President Donald Trump is in England this week and gathered with other world leaders on Wednesday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944.
The president and First Lady Melania Trump participated in two ceremonies on Wednesday and are expected to participate in more on Thursday. One of Thursday’s events will be at the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, where many of the U.S. casualties from D-Day are buried. CBS News will broadcast a Special Report of the D-Day anniversary ceremony from Normandy Beach in France on Thursday morning.
For the events on Wednesday, President Trump joined British Prime Minister Theresa May, Queen Elizabeth II and leaders from the other countries that participated in the Allied D-Day invasion.
In Carentan, France, 200 parachutists, including active soldiers from the U.S. Army, participated in a parachute jump over Normandy on Wednesday, replicating the jump made by the United States Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions on the night before the invasion. One of the parachutists was 97-year-old D-Day veteran Tom Rice. The airborne operation was a prelude to the Normandy landing the next morning and was critical to the success of the invasion.
At Point du Hoc on the Normandy coast, about 100 members of the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment scaled 100-foot cliffs in the same manner as the Rangers did on D-Day.
The D-Day invasion is often considered the turning point in the European theater in World War II. The Allies lost nearly 100,000 men during the invasion, but its success allowed the Allies to begin taking back Europe from Adolf Hitler’s vast control of the continent.
