God, I said, hey, God, you know, if there's anything you want me to do in my life, I will do it, as long as you get me off this beach.

[helicopter sounds] MAN 1: I knew we were in trouble.

And all I could see was red blood.

RICHARD: Something I tried to get out of my mind, but it's just stuck there.

I just can't shake it off.

♪ ♪ RADIO ANNOUNCER: Washington.

The war department says it has no information on reports by the German radio that invasion operations have begun on the French Channel coast.

[typing] ♪ KEN: England was loaded with equipment and troops.

And we laughed and said, the only thing that kept the island up were barrage balloons.

♪ ED M: We trained there for nine months.

We had practices jumps, we had one--a night jump there.

And it looked like the area of France, but we didn't realize where we were going to go.

They had, like, hedgerows and everything.

ROBERT: Everybody was there, waiting on something to happen.

♪ WALTER: Don't think that I wasn't scared, you were scared.

But you just go, that's all.

You don't think about it, I didn't think about it.

But a lot of guys did, some guys broke down.

I don't know why I didn't break down, but I went through.

♪ LEO: Something big was coming that we knew.

When we were told we were going to be leaving and to go to South Hampton, I said, South Hampton, that's right on the coast to go to France.

♪ ED M: They put us behind barbed wire fences with guards on the outside, and guards inside, and nobody could get in or out.

We were there for about a week.

♪ KEN: We realized that we were going to be the tip of the spear when the invasion came.

♪ EARL: I think we all had an idea, in fact, I think we all knew that General Eisenhower said we was going to be 94% casualties.

So, we already knew that already.

So, probably wasn't supposed to know it, but we did.

So, yeah, we knew what was coming.

♪ KEN: We were all anticipating what we -- how we would react to people being--shooting at us.

So, it was a time of a good deal attention.

♪ DICK: The important part was that you had to have some kind of weather that was clear enough so you could have air cover.

You had to have as close to a full moon as possible, so you could see what you were doing on the beaches.

♪ ED M: June 5th came, and he said, we're going on the 5th.

And we were all suited up to go, and word came down that the mission had been scrubbed because the weather wasn't very good.

DICK: The weather was stormy all the week before.

And the only way we could forecast was to look at the whole weather systems coming across the North Atlantic.

And the weather showed a day before a high pressure ridge creeping up from the Azores, and this told us we could go.

[typing] [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER: It is now too early to try to guess what the Allied command objective might be.

♪ We got briefed for a couple of missions before D-Day.

And then for the actual invasion they showed us the sand tables and gave us the briefings, told us what to expect.

We were assigned to landing craft assault teams.

We were going to be the initial assault wave on D-Day.

Our first battalion won that award.

Don't ask me why, we weren't too excited about hearing we were going to be the initial assault.

But in any event, we were.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: Solders, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, you are about to bark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months.

The eyes of the world are upon you, the hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.

In company with our brave Allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one.

Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened.

He will fight savagely.

Our home fronts have given us a great superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal, great reserves of trained fighting men.

The tide has turned.

The free men of the world are marching together through victory.

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full victory.

Good luck and let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

[engine noise] [engine noise] [typing] [engine noise] I saw so many planes, I actually felt sorry for the Germans.

MAN 2: England had double summertime and it was still fairly light, we could see the English Channel as we were going across.

I looked out the door and saw all the boats headed for France.

So, it looked encouraging.

We weren't alone.

ROD: Was pretty quiet.

They passed out some pills and put us about half asleep.

And first thing you know we're ready to--we're over the Cotentin Peninsula and ready to jump.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER: NBC reporters are standing by to bring you the latest invasion bulletin as they come off the wire.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 2: Early this morning the long-awaited British and American invasion began when paratroops landed in the area of the Somme Estuary.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 3: The German new agency said the Allied invasion operations began with the landing of the airborne troops in the area of the Seine River.

KEN: When we made landfall, across the channel, the Germans were waiting for us.

They had been expecting us the night before.

And they were all ready with all their anti-aircraft artillery, and they shot us up.

We couldn't have been more than 3 or 400 feet off the ground.

ED M: Soon we hit the coast and then it was--they called it "Night of Nights" and the sky lit up and the flag came up and machine gun traces were coming up.

