Eddie Izzard Quotes

That road to V-E Day was hard and long, and traveled by weary and valiant men. And history will always record where that road began. It began here, with the first footprints on the beaches of Normandy.

If D-Day - the greatest amphibious operation ever undertaken - failed, there would be no going back to the drawing board for the Allies. Regrouping and attempting another massive invasion of German-occupied France even a few months later in 1944 wasn't an option.

I had a go at changing history - maybe not all by myself - I fought at the battle of Normandy, I slogged through the Ardennes, and I celebrated the liberation of Paris on the streets with beautiful French girls throwing flowers at me. I said good-bye to my first true love and discovered what I really wanted to do with my life.

In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

Mom's dad was in the army, stormed the beach at Normandy, fought through the French hedgerows, the Battle of the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, and liberated concentration camps at the end of the war.

My dad was my hero. He was part of the D-Day landings and came back to Reading in 1945 - I was born in 1946 - so the house was full of soldiers who'd been to war and that was obviously the main topic.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

there on the beaches of Normandy I began to reflect on the wonders of these ordinary people whose lives were laced with the markings of greatness.

I have returned many times to honour the valiant men who died...every man who set foot on Omaha Beach was a hero.

Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible.

Eric Ashcroft, a gentle, kind, popular man with a wicked sense of humour, was always modest about his wartime exploits, but eventually, with much prompting from his persistent son, he told me of his terrifying experience on D-Day.

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.

My father, a captain in the 5th Battalion of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, landed in Normandy the day after D-Day.

We owe our World War II veterans - and all our veterans - a debt we can never fully repay.

It was a requirement by the veterans to list the 57,000 names. We're reaching a time that we'll acknowledge the individual in a war on a national level.

The accounting of the sacrifice is, more than anything else, the attitude toward war memorials in our time.

World War II was a decisive time in our history and June 6, 1944, marked the decisive moment of the war.

'What if?' history is a tricky game, but there is no doubt that the senior planners of D-Day - including Eisenhower and the British general Bernard Montgomery - believed that the Double Cross operation had played a pivotal role in the victory.

I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated - Japan's attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

I know a lot about the Battle of the Bulge, and a lot about World War II from 'Saving Private Ryan.'

My father, Reginald Francois, was a D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German, and neither will his son.

But I'm a daughter of the American revolution, my grandpa fought in World War II, I have lots of family members who were in the military, and it really just was part of growing up for me.

When the Second World War started, I was only five but I still remember... Being a witness... I wanted people to remember what happened in our country and elsewhere.

Sixty years ago this week Hitler invaded Poland. This led to the creation of The History Channel.