Charlie Gaddy: D-Day 'defining event of century'

On June 6, 1944, Europe's freedom was bought at the price of thousands of lives. 75 years after D-Day, the youngest of the WWII veterans are in their 90s.

In tribute to those lost and to the survivors, we must think about history not as a story but as reality – through the eyes of those who've seen it and those who hope to never see this again.

On the morning of June 6, more than 160,000 Allied troops waited on the coast of England. The Nazis knew they were coming. However they thought the invasion would launch from Dover, the closest point to the French coastline. The Allies actually left from more than a dozen other sites along the coast, giving them the upper hand against the German army.

Planes took off at midnight, dropping paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne behind enemy lines before dawn. Their mission – take out as many enemy troops as possible to help the waves of Allied soldiers coming ashore at the beaches of Normandy.

Those troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily fortified French coastline. Utah Beach and Omaha Beach were ground zero for the American units and where many American lives were lost.

Disorganization and confusion marked some of the first landings. War is like that. It's not perfect. It's life and death. Survival of the fittest.

On that first day alone, more than 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded.

Those who survived began their liberation of Europe in a small town off Utah Beach.

50 years later, in 1994, WRAL anchor Charlie Gaddy spent the anniversary of D-Day in Sainte-Mère-Église, France. On the 75th anniversary of the invasion, Gaddy again recalled how the town of thanked the American troops – many from the 82nd Airborne – for their freedom.

At the D-Day commemoration in 1994, thousands jammed the town and surrounding countryside to see some of the old paratroopers jump back in after 50 years. The by then-old men had to re-qualify to jump on that day. Some of them were injured, but like 50 years before, they still had the spirit.

It's the most awesome jump you ever want to make because to jump in behind the veterans, jump with the French, jump with the 101st guys ... it's the most awesome thing you could ever want to do," one paratrooper said on that day.

"We concentrate on the 82nd, and the reason we do is they're our kids (from) right here at Fort Bragg," Gaddy said. "There's an 82nd Airborne Museum in the square in Sainte-Mère-Église, that's how much they appreciate the sacrifice."

"It's hard for me to tell you how receptive these people are to the Americans here," an active-duty paratrooper said.

"It's like they're treating us like heroes because of what our forefathers have done. It's just real touching to walk downtown and have the old timers come up to you or the older ladies that watched this happen, that housed some of the paratroopers when they jumped in during the invasion. It's incredible. They're so friendly, and they just love us. They treat us like heroes."

Gaddy said, "It was an honor to do that story and relive things that I had read about.

"I interviewed a lady who was a teenager who lived right on the square. She told me she heard clatter and pushed the shutters open and saw parachutes landing on her lawn with an American voice yelling, and she said, 'I fell to my knees and I thanked God because I knew we were going to be liberated.' What a moment! What a story to have heard," Gaddy said.

When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said "Okay, let's go," he set into motion nearly a quarter of a million Allied troops. Among them, men from North Carolina.

Dick Rice, a highly decorated officer, had recovered from wounds in North Africa just in time to join the invasion in Normandy. He later became an architect in Raleigh, then a combat engineer. He described his role as "building bridges, blowing up things, pulling out mines, laying minefields."

Dr. Boone Grant, who went on to become a pediatrician in Rocky Mount, headed an Airborne medical unit. His patients then were wounded and dying soldiers. When he sees the crosses in the Normandy American Cemetery, he wonders, "just how many of them did I touch in one form or another?"

Jack Tallerday of Fayetteville was an officer who led his troops by gaining their confidence.

"I knew them like I did my own brothers," he said. "In fact, I knew some of them better. I could tell you the names of their parents, their girlfriends."

Some historians say when people like Rice, Grant and Tallerday came home, their drive and energy set the tone for a vigorous post-war America.

In interviews with veterans, we journalists have heard stories long suppressed, kept from family and friends to protect them from the horrors of war.

"I've interviewed veterans and asked them, 'Tell me your story.' Twice family members were in the other room and said they had never heard the story," WRAL's David Crabtree said.

"It won't be many more years before there won't be any person with a living memory of World War II, if you think about it," Gaddy said. "I was 10 years old when America entered the war."

He went on to share the story of his hometown of Biscoe, where a full quarter of the residents saw military service during World War II. "One old veteran told me that every boy in Biscoe who was eligible to go fight, did," Gaddy said.

An especially difficult duty fell to Ollie Lambert, who was Biscoe train station master.

"He was also the telegrapher," Gaddy said.

"It was up to Mr. Lambert to take those awful telegrams – 'We regret to inform you that your son ... or that your son has been wounded.' – When he would deliver those telegrams, they tell me that as he turned in a driveway to a home, the screaming would start inside the house because they immediately recognized his car and they knew why he was coming."

Some of the most chilling reminders of the sacrifice of D-Day come at the American cemeteries in northern France.

"It takes your breath away," Gaddy said. "You know, the path to that cemetery at Coleville curves around and all of a sudden, there's the sacrifice."

It's eerily quiet, the grounds are manicured. The enormity of loss is visible in the 10,000 crosses or star markers.

Families had a choice. They could either have the bodies returned home, or they could be buried in that beautiful place and be on that bluff and have that kind of care taken to their resting place.

"I asked, 'Are you here to see anyone special?' And his eyes welled up with tears and he said, 'I'm here to say I'm sorry,'" Crabtree remembered.

"It affected me tremendously, in that the sacrifice was so amazing," Gaddy said.

We haven't known a time in our modern history where that has happened, but we do know those who answered the call and did so with hundreds of thousands giving their lives, and we don't know what history would be had the commitment of the American military not been what it was.

Like any international trip, Gaddy's reports from France in 1994 were not without logistical challenges. Among his memories is the effort of photojournalist Richard Adkins to get around French travel restrictions to get their stories on the air.