"I took a moment to just hold the sand and you think, gosh, the blood that was spilled to give me that moment and the freedom to hold that sand," he said. "That was emotional for me."
"I hope a lot of this younger generation is watching because we can't forget what happened 78 years ago," Jensen said, especially thinking of the current fighting in Ukraine.
On Monday, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, home to the gravesites of 9,386 who died fighting on D-Day and in the operations that followed, will host U.S. veterans and thousands of visitors in its first major public ceremony since 2019.
On D-Day, Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.
