D-Day, homefront casualties honored
Vietnam Veteran Bill King, standing, accompanies his father, World War II veteran Bill King, at Redondo Beach’s 2019 Memorial Day Service. Hundreds of residents and retired armed forces service members joined the City of Redondo Beach for its annual Memorial Day Service at the city’s Veteran’s Memorial on May 27. Redondo Beach’s annual Memorial Day observance came little more than a week before the 75th anniversary of World War II’s D-Day landings, which was not lost on the afternoon’s speakers. The June 6, 1944 invasion of Normandy, France was the largest seaborne invasion in history, including more than 156,000 service members from the Allied Powers and more than 50,000 entrenched soldiers from Germany and the Axis Powers. The invasion resulted in at least 14,000 casualties across both sides, and 4,414 confirmed Allied dead. “It was the largest assembly of bravery and courage in human history, and it was not clear that the Allies were going to succeed,” said Congressman Ted Lieu, a colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve. Lieu, in honoring the service members who invaded Normandy that day, chose to read from General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s letter drafted in case of the…
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