(6 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, France – 6 June 2025
1. Wide of people standing up in tribute
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Colleville-sur-Mer, France – 6 June 2025
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense: ++PARTLY OVERLAID WITH SHOT 3++
“Today the United States and France again rally together to confront such threats. Because we strive for peace, we must prepare for war and hopefully deter it. We must ensure that our children and our grandchildren know what these men did. History is not over. Evil has not been eradicated from the globe. Good men are still needed.”
3. Various of Hegseth meeting and talking with WWII veterans
4. Various of Hegseth and French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, laying wreath
5. SOUNDBITE (French) Sebastien Lecornu, French Defense Minister: ++STARTS ON SHOT 4++
“Mr. Secretary of Defense of the United States of America, dear Pete. We don’t forget what we owe them (the American soldiers who died during DDay), what we owe you, dear American allies, dear veterans. We don’t forget that our oldest allies were there in this grave moment of our history. I say it with deep respect in front of you, veterans, who incarnate this unique friendship between our two countries.”
6. Tilt up of flyover
STORYLINE:
Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commemorated the anniversary of the D-Day landings, in which American soldiers played a leading role, with veterans at the American Cemetery overlooking the shore in the village of Colleville-sur-Mer.
French Minister for the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu told Hegseth that France knows what it owes to its American allies and the veterans who helped free Europe from the Nazis.
"We don’t forget that our oldest allies were there in this grave moment of our history. I say it with deep respect in front of you, veterans, who incarnate this unique friendship between our two countries,” he said.
Hegseth said France and the United States should be prepared to fight if danger arises again, and that “good men are still needed to stand up.”
“Today the United States and France again rally together to confront such threats," he said, without mentioning a specific enemy.
“Because we strive for peace, we must prepare for war and hopefully deter it.”
The June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France used the largest-ever armada of ships, troops, planes and vehicles to breach Hitler’s defenses in western Europe. A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The battle — and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities — killed around 20,000 French civilians between June and August 1944.
The exact number of German casualties is unknown, but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone.
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on D-Day.
Of those, 73,000 were from the U.S. and 83,000 from Britain and Canada.
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/3fbd4093539a405e856f63eb5d9cb4a6
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in June 11, 2025, 9:05 pm.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
