D-Day Anniversary, TV news featuring my father Bill Urtis

[Tom Urtis]

June 6, 2009 marked the 65th anniversary of the landings on Normandy beaches that led to liberating Europe from the Nazis, and the beginning of the end of World War II.

To me, anyone who served at Normandy that day are true war heroes, whatever their military rank or duty was on that day. Thousands of brave service people were killed that morning in the liberation effort.

My father, Bill Urtis, was 19 years old in 1944, on a Navy patrol ship that provided cover and gun support for the troops hitting the beach. Every year in Rochester, New York where my parents still live, the veterans of that day gather on June 6 to keep in touch and to remember...and to keep the D-Day memory alive for the younger generations.

The link below shows today's gathering that was covered by the local news media, and my dad speaking to the gathering and being interviewed by the TV news crews.

Thank you to all veterans and active military service people who protect our freedoms.

http://www.rnews.com/Video/video_pop.aspx?vids=157117&sid=32018&rid=2004

 

[Smitty]

Thank you to all veterans and active military service people who protect our freedoms.

My deepest thanks to all of them.

My Father-in-Law served in the Navy and was in the South Pacific on LST's, 3 of my great uncles were in the Europen theatre in the Army and one was a P-41 Mosquito pilot.

They truly are the "Greatest Generation".

And deepest appreciation to everyone in a uniform today.

 

[absquatulation]

My father was with the British Expeditionary Force which left France in the spring of 1940, somewhere near a small village called Dunkirk. He recounted that when waiting for evacuation from one strafing raid he dived under a vehicle, only to discover later it was filled with explosives!

He went back to France on D-Day +1 (7th June 1944) commanding a team of DUKW (amphibious vehicles) unloading ships and putting cargo onto the beach. This was done under constant attacks from German aircraft. He stayed in Europe until the end of the war.

From one comment he made I suspect that he went to Belsen where there were 60,000 prisoners were found inside, most of them seriously ill, but apart from that one comment he would not discuss Bergen-Belsen or any death camps at all.