By JOHN LEICESTER, SYLVIE CORBET and DANICA KIRKA | The Denver Gazette
As young soldiers, they waded ashore in Normandy through gunfire to battle the Nazis. On Thursday, a dwindling number of World War II veterans in a parade of wheelchairs joined a new generation of leaders to honor the dead, the living and the fight for democracy in moving commemorations on and around those same beaches where they landed exactly 80 years ago on D-Day.
The war in Ukraine shadowed the ceremonies, a grim modern-day example of lives and cities that are again suffering through war in Europe.
The break of dawn eight decades after Allied troops landed on five code-named beaches — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword — started the day of remembrance by Allied nations now standing together again behind Ukraine.