France prepares to commemorate D-Day’s 80th anniversary
Eighty years on, Normandy’s beaches and fields still bear the scars of violence that erupted during World War Two on D-Day, history’s largest amphibious invasion on June 6, 1944, drone footage shows.
Commemorations in June will mark the day when more than 150,000 allied soldiers invaded France to drive out Hitler’s forces.
At the Normandy American Cemetery, perched above Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer, dotted with white cross headstones and U.S. flags, 9,386 soldiers are buried.
Along the coast lie the remains of the artillery batteries of Longues-sur-Mer, from which the forces of Nazi Germany shelled invading forces on Omaha Beach.
Allied troops built the Winston Harbour nearby, in Arromanches-les-Bains, to bring in the supplies needed to force the Germans out of France, with its concrete caissons still visible to this day.
The D-Day beaches, spread over 120 km (75 miles) of the Normandy coastline, attract large numbers of tourists each year.