Harold Angle is from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and landed in Normandy in 1944 and moved to eastern France, where his division fought through a brutal winter. He saved a piece of a bullet that hit his helmet and keeps it with a wartime photo of himself and a letter he wrote home to his mother, describing his scrapes with death.
Steve Melnikoff, 99, of Cockneyville, Maryland, came ashore on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, with the 29th Division. It was one of the most pivotal days of the war, but to him, just one of many life-and-death experiences infantrymen faced on the front lines of history's deadliest conflict.
"What we went through, to do what we did, people don't realize," he said. He still has pictures in his head of a fellow soldier falling beside him, and another. Of the muddy holes he called home. Of the German machine guns, each capable of firing thousands of rounds.
War, he says, is "nasty, smelly, terrible." But he maintains, "it was important for someone to do this," to stop Hitler from taking over more of the world.
Donald Cobb of Evansville, Indiana, took part in the invasions of Normandy and of southern France from aboard ship, operating high frequency antennae to detect German submarines and helping load ammunition when at battle stations.
He's back in peaceful Paris this week with the Greatest Generation Foundation, which organizes trips for veterans. He sometimes feels "survivor guilt," and has one fundamental message for younger generations: "Learn history, and don't repeat mistakes."
--GreGen
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