Remembering D-Day, as a new war rages in Europe
World leaders and surviving soldiers will attend the 80th anniversary of Normandy
Bob Fagan was a 21-year-old private from Texas when he plunged from his assault craft into the cold sea off Utah Beach in Normandy, under the rattle of Nazi machinegun fire and air bombardment. “The water was red with blood,” he later recalled. “There were bodies floating all around us.” A fellow member of the 299th combat battalion landing on Omaha Beach had a simpler description: “Hell.”
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Beaches like no other”
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