You could hear the bullets hitting the side of the plane and... BUCK: There's no substitute for having somebody try to kill you because pilots were trying to stay away from their flack and everything.

[gunfire] BRAD: We was all pretty serious when we're going through that and it was just that we was going to combat, what we had been training to do.

We were maybe five minutes just solid anti aircraft fire, rifle fire.

It could hit us at that altitude, so were really anxious to get out of that airplane.

When the flack started, which did over the Guernsey Islands.

The guys were just saying, let us get the hell out of here.

Can't imagine how tense everybody was, it was--it was amazing.

And we're quite eager to get out of the damn thing.

It was a lot of action.

MAN 2: I think everybody wanted to get out of it.

I think everybody was ready.

No question whether you was going to jump or not, you just wanted out of that thing because the shrapnel was going through that thing sounded like a beehive.

So, there was no problem getting the guys to jump.

They wanted out.

They wanted that green light to come on so they could get out of that damn thing.

ED M: It was four planes in a formation, 66th was accompanying the plane, and they left.

It was a plane that was one of our platoons.

On the right was 68.

And then I was in the back with 69.

And after that we went through all that firing and that, we got the--we saw the plane--company--a company plane get shot down.

ROD: One of our planes was hot down and we lost, you know, 12, 14 men, the company commander and first sergeant.

That was just before those guys even got on the ground.

I think the number's somewhere around 60 aircraft didn't make it back to England.

The moon was going in and out behind the clouds.

And the--I just thought about what you could see, and then you couldn't see.

MAN 3: We didn't know where we was at, but we was there.

ROBERT: And you're floating around down there, you're wondering what's going to happen.

[engine noise] EARL: All I can see is tracers flying in all directions down there.

It looks like one of them's going to hit you between the eyes, and then peel off one way or the other.

And that's about all.

And that's the first time I ever saw green tracers.

I told people I saw green tracers.

And I found out later that the German did have green tracers.

Ours were red.

[gunfire] Well, when I come down on my parachute on June 6, I landed on a shrine down over the hill behind a church here, on the roof of a shrine.

And there was two Germans there to greet me when I landed, welcome me to Normandy.

[laughs] MAN 4: I was the last man out.

I was the last man out and I stayed to make sure everybody got out.

I was the sergeant at the time.

[gunfire] ED T: We had the password thunder, welcome, and flash.

And when I landed, another guy landed very close to me.

And I turned, still in my parachute, and I opened my mouth to say the password and he yelled out, Tipper!

We had known each other so well during this training that we could recognize just by the way we moved, you know.

You see somebody and he'd recognize me and I recognized him.

BUCK: I hit the ground very quickly.

Wasn't hurt.

Got up.

Took my harness off, and it was so quiet there, there was no action, no firing right there on the ground.

And I heard some rustling in the bushes.

There were three--three of us together.

WESLEY: There's the paratroopers led the way in, and the glider troops followed.

Of course, I guess about every glider crash landed.

Some overturned, some lost their wing.

Some got attack damage, but got out of the attack.

Fortunately I was in a glider that no one was hurt.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 4: The German radio announced, this is D-Day.

CHRIS: Had no inkling of where I was from that time until I got to Saint-Lô.

I probably was some 14 miles from where I was supposed to be.

I was all alone.

The only thing I got scared of, really, ran into, was I avoided roads and so forth was cows.

I'd hear--I was sneaking up on cows because I thought they might be some of our men.

And I didn't use the clicker, I never believed in the clickers because I figured it was more harm than good.

[explosions] I could hear the guns on the shore opening with the bombardment.

I could hear that all the time, every morning, noon, and night, all during that period.

I could see very nearby, because of the tracers going off.

A German walked right in front of me and I hadn't seen and he hadn't seen me.

Fortunately I had my Tommy gun cocked.

When he came around the tree, I tried to remember whether he had his gun slung over his shoulder, I think so.

But I just stitched him all the way up with a machine gun.

And that was the period I--that was the most difficult period in all my whole career because I thought he was the point of a squad.

There's no substitute for hearing a bullet snap past your head and you realize that someone's trying to kill you.

And you can't explain or put into words how that feels, but it--it forever changes you.

You're never quite the same.

I landed in water over my head.

I had on all of my equipment, plus a leg bag.

I managed to get out of the trench.

And the troops that I took up with were 82nd division people.

