WWII vets are rock stars in France as they hand over the duty of
remembering D-Day
[June 05, 2025]
By JOHN LEICESTER
OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — The D-Day generation, smaller in number than
ever, is back on the beaches of France where so much blood was spilled
81 years ago. World War II veterans, now mostly centenarians, have
returned with the same message they fought for then: Freedom is worth
defending.
In what they acknowledge may be one of their last hurrahs, a group of
nearly two dozen veterans who served in Europe and the Pacific is
commemorating the fallen and getting rock-star treatment this week in
Normandy — the first patch of mainland France that Allied forces
liberated with the June 6, 1944, invasion and the greatest assembly of
ships and planes the world had known.
On what became known as “ Bloody Omaha ” and other gun-swept beaches
where soldiers waded ashore and were cut down, their sacrifices forged
bonds among Europe, the United States and Canada that endure, outlasting
geopolitical shifts and the rise and fall of political leaders who blow
hot and cold about the ties between nations.
In Normandy, families hand down D-Day stories like heirlooms from one
generation to the next. They clamor for handshakes, selfies, kisses and
autographs from WWII veterans, and reward them with cries of “Merci!” —
thank you.
Both the young and the very old thrive off the interactions. French
schoolchildren oohed and aahed when 101-year-old Arlester Brown told
them his age. The U.S. military was still segregated by race when the
18-year-old was drafted in 1942. Like most Black soldiers, Brown wasn't
assigned a combat role and served in a laundry unit that accompanied the
Allied advances through France and the Low Countries and into Nazi
Germany.
Jack Stowe, who lied about being 15 to join the Navy after Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, said he gets “the sweetest letters” from
kids he met on previous trips.
“The French people here, they’re so good to us,” the 98-year-old said,
on a walk to the water's edge on Omaha. “They want to talk to us, they
want to sit down and they want their kids around us.”
“People are not going to let it be forgotten, you know, Omaha, these
beaches,” he said. “These stories will go on and on and on.”
The dead honored with sand
At the Normandy American Cemetery that overlooks Omaha, the resting
place for nearly 9,400 American war dead, workers and visitors rub sand
from the beach onto the white gravestones so the engraved names stand
out.
Wally King, a sprightly 101-year-old, wiped off excess sand with a
weathered hand, resting the other atop the white cross, before saying a
few words at the grave of Henry Shurlds Jr. Shurlds flew P-47
Thunderbolt fighters like King and was shot down and killed on Aug. 19,
1944. In the woods where they found his body, the townspeople of
Verneuil-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris, erected a stele of Mississippi
tulip tree wood in his memory.
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D-Day veteran Jake Larson, a 102-year-old who is also a star on
TikTok, with 1.2 million followers, greets schoolchildren during a
visit Monday, June 2, 2025 in Colleville-sur-Mer, to the Normandy
American Cemetery that is the final resting place for nearly 9,400
American war dead and which overlooks Omaha beach, one of the
D-D-day invasion zones on June 6, 1944. (AP Photo/John Leicester)
Although Shurlds flew in the same 513th Fighter Squadron, King said
he never met him. King himself was shot down over Germany and badly
burned on his 75th and last mission in mid-April 1945, weeks before
the Nazi surrender. He said pilots tended not to become fast
friends, to avoid the pain of loss when they were killed, which was
often.
When “most veterans from World War II came home, they didn’t want to
talk about the war. So they didn’t pass those experiences on to
their children and grandchildren,” King said.
“In a way, that’s good because there’s enough unpleasantness,
bloodshed, agony in war, and perhaps we don’t need to emphasize it,"
he added. "But the sacrifice needs to be emphasized and celebrated.”
When they're gone
With the march of time, the veterans' groups are only getting
smaller.
The Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that has been organizing
their trips to Normandy since 2004, last year brought 50 veterans
for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. This year, the number is 23.
Betty Huffman-Rosevear, who served as an army nurse, is the only
woman. She turned 104 this week. The group also includes a renowned
romantic: 101-year-old Harold Terens and his sweetheart, Jeanne
Swerlin, were feted by France's president after they tied the knot
in a symbolic wedding inland of the D-Day beaches last year.
D-Day veteran Jake Larson, now 102, has made multiple return trips
and has become a star as "Papa Jake" on TikTok, with 1.2 million
followers. He survived machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha,
making it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach and which in
1944 were studded with German gun emplacements that mowed down
American soldiers.
“We are the lucky ones,” Larson said amid the cemetery's immaculate
rows of graves. “They had no family. We are their family. We have
the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be
alive."
As WWII's survivors disappear, the responsibility is falling on the
next generations that owe them the debt of freedom.
“This will probably be the last Normandy return, when you see the
condition of some of us old guys,” King said. “I hope I'm wrong.”
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