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Program Alerts: Fox Nation Series “The Final Journey of the Greatest Generation with Martha MacCallum”
As I write this, dozens of world leaders, including President Biden, Emmanuel Macron, King Charles III and Prince Charles, are preparing to travel to a place of deep significance in our shared history. They will return to the beaches of Normandy and the countless fields of crosses that mark the resting places of our fallen soldiers, sailors and airmen, many of whom were still boys. Their bodies lie in the beautiful shade of trees this June, under a soft blanket of bright spring grass, just as they did 80 years ago.
But this peaceful place was not the place they knew. More than 150,000 men, some in their late teens and early twenties, came ashore. Some boarded Higgins boats, some jumped from C-47s, many clambered up the beaches, and some scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc using fire department ladders brought from London. They struggled to keep moving forward under intense artillery fire.
Thousands took their last steps in those very places — Omaha, Utah, Juneau, Sword, Gold — and those who survived watched as their comrades, with whom they had shared their last meal only hours before, lay wounded, blown apart, many dead.
U.S. Army soldiers board a Navy landing craft for the Normandy landings in France, June 6, 1944. (U.S. Navy/Getty Images)
Forced to leave their boats, some of them drowned under the weight of their burdens, they made what Lincoln called their “final dedication” at Gettysburg, bringing freedom to Europe, a continent most of them had never seen and people they had never met.
101-year-old D-Day veteran travels to France for 80th anniversary of Normandy landings
Last year’s commemoration only allowed a handful of members of the Greatest Generation to make the trip, but this year’s 80th anniversary will be different: This year’s celebration will be a big one, with 150 people expected to attend.
In 1984, President Reagan and his White House team realized that 40 years after the war, many of the “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” and their comrades, then of retirement age, would likely make the journey. President Reagan delivered an inspiring speech to them as the 2nd Ranger Battalion sent 225 young men to the cliffs, winds howling above the sacred ground where they had fought the Germans. Their casualty rate was 70 percent. Many of those killed rest in the American Cemetery, a short walk from where the fighting began.
It’s been 40 years since France welcomed these heroes — 40 years of reunions, big-band dancing, people disembarking from planes at commemorative ceremonies, greeted by French schoolchildren thanking them for the freedom they brought so many decades ago — but this will likely be the last time they come to Normandy, bringing their stories and their tears with them. Most of them are now between 97 and 102 years old.
In Normandy, we’ll join three World War II soldiers we’ve come to know through years of reporting on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings, Iwo Jima and our new Fox Nation series, “The Final Journey of the Greatest Generation,” featuring veterans in their own words, and whom we’re honored to call friends.
American Airlines launches Normandy landings 80th anniversary trip for WWII veterans
Londo Scharfe and I met in Guam, at breakfast in a hotel just before boarding a flight to Iwo Jima. He was wearing running shorts and a neon T-shirt. Though he was 92 at the time, he looked at most 75. His boyish energy and charm belied his age.
To join the Navy in 1943, he bleached and changed the numbers on his baptismal certificate, making him 18 instead of 16.
As a young man, he sailed to the Pacific Ocean and captained the Higgins boat that landed on Iwo Jima, where he was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.
He’s been back to Iwo Jima once, and to Normandy twice, and he told me he comes back for the friends he lost and the nightmares he still has sometimes. Friends would come up to him and offer to trade places for a few days, to give him a taste of the life they were living.
Bud Garth, an Army veteran, invited me to his suburban Baltimore home where he lives with his wife, Angela. At age 98 and still an avid traveller, Garth had to time our interview around a recent trip to Europe. He held a photo album at arm’s length, and was refreshing his memory with pictures of himself alongside his comrades who had served alongside him in Europe 80 years earlier.
While the men stormed Normandy, women served as code breakers, cartographers and helmsmen, ensuring the success of D-Day.
As part of the famed “Rainbow Division,” he was sent to France in 1944 to fight off a German counterattack. He was awarded the Bronze Star after the house where he and his fellow soldiers were taking refuge was surrounded by German soldiers. He fought back from that location for over two hours, holding the enemy at bay. He killed 10 German soldiers that day, defending the territory and preventing the Germans from breaking through the Schweghausen defenses.
Later, Bud was one of the men who liberated the Dachau concentration camp. He and his men saw some people in the woods. Thinking they were fleeing the Nazis, they prepared to kill them. But on closer inspection, they saw emaciated prisoners crawling through the woods toward them. Bud stared in disbelief at their condition and choked up as he recalled a man kissing his feet. The next day, Bud was in the first American truck that entered Munich.
We met Andre Chappaz, 98 years old He lived near a naval base in California. Born in San Francisco to French parents, his family moved to Paris, but when the Nazis invaded France, the Chapaz family returned to the United States. In 1943, at age 17, he enlisted in the Army. Deployed to the Pacific, he helped build an airfield on Guam and an airstrip on Okinawa, which were used by American planes to land on the Japanese mainland. A talented artist, he documented his time in the military through paintings.
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This week in Normandy, we honour those who participated as they take their final steps to the battlefield that defined their lives and so much of our history — the beginning of a battle that finally brought an end to years of suffering, terror and war.
Just hours before the invasion, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower walked among soldiers gathering in Britain to deliver a powerful message.
“Soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark on the great expedition for which we have been working for so many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of all freedom-loving peoples walk with you. Together with your brave allies and comrades on other fronts, you will destroy German military power, eliminate Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and ensure our own security in a free world.”
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Earl Mills remembers hearing those words at a base in England just hours before the Normandy invasion. Speaking to Fox Nation’s series “The Last Journey,” Earl said, “He was telling us how important it was that we were successful in landing at Normandy. And he also said that many of you here today would not come back. I remember that very well.”
We remember Earl, who passed away shortly after the interview, and all the men who told the stories we recorded so that everyone can hear directly from these heroes. These men who defeated the forces of Hitler and Imperial Japan and liberated the world from tyranny and oppression. They will always be our heroes, and we salute them this week as they make their final journey to Normandy.
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