They came in behind me.

And that's the people that I was with when I killed my first man.

It was very lonely.

I jumped in, couldn't find any of my friends for about five hours.

And my first impression was, what am I doing here?

I had never felt so alone in all of my life.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER: Early Tuesday morning landing craft and light war ships were observed in the area between the Mouth of the Sun and the eastern coast of Normandy.

[water rushing] ROCCO: Their guns were positioned in such a way that unless you got real close, you couldn't even see them.

They had some large guns hidden, like inside the rocks and so forth.

From the beach we could see the field, the ridge that they were on, because they put the artillery that we fired up in there, you know?

♪ It was pitch dark.

You couldn't see nothing in front of you, and we started to load the troops up, and the boats.

♪ They didn't tell us what area we were going to hit, they just told us we were going to the beach and that's it.

♪ [gunfire] The first thing, you know, every ship in the harbor started firing at the beach the battleships, destroyers, you name 'em.

And it looked like the Fourth of July, only about a thousand Fourth of Julys all at once.

[gunfire] And that ocean lit up like a Christmas tree.

[gunfire] And there was 4:30 in the morning and they were bombing that beach like hell.

[gunfire] [gunfire] After loading up our troops we went to a rendezvous area with the other boats, and then we got our single to land head to the beach.

[gunfire] ROBERT: A few guys got seasick.

They were wearing these heavy combat jackets.

RICHARD: The first thing, you know, every ship in that harbor start firing at the beach, battleships, destroyers, you name 'em.

[gunfire] ♪ They're scared all the time to do something.

I was anyway.

I imagine all the others were, too.

♪ ♪ [indistinct yelling] LOU: I wasn't nervous, I was scared like hell.

Well, everybody was scared.

We were only a bunch of kids, about 20, 21, 19.

And nobody knew what the hell war was at that time, but now I know.

♪ MAN 5: Attention, men, attention.

From General Eisenhower to all soldiers, sailors, and airmen... ROBERT: And then we got our single to land, head to the beach, and I figured out a way in.

I says, this is going to be a piece of cake, can't nobody be left on that beach with the bombardment they took.

You could see them soldiers, they were scared stiff, you know, they could see they were nervous.

♪ [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 5: We interrupt our program to bring you a special broadcast.

Berlin radio says about 15 Allied cruisers, 50 to 60 destroyers are all they have, guarding great numbers of landing craft, apparently waiting orders to hit the coast.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 6: The British-America landing operation against the western coast of Europe, from the sea and from the air, are stretching over the entire area between Cherbourg and Le Havre, a distance of about 60 miles.

♪ LOWELL: It was the roughest time I ever saw.

It was raining and the waves were so high that the boat was just bouncing up and down.

And everybody--all the soldiers were getting seasick and vomiting over the side.

[gunfire] JIM: D-Day morning we were about 500 yards stern of the battleship Texas.

And she was firing her big guns and in point to Pointe-du-Hoc.

And every time she would fire her guns we would move sideways about 25 feet.

♪ We did trips back and forth, bringing everything from troops to plasma, blood plasma, K rations, shells for the guns for thing.

I mean, it looked like, you might say, a giant junk yard between the vehicles and ships and the smaller ones, the LCM's, the LCT's that were hit mines and roached and everything.

♪ [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 7: The greatest fleet of ships ever to set sail, 4,000 ships and thousands of lesser craft.

The greatest army ever to strike a hostile shore.

[gunfire] RICHARD: As I was going into the beach, I could hear the bullets hitting on the side of the ship, on the side of my boat.

And then that's when I realized, I said, this isn't going to be a piece of cake, this is for real.

[gunfire] I looked into the well of the boat and there was 35 soldiers in there.

And I don't think there was an atheist in there because every one of us is making a sign of the cross as we were going in.

[chokes up] And I happen to look.

I looked to the right and I seen a boat there.

And that's when I realized what we were going into.

Our job was to pull up these obstacles.

They had what they call hedge hogs, then they had these telephone poles with a ramp, and on top of the telephone pole was a mine.

That was for when the tide came in, boats would just slide up there and the mine would explode.

Our job was to blow 50 yard gaps so the infantry could land.

[crying] [gunfire] I carried a rifle and a web belt with a web belt with canteen and ammunition and a rifle, and I forgot how many pounds of explosives I had on my back.

