Known officially as the Normandy Invasion, it left 4,414 troops killed on that day, including 2,501 Americans, and 5,000 wounded.
A total of 9,843 troops from the U.S., Britain, and Canada were killed in the action on June 6 and in the few days thereafter.
German troops were ready for the invasion, however, with gunfire placed at strategic high points around the nearly 10-kilometer-long (6-mile) beach as the forces landed. The ocean waters as well as the beach were also heavily mined by the Germans.
"I'm enormously proud to have been a minute part of Operation Overlord," Mary Scott, 95, told French news outlet Radio France International as she paid tribute at the beach. Scott worked in the operations center in the English port city of Portsmouth on the other side of the Channel. Seventeen at the time, she was charged with passing on radio messages as the invasion took place over each of the beaches.
"When they (the communication officers) had to respond to my messages and they lifted their lever, you heard all of the sounds of the men on the beaches, bombs, machine guns, men shouting, screaming. The war was in my ears."
