Скачать или смотреть DDAY prisoner of war looks back 75 years later

(23 May 2019) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus117456

The day before Dennis Trudeau parachuted into Normandy, he wrote his parents a letter saying he was about to go into battle but they shouldn't worry.
"Everything is going to be fine and dandy," he wrote. "After all, I'm not scared."
Trudeau had joined the Canadian military at 17 and became a paratrooper, in part because they were paid an extra $50 a month.
He's 93 now, living in Grovetown, Georgia. But his memories of D-Day and the day before D-Day are undimmed.
On June 5, 1944, he and the other paratroopers sat on the tarmac and joked about how they'd be in Paris by Christmas. But when they climbed into the plane, the chatter stopped.
Trudeau's position was by the open jump door; he could look out across the vast array of planes and ships powering toward Normandy. Planes were strung out across the horizon.
He prayed: "I just kind of told the Lord, 'Let me see one more sunrise.'"
And then, he jumped.
Trudeau landed in water up to his waist in a flooded field. In the dark, he rendezvoused with other paratroopers. They were on the way to their objective when friendly fire hit _ an Air Force bomb.
Thrown into a ditch, Trudeau heard a dying friend nearby, calling out for his mother.
"I said, you're going to be alright. And he died. Those things hurt," he said.
Within hours combat would be over for Trudeau, as well. He was captured by German forces, and spent the duration in a prisoner-of-war camp. By the time the war was over he had gone from 135 pounds to about 85.
He'll never forget seeing an American solider when he was freed"
"I looked up in the heavens and said Lord, thank you. I was free, I was well and I was going home," he said.
He returned to Normandy in 1955 to see the graves of eight platoon members who didn't survive. This time, he'll say a prayer over their graves.

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