I believe they called it tetrytol.

And as I got to the ramp that the small boat was in to land, there was--I just--just as I jumped into the water there was this explosion.

And while I was under water maybe a couple of seconds, someone pulled me out and I couldn't find anything.

[crying] I couldn't find any of the crew that I was attached to.

I found out they were all killed.

[crying] I was the only one left.

♪ And as I was going in, I could see the other boats, a lot of the klaxons, I don't know if some of them got nervous, and they lowered their ramps way before they got into the beach and that was how a lot of those soldiers drowned.

WILSON: The tide was coming in so fast, the people were holding hands.

I guess a lot of them couldn't swim.

But they were holding hands.

♪ MAN 6: As I hit the beach, Wally Lawton lowered the ramp, and the soldiers start loading out.

And I seen them drop, I seen 'em getting shot.

I seen them, their faces blown off.

[crying] God, it was almost certain death.

It's a sight I'll never forget.

It's been on my mind since.

As they were going off, there was one soldier there that didn't want to leave, I guess he froze.

He seen what happened in front of him.

And we were instructed not to take anybody back unless they were wounded or dead.

As I lifted up my arm, tell him to get off, I was shot, it came out my back.

[explosions] ♪ In fact, when it happened I called for my mother.

I was in that water, and I called for my mother.

MAN 6: I really didn't start getting scared or feeling about it until we started hearing the bullets hitting on the side of the ship and hitting on the water.

Then when I looked, like I said, I seen that boat blow up, I said, oh, my God, I said, I hope I don't get hit.

I can remember the soldiers telling me, go all the way in, I don't want to get wet, I don't want to get wet, you know.

They didn't get wet, they got killed.

[typing] [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 7: The beaches of northern France are alive right now with Allied troops.

Allied troops landing in wave after wave.

♪ TOM: We got in within 300 yards of the close point of Pointe-du-Hoc, the mission to take out these guns that were pointed at the Omaha Beach, Utah Beach, and you name the beach, these guns were ready to go.

And pretty soon the 88's start coming at us, and tracers are going over our head.

MAN 7: Next thing I knew, when we got within about 800 yards from the Pointe, we were taking an awful pounding, and one shell hit just in front of the bow of the landing craft, just picked it up, and we had it almost half full of water already, just flipped it over.

First thing I know, I remember hearing our captain saying, abandon ship.

We had no choice, we were dumped right into the water.

And we lost five guys.

And we figured that the end was going to come.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 8: Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.

♪ MAN 8: And the water was really red, too, with all the people that get hit, it's awful.

They had us pinned down.

Actually, you couldn't move.

If you stood up, you were gone.

[gunfire] DON: I reached a point where I could see I had to talk to God in a real hurry.

And I remember looking up to God, and I yelled, God, no matter what it is you want me to do, I'll do it, forever or the rest of my life.

And almost instantly the Navy had shot down smoke flairs way down below the beach, near Vierville, and the smoke had drifted up by us.

At that point Colonel Cannon, who was my regimental commander, had come along in the smoke and said, okay, guys, get off the beach, get your ass up here, get off to the beach and run.

And it was almost simultaneously.

And he yelled, 29, let's go.

And we did.

We get up to the berm, and we made it to the berm.

And managed to get up there, soaking wet.

I mean, we're talking about a beach that's like a quarter of a mile long.

How I managed to get up there, I don't know, but God was helping me.

ERNIE: When I jumped in, I went overboard, I went under.

And all the sudden someone pulled me back up.

That was almost simultaneously with this explosion from an 88.

But I was about maybe waist deep.

But the tide was way out at the time.

[gunfire] I managed to crawl up the beach, and 'cause the tide went out.

It went out very far, but when it came in, it came in quite fast.

And it left a very small beach.

And that's when--before, as I was crawling in the beach, I looked back and I could see these tanks that were supposed to float.

They just sank.

They went right to the bottom.

And I got up on the beach, and another--one of the tanks got stuck and it lost its tread on the small rocks.

And as I was laying there, I couldn't find any Navy men.

And you could tell the Navy men because the helmets, we had a blue stripe that went around the helmet.

There was some Army men about 10, 15 feet from me laying down with a medic, and an 88, they called 'em 88's.

