Veterans, World Leaders Commemorate 75th Anniversary of D-Day

Veterans and world leaders gathered in Normandy, France on Thursday to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day....the battle that helped lead to victory in WWII. 

Thousands gathered at the American Cemetery in Normandy, France to honor the sacrifices made on that fateful day.

"On this day 75 years ago, 10,000 men shed their blood and thousands sacrificed their lives for their brothers, for their countries, and for the survival of liberty,” said President Trump.

"For the men who sit behind me and to the boys who rest in the field before me, your example will never ever grow old. Your legend will never die, your spirit, brave, unyielding and true, will never die. The blood that they spilled, the tears that they shed, the lives that they gave, the sacrifice that they made did not just win a battle. It did not just win a war. Those who fought here won a future for our nation."

More than 150 D-Day veterans returned to the shores to be with their comrades including 96-year-old vet Jake Larson who says Omaha Beach today looks dramatically different.

"The sea here is clear. It was bloody bodies. What can a person say now except that war is hell." 

French President Emmanuel Macron presented a number of U.S. veterans with the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award.

“We know what we owe to you veterans: our freedom. On behalf of my nation, I just want to say thank you.”

Macron also praised the ambition and bravery of the United States, saying "your country is never so great as when it fights for universal values."

The ceremony concluded with several fly-by salutes. 

This will likely be the last time so many veterans will gather so the 9,388 headstones stand as an eternal reminder of the sacrifice. 

Each headstone has been adopted by a French family. People come from all over France to look after "America's boys."

On Gold Beach, a lone piper played at Mulberry Harbor exactly 75 years after British forces came ashore.

Concluding D-Day celebrations at Juno beach, with birds singing in the background, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has made a plea for global peace and understanding.

Philippe attended the ceremony alongside Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, among other dignitaries from other countries.

They paid a last tribute to D-Day victims and veterans, laying wreaths of flowers on the sand where German machine guns, artillery and mortar shells greeted the Allied soldiers on June, 6, 1944.

"It's up to all of us to recount the dread and the tears, but also and above all, to take action and affirm our desire to live in peace, to live in the concord of nations, to live free," Philippe said.

After reading out the name of Allied countries, the French prime minister had some brotherly words for former enemy Germany.

"We will not forget the young German men who fell on the beaches," Philippe said. "In 1944, they were enemy soldiers. Today, they too have found a final resting place here. Their children, their grandchildren, are not just our allies. They are our friends too."  

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)