100-year-old vet prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion

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His plans for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion include a visit where he survived a strafing by German planes.

HELEN, Ga. — Andrew “Andy” Negra Jr., of Helen, Georgia, is one of a dwindling number of veterans that took part in the Allies’ European war effort that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany.

It was 1943, and Negra Jr. had just finished high school. He was thinking of attending the University of Pittsburgh. “But Uncle Sam had that finger pointed at me. ‘I need you.’ And, I was drafted.”

https://www.wnep.com/article/news/na...0-d25ca3400207

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The last WWII vets converge on Normandy for D-Day and their fallen friends
Veterans of World War II pilgrimaged Tuesday to what was the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches on June 6, 1944.

American WWII veterans Bill Wall, left, and Bob Tedesco attend a ceremony on Omaha Beach, Tuesday, June 4, 2024 in Normandy.

NORMANDY, France — Under their feet, the sands of Omaha Beach, and in their rheumy eyes, tears that inevitably flowed from being on the revered shoreline in Normandy, France, where so many American young men were cut down 80 years ago on D-Day.

Veterans of World War II, many of them centenarians and likely returning to France for one last time, pilgrimaged Tuesday to what was the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches on June 6, 1944. They remembered fallen friends. They relived horrors they experienced in combat. They blessed their good fortune for surviving. And they mourned those who paid the ultimate price.




https://www.wnep.com/article/news/na...6-eb85a66a0887