Four months after Pearl Harbor, and at only 15 years old, Joe Crain joined the US Navy. In this Oral History clip, he explains his involvement on Omaha Beach in 1944.

While the Overlord operation was a combined effort of land, sea, and air forces, the amphibious assault plan was given the code name Neptune.

When POWs awoke at Stalag Luft I on May 1, 1945, the German guards had disappeared and a hand sewn Stars and Stripes replaced the swastika on the flagpole. The Red Army arrived a day later.

Merchant Marine, Louis Taix of New Orleans, Louisiana, was lost at sea when the SS Nicarao was sunk by a German submarine U-751 on the night of May 15, 1942, in the Bahama Islands.

This column is the second of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy.