VIERVILLE-SUR-MER, France — Veterans from the US 29th Infantry Division returned to the shores of Omaha Beach at dawn Friday after 70 years — but this time the storms of 1944 were replaced by a bright sun and their mission of war gave way to a desire to remember their fallen comrades.
As the sun came up over the Normandy coast, the seven returning veterans and their family members toasted those who died when more than 150,000 US, British, Canadian, and other Allied forces landed on June 6, 1944.
At 6:30 a.m., the precise hour that the first waves of infantry began wading ashore under a deafening hailstorm of German machine-gun and mortar fire, the men — most now in their 90s — raised glasses of bracing Calvados apple brandy to the memory of friends killed that day.
Hundreds of onlookers crowded the beach, including many reenactors in period army uniforms. Some drove vintage jeeps and armored vehicles like those seen here 70 years ago.
A military band of serving 29th Division members played taps and ''Amazing Grace'' before the seven veterans walked off the beach to the applause of hundreds of onlookers.
The 29th, a National Guard formation nicknamed the Blue and Gray, was one of six Allied infantry and three airborne divisions that assaulted a 50-mile stretch of heavily defended coastline. Nearly 1,000 members of the division were killed, wounded, or went missing on the invasion's first day. Thousands more died in the ensuing three-month Battle of Normandy in addition to some 20,000 French civilians killed in Allied bombardments.
Retired doctor and author Harold Baumgarten, 89, of Jacksonville Beach, Fla., has returned to Normandy many times over the decades.
''I landed on this beach in the first wave and I got wounded five times — three times on D-day and twice on June 7th,'' Baumgarten said.
In interviews this week in Normandy, Baumgarten and other 29th Division veterans described in detail memories of that morning 70 years ago.
Baumgarten was a 19-year-old from the Bronx when he jumped off a landing craft into the surf and waded into France, passing the bodies of soldiers whose war had ended there.
''I can look out at that beach and tell you where each was lying and I can describe his face, even nowadays,'' Baumgarten said.
Another 29th Division veteran also paid tribute to ''those guys on the bluff'' — referring to the 9,387 men killed during the battles in the summer of 1944 who are buried at the nearby US cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.