"In France, people who remember these men, they kept them close to their hear," Charles Shay said. "And they remember what they did for them. And I don't think the French people will ever forget."
On Saturday morning, people in dozens of World War II vehicles, from motorcycles to jeeps and trucks, gathered in Colleville-Montgomery to parade down the nearby roads along Sword Beach to the sounds of a pipe band. Residents, some waving French and American flags came to watch.
Henri-Jean Renaud, 86, remembers D-Day like it was yesterday. He was a young boy and was hidden in his family home in Saint-Mere-Eglise when more than 800 planes bringing U.S. paratroopers flew over the town while German soldiers fired at them with machine guns.
Describing an "incredible noise" followed by silence, he remembers crossing the town's central square on the morning of June 6. He especially recalls seeing one dead American paratrooper stuck in a big tree that is still standing by the town's church.
"I came here hundreds of times. The first thing I do is look at the tree," he said. "That's always to that young guy that I'm thinking of. he was told: 'You're going to jump in the middle of the night in a country you don't know' ... He died and his feet never touched (French) soil, and that is very moving to me."
D-Day cost the lives of 4,414 Allied troops with 2,501 of that number Americans.
--GreGen
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