Lone veteran remembers losing friends on Omaha

In a small Normandy town where paratroopers landed in the early hours of D-Day, applause broke the silence to honour Charles Shay. He was the only veteran attending a ceremony in Carentan commemorating the 77th anniversary of the assault that helped bring an end to World War II.

Shay, who now lives in Normandy, was a 19-year-old US Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Today, he recalls the ‘‘many good friends’’ he lost on the battlefield.

Under a bright sun, the 96-year-old Native American from Indian Island, Maine, stood steadily while the hymns of the Allied countries were being played in front of the monument commemorating the assault in Carentan that allowed the Allies to establish a continuous front joining nearby Utah Beach to Omaha Beach.

Covid-19 travel restrictions mean Shay is expected to be the only veteran at today’s anniversary ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery of Collevillesur-Mer. And his lone presence is all the more poignant as the number of survivors of the epochal battle dwindles.

Henri-Jean Renaud, 86, remembers D-Day like it was yesterday. He was a young boy and was hidden in his family home in Sainte-Mere-Eglise when more than 800 planes bringing US paratroopers flew over the town while German soldiers fired at them with machine guns.

He remembers crossing the town’s central square in the morning of June 6 and seeing one dead US paratrooper stuck in a big tree that is still standing by the town’s church.

‘‘I came here hundreds of times. The first thing I do is look at that tree,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s always to that young guy that I’m thinking of . ... He died and his feet never touched [French] soil, and that is very moving to me.’’

D-Day cost the lives of 4414 Allied troops. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.