BÉNOUVILLE, France — The anniversary of D-Day is celebrated annually with solemn ceremonies and grand re-enactments. But this year — the hugely symbolic 80th anniversary since that day of days — it may be the last major milestone for many veterans to recount in their own words the sheer brutality of that pivotal battle. Around 200 veterans attended this year’s event, the youngest in their 90s and some over 100.
And an unavoidable truth, mostly unspoken this week across Normandy , is that the next five-year anniversary will almost certainly look very different. Relatively soon, there won’t be so many stories like that of Richard “Dick” Rung, now 99, of Carol Stream, Illinois, who served that day as a motor machinist mate second class.His landing craft ferried troops to Omaha Beach, its hull soon soaked with the bloodied bodies of those scythed down by the German machine guns, mortars and artillery.
It was Rung’s job to wash off the blood with a firehose. “It was raining death,” he told NBC News at a ceremony Wednesday honoring veterans at Pegasus Bridge, a site captured by the Allies early on in the epic air, sea and land attack that helped turn the tide of World War II and defeat Nazi Germany. “I heard someone saying over the radio, ‘We are being slaughtered like hogs’ — and it’s true, we were.
” In his speech at the American Cemetery in Normandy on Thursday, President Joe Biden referenced the years soon to come, when the story of D-Day will b.