The shells hit them and they were gone.

There were body parts all over the place.

MAN 9: Bodies all over the place, arms and legs.

ERNIE: I remember this, he must've been an officer, because there were two kinds of people on the beach.

Those that are dead, and those that are going to be dead.

I remember that.

RICHARD: As I backed off the beach, I could see a lot of soldiers there just floating in the water and it was a hell of a sickness.

I--something that I try to get out of my mind, but it's just stuck there and I just can't shake it off.

And I've, oh, I thought so much of those, we were all a bunch of kids, no more than, I was only 19-years-old, so the rest of them, I figured I was the youngest one on that beach that day, because the rest of them were older than I was, 23, 34, 25-year-olds, and to see them soldiers floating there and dying on that beach is--it was hell, and don't let anybody tell you it was different, because it was hell.

It was awful and these are things that I will never forget.

The scariest thing that ever happened to me in my life.

♪ ♪ CAPTAIN ZIMMERMAN: Whatever was done, was not enough to make any difference to the Germans and their efficiency and ability to prevent us from landing, and therefore, they had to change everything.

So they scrapped the book and we went on in, as close as we could to our assigned areas within the range of Omaha Beach.

Each of the destroyers had a certain section to eliminate the German, what they called the Atlantic Wall.

[water rushing] MAN 10: There was just a huge mass of ships of landing craft, and everything and circling around because there was no success, immediate success on the beach.

A lot of ships that should've been in, unloaded and gone out was still on there on the beach, so there was a mass of ships close to the beach.

It would've been a field day if we had gone out farther, but it was obvious that they were determined to find their fire out of the beach and just off the beach.

JOHN: We went and examined a pillbox afterwards and they said, this is probably where our big guns hit and there'd be a little chip of cement off the, our guns didn't do any damage unless they were a direct hit.

♪ FRANK: One of the toughest things for us was that when we would come across parts of bodies floating, and we would have to report them in, and they had special people that picked them up, that never goes away.

It stays with you all the time.

I--when flashbacks come back, I see arms, legs, bodies.

♪ VINCENT: We lost a lot of people out there, a lot of good people.

♪ [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 11: A landing was made this morning on the coast of France, and German stations admit that our troops are now 10 miles inside Europe.

♪ He was very surprised, because he relied on the expert's view of the German Kriegsmarine that nobody could land under such weather conditions.

It was a very courageous decision of General Eisenhower and very successful.

My father was away from the theatre and some others as well.

He said, this is very painful that they are landing while I am not there.

The British and Americans were more courageous than the Germans concerning the weather, but in the morning they around 8:00, there was still no clear picture of the situation, in my father's and Von Rudnstedt's headquarters.

They were still doubtful if this really had been the landing, but that changed in one hour and my father began...when he heard it, he began to call his driver and prepare himself for departing from France.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 12: Today is a day that no living American can forget, Invasion Day.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 13: Allied invasion forces have cleared enemy forces from their beaches in French Normandy.

Today they are marching their way in.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 14: A report that several beach heads have now been established.

Allied forces are slicing their way inland from these beach heads according to the reconnaissance photos.

I never remember being scared, you know it was an experience that I knew would probably be the most important thing that I did in my entire life would be part of that invasion.

We were coming into the beach and we were taking wounded off, and most of them were paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne.

One person that we took off was a fighter pilot, and he was in really bad shape.

The doctors later said that he had broken every bone in his body.

I took him back in my boat.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 15: We have broken the first German defense line.

We've pierced a hole in it.

We are 10 miles inside the fortress of Europe, that wall of steel in concrete, which Hitler boasted could never be broken, but apparently has already been broken.

♪ MAN 11: Our job was to go in there and stay in there until we silenced each of the German heavy artillery in there, the machine gun nests, the mortar nests, and the sharp shooters.

The destroyers stayed there until there were no more firing from any source of the Germans.

The German's wall was broken forever.

What was happening when we got there, people were getting off the boats and being killed on the beach.

I remember looking down in both directions, and as far as I could see there were men on the sand there, and they were either dead, or they were lying still because they didn't want to be dead, and 'cause there was nothing but death for them if they got up, because none of the defense, the offensive actions of the Germans were stopped with all the things that we did, until the destroyers came in and destroyed the big guns, and then all the others that they had, and by the time sunset, there was not a single German gun firing, or a pistol, or a rifle, mortar, or anything else, and the German wall, the Atlantic Wall was no more.

