80 years after D-Day, one of the men who helped prepare for the invasion tells his story

When Charles Seiter returned to New York City in April 1946, he saw the Statue of Liberty on the city skyline. After two years abroad during World War II, the New York native was finally home. In his time overseas, he had helped prepare for the Normandy invasion, seen its aftermath and was at the gates of the Allied headquarters in France where the Third Reich signed its surrender.

“Good old statue,” Charles said. “We were home.”

Seiter is a “living history book,” said his daughter, Cathy Seiter LaMontagne. At 103, he is part of the less than 1% of the millions of Americans who served in the second world war who are still alive. He’s part of an even smaller number who were part of the Normandy landings, the largest amphibious assault in history.

On June 6, 1944, thousands of soldiers, vessels and aircraft converged on five beaches in Normandy in northern France. The goal was to establish a foothold in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Seiter landed on the Cotentin Peninsula, codenamed Utah Beach. General and soon-to-be President Dwight D. Eisenhower identified the Utah landing as “key to capturing the port of Cherbourg,” a nearby harbor that would help Allied forces bring in supplies for later military operations, according to Stephanie Hinnershitz, a historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

Working recon, preparing for an invasion

Seiter was born in Ridgewood, N.Y., and attended the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School before working as an engineer.

At 22, he quit his job to join the Army Air Force after two of his friends were killed. After basic training in November 1943, Seiter was put on an old ship and sent across the Atlantic to Liverpool in England — but he didn’t know that at the time, he said. Nobody knew where they were going. Sick for days, he slept in a hammock with thousands of soldiers on a ship meant for 500.

“I think they scuttled it about a year after we got there,” he said. “It was an old piece of crap.”

The ship traveled in a convoy of about 40-60 other vessels. Around six of these ships were lost to attacks on the way.

When he arrived in Liverpool, Seiter was brought to Bentley Priory, where some of the planning for the Normandy invasion took place. He worked in intelligence, bringing recon photos from Allied aircraft to the planning room.

“I used to get all the photographs from the reconnaissance,” Seiter said. “The fighters, they were out there taking pictures, and they would go through me to the war room.”

Sometime that summer, Seiter was sent to Southampton. Again, he didn’t know why. He boarded a landing ship full of trucks and laid in the back of a canvas-topped truck to stay out of the rain.

Shortly after the rain stopped, Seiter woke up to hundreds, “maybe a thousand” airplanes off to the east. They were mostly full of paratroopers.

“I looked up,” Seiter said. “In my mind I said ‘oh my God, it’s started now.’”

It was June 6, 1944. The Normandy invasion had begun.

The end of the war and the German surrender

When Seiter arrived on Utah Beach a day later, June 7, 1944, the fighting was already over. The nearly 200 American soldiers killed on the beach had been removed. A massive concrete fortress on the beachhead had been bombed out by Allied planes and troops had moved three miles inland. Utah Beach saw the fewest number of casualties of all five landing sites. But Seiter didn’t know that.

“When I landed, I said ‘oh my God, what are we going to be headed into?’” he said. “We didn’t know that Utah was successful.”

Seiter moved inland with a convoy of vehicles, again traveling without knowing why or where. And again, nobody knew.

“Or somebody did," he said, "but we didn’t.”

Further inland, they encountered a sign pointing to the direction of the Allied forces and followed it for about a mile, but they didn’t see anybody. Something felt wrong so they turned back.

“I found out later on there was a huge Panzer division up there,” Seiter said, a German armored tank division.

After Utah Beach, Seiter stayed in France. He went to Versailles to help the military set up headquarters for Eisenhower and trained pilots how to land in the fog. When German General Alfred Jodl signed the German surrender at a technical high school in northeastern France, Seiter was there at the gates.

“They come in … all of the admirals and generals, and they go right across the way,” he said. “That’s where Eisenhower was. About how far away? 150 feet.”

At the end of the war Seiter and some other soldiers were shipped out on a rail car full of hay, passing around a bottle of Scotch. Soon after, Seiter boarded another ship. This time, he knew where he was going.

“I didn’t want to go to the Pacific. I had enough of that,” he said.

Seeing the 'good old statue'

When Seiter arrived in New York City and saw the “good old statue,” he knew he was home.

Decades later, Seiter's daughter, Cathy, was working as a flight attendant. While in Europe, she found some extra time to visit Bentley Priory where her father had brought classified recon images to some of the top minds of the Normandy landings. She saw the tables where generals sat and planned the operation.

Cathy called her father from the property to tell him where he was. A couple of years ago, she also visited Utah Beach, where her father landed in 1944. Many of the stone bunkers used by defending forces still remain. Instead of the huge concrete fortress, there’s a museum that tells the story of D-Day.

“It would have been nice to visit, but it’s a long way,” Seiter said. “It’s changed quite a bit. There’s a lot more civilians coming in, building up things. So the beaches are not the same anymore.”

Seiter said he’s proud to have served, but for the most part, he doesn’t like to talk about it. No veterans do, he said. He doesn’t see himself as a warrior. He doesn’t think his story is interesting, but Cathy said he wants people to know about it.

“He said by the D-Day vets going out and talking about it keeps the event alive, and that all the boys that he talked about that died will not be forgotten,” she said. “That the young men that died on the beaches and in the war itself will not be forgotten by future generations.”

So, he tells his stories.

“Little stories make a war,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How an Arizona veteran helped prepare for the U.S. landing in Normandy