ATLANTA _ Charles Maupin remembers coming ashore on Omaha Beach 75 years ago and seeing rows of fellow U.S. soldiers in the bloodstained sand, their bodies covered with ponchos. He remembers American officers interrogating German captives in the shadow of a cliff as a military truck smoldered nearby. He remembers following a column of tanks into the French countryside while they fired their machine guns at pockets of resistance in the woods, their tracer rounds glowing bright red.
The 99-year-old Columbus, Ga., veteran will help others remember Thursday when he attends a commemoration at Fort Benning _ complete with an Infantry School graduation ceremony, a jump by the Silver Wings Parachute Demonstration Team and a reading by a President Franklin D. Roosevelt reenactor _ for the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Western Europe that helped hasten the end of World War II.
Maupin is among a rapidly dwindling group of heroes. As of September, there were 496,777 surviving American veterans of WWII, including 9,323 in Georgia, Veterans Affairs Department figures show. The nationwide total is down by nearly half from 2015. Like Maupin, many survivors are in their 90s. The VA estimates there will be none left by 2045.
For these reasons, Maupin is urgently sharing his story. He especially wants young people to know it.
"Freedom isn't free," he said. "It comes at a terrible cost. But think of what it would cost, if you lost your freedom. Once lost, you can nearly hardly ever get it back."