[typing] [typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 16: Enormous Allied reinforcements have been pouring across the channel and onto the beaches gap in the Nazi line of steel and cement fortifications along the coast.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 17: Supreme headquarters says initial landings succeed, fighting proceeds.

Winston Churchill says that the enemy was surprised by our landings.

The airborne troops are well established behind Nazi lines, and the Allied forces have penetrated several miles inland, losses have been far lighter than had been anticipated, and the operation is proceeding in a thoroughly satisfactory manner.

[typing] RADIO ANNOUNCER 18: And another bulletin just in, emphasizes the element of surprise, saying that the Nazis were caught off their guard in an effective surprise by the Allied forces.

RADIO ANNOUNCER 19: Although all the beaches we have landed have been cleared of the enemy, and some of the beaches have been linked together.

The fighting inland is both heavy and general.

The first phase of the invasion is going well.

The Allies now control about 50 miles of the French coast.

[flag flapping] [typing] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ In my rosary at night when I say the prayers, I don't pray for the guys that on holidays, I pray for them every night.

I even pray for the people that were in the concentration camps that got killed by the Nazis, and I say, God bless the people that didn't make it back home, every night, not on holidays, every night.

♪ MAN 9: I remember that day after I got wounded.

The four of us was there and we were all crying, not over me, but what we saw, the florals.

We couldn't believe it, and Brean, he had studied to be a priest, and he was the one that prayed the most, I guess, for all of us.

♪ MAN 12: I'm not the hero.

I'm not--I'm not the hero.

I'm just a survivor.

The heroes, most of the heroes over there are under the white crosses that you all know about, and their mothers and their fathers, and their brothers, and their sisters, and even their children of some of those people, those are the heroes of this war.

We're the survivors though, and I'm glad you feel that way, and I hope you always do, because democracy and liberty are too precious, and until I came over here, I didn't realize how precious it was.

♪ PHILIP: I always had the feeling somebody was looking after me, because look at what happened, we were supposed to land at 10:00 in the morning, and I didn't land until the next day.

So, that saved me then.

If I landed at 10:00 in the morning, I probably would've been one of those guys laying there.

♪ WILSON: I always felt bad, and I do today, for all the servicemen that get killed in action.

I think about it all the time.

♪ FRANK: I was very glad that I took part in it, and I could be of some, you know help, one way or another.

Yes, but anybody would've done what I did, you know.

[waves crashing] LOU: A hero, what does it mean a hero?

Can you tell me?

Just because you did something that is very important, but he had a job to do, and that's what I did.

I had a job to do and I did it, but I'm not a hero.

I wouldn't call myself a hero.

AL: The thing that affects me more is that they were one of my buddies, one of my fellow soldiers and we were kind of like a family in a way, and we were kind of like one, almost.

I think that affects more than anything else.

Their lives were cut short, they never got the chance to realize an adult life, and they were just kids really, and our whole regiment was 21-years-old, I think, officers and men, and they never had a chance to have families and children, you know.

It's sad.

It's sad.

[chokes up] I didn't think I could be affected, but you can't help but have it overwhelm you to see all of this.

♪ I've always been proud of the uniform I wore, the boys that I served with.

♪ WALTER: Well, you were probably off it, because you lived up to the position of the outfit, you know, what I mean.

I didn't want to disgrace the outfit.

No matter what happened, I didn't want to disgrace the outfit.

♪ MAN 13: You've got to look at it this way.

You're looking at me, I'm looking at him, I'm looking at him, looking at him.

What can I say is we know what it was.

MAN 12: And we're survivors.

MAN 13: Yeah, the heroes are all over there buried.

Right, and when those people say, you're a hero.

No, those guys under the white crosses are the heroes.

MAN 14: That's right.

MAN 13: That's it.

See you're not alone.

MAN 14: We made it and I'm thankful to God that we did make it.

♪ KEN: D-Day is one of the big historical events of our, of our century.

When you say D-Day to someone, they know what you're talking about.

And I was there and I got a front-row seat, and it was pretty unique.

♪ DON: We changed the world whether you know it or not.

We actually were involved in changing the way that the world was operating.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