Please join me in honoring the brave souls who undertook this operation....
Suddenly it's D-Day again; aging veterans recall invasion
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ABOARD THE BOUDICCA IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL The veterans hobble along on canes and lean on walking frames now, slower and weaker than they were on D-Day, when they stormed the Normandy beaches with the fate of the free world resting on their shoulders. It's hard to imagine them as soldiers carrying rifles across their chests and 60-pound packs on their backs until they start talking.
Then the scales of age fall way. They are all young men heading to France a place most had never been.
"The noise was deafening," said former Royal Marine Les Budding, now 93. "The black smoke and the acrid smell of cordite, which was coming from the battleships firing the big shells. They are the outstanding things in my memory coming from that day."
Suddenly it's D-Day again. The soft-spoken Budding is once again an 18-year-old gunner a baby-faced, pink-cheeked cherub who smiles from a war-time photograph in a dress uniform that looks like he borrowed it from his father. Budding said he just did what Marines are supposed to do. In his case that meant offering cover to other Marines storming beaches and moving forward. Keep going. Stay alive.
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Former Royal Marine Les Budding, right, stands with Philip Collins, 62, who is the son of the late F.E. Collins of 45 Commando, who fought alongside Budding on D-Day, as they pose for a photo aboard the MV Boudicca ship as veterans return to the scene of the D-Day landings 75-years after the Allied invasion of northern France, Tuesday June 4, 2019. Many veterans are returning to the scene where as young men they stormed the beaches of Normandy in northern France during World War II, with the fate of the free world resting on their shoulders. Budding was a gunner on a flak 34,'' a specially armed boat that defended F.E. Collins' landing craft as it hit the beach on D-Day. (AP Photo/Ben Jary)