ST. JOSEPH, Mich. — For a moment, the sands of St. Joseph sounded something like the beaches of Normandy.
Bullets and bombing runs. Soldiers charging from sea to shoreline, ducking behind berms and beneath barbed wire: War, reenacted.
On Saturday, hundreds of history buffs and veterans descended upon Tiscornia Park in St. Joseph for a large-scale D-Day reenactment, eighty years after the largest amphibious invasion in military history altered the course of World War Two, signaling the beginning of the end of Hitler's hold on Europe.
"You're wet, you're sandy, you're dirty, you're sweaty," said Antonio Hare, playing the role of an Allied gunner. "I want to put myself into their boots and try to feel an inkling of what it would have been like,"
During the reenactment, when the Illinois resident reached the first berm on the beach, he took his "hit" and went down, playing dead in his period-appropriate uniform as the fighting continued on ahead.
Staged by veterans group Lest We Forget, the mock battle lasted nearly an hour until Allied soldiers forced the Germans to surrender atop Tiscornia's sand dunes. A pyrotechnics display added to the heat of the summer morning and World War Two-era ships and planes completed the shoreline scene.
Later in the day, Lest We Forget staged the Battle of Saipan, a similar, sea-to-ground assault launched during the war against Japan.
"I can't explain it. I can't explain it," said 106-year-old World War Two veteran Robert Holt, describing the D-Day reenactment.
Drafted as a 23-year-old college student, Holt served in an all-Black unit in a segregated army and was deployed to Germany in the mid-1940s. On his first day of combat, his truck hit a landmine: "I walked around and said, 'You alright?'' Holt recalled. "He looked up at me and said, 'No, I got hit.'"
Holt survived the day and the war, eventually moving to Albion, Michigan.
READ MORE: Cpl. Robert Holt battled fascism and racism. At 105, he’s still laughing
"I thought I was coming here to help celebrate [D-Day]," Hold said. "They come celebrate me."
Sitting near Holt on Saturday was another veteran, Gloria Weberg, who served in the WAVES program.
"It was really good for women to be recognized where we hadn't been before," Weberg said.
An acronym short for Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, the voluntary branch of the US Navy offered numerous roles, including machinist mates, parachute riggers, photographers, metalsmiths, gunnery instructors, radiomen, control tower operators, and pigeon trainers.
While "taking care" of soldiers' records, Weberg saw 17 and 18-year-old boys leave for combat overseas, never to return home.
"I hope we no longer have wars,' Weberg said. "We must keep that from happening."
