By JOHN LEICESTER

OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — The D-Day generation, smaller in number than ever, is back on the beaches of France where so much blood was spilled 81 years ago. World War II veterans, now mostly centenarians, have returned with the same message they fought for then: Freedom is worth defending.

In what they acknowledge may be one of their last hurrahs, a group of nearly two dozen veterans who served in Europe and the Pacific is commemorating the fallen and getting rock-star treatment this week in Normandy — the first patch of mainland France that Allied forces liberated with the June 6, 1944, invasion and the greatest assembly of ships and planes the world had known.

On what became known as “ Bloody Omaha ” and other gun-swept beaches where soldiers waded ashore and were cut down, their sacrifices forged bonds among Europe, the United States and Canada that endure, outlasting geopolitical shifts and the rise and fall of political leaders who blow hot and cold about the ties between nations.

In Normandy, families hand down D-Day stories like heirlooms from one generation to the next. They clamor for handshakes, selfies, kisses and autographs from WWII veterans, and reward them with cries of “Merci!” — thank you.

Both the young and the very old thrive off the interactions. French schoolchildren oohed and aahed when 101-year-old Arlester Brown told them his age. The U.S. military was still segregated by race when the 18-year-old was drafted in 1942. Like most Black soldiers, Brown wasn’t assigned a combat role and served in a laundry unit that accompanied the Allied advances through France and the Low Countries and into Nazi Germany.

Jack Stowe, who lied about being 15 to join the Navy after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, said he gets “the sweetest letters” from kids he met on previous trips.

“The French people here, they’re so good to us,” the 98-year-old said, on a walk to the water’s edge on Omaha. “They want to talk to us, they want to sit down and they want their kids around us.”

“People are not going to let it be forgotten, you know, Omaha, these beaches,” he said. “These stories will go on and on and on.”

The dead honored with sand

At the Normandy American Cemetery that overlooks Omaha, the resting place for nearly 9,400 American war dead, workers and visitors rub sand from the beach onto the white gravestones so the engraved names stand out.

Wally King, a sprightly 101-year-old, wiped off excess sand with a weathered hand, resting the other atop the white cross, before saying a few words at the grave of Henry Shurlds Jr. Shurlds flew P-47 Thunderbolt fighters like King and was shot down and killed on Aug. 19, 1944. In the woods where they found his body, the townspeople of Verneuil-sur-Seine, northwest of Paris, erected a stele of Mississippi tulip tree wood in his memory.

Although Shurlds flew in the same 513th Fighter Squadron, King said he never met him. King himself was shot down over Germany and badly burned on his 75th and last mission in mid-April 1945, weeks before the Nazi surrender. He said pilots tended not to become fast friends, to avoid the pain of loss when they were killed, which was often.

When “most veterans from World War II came home, they didn’t want to talk about the war. So they didn’t pass those experiences on to their children and grandchildren,” King said.

“In a way, that’s good because there’s enough unpleasantness, bloodshed, agony in war, and perhaps we don’t need to emphasize it,” he added. “But the sacrifice needs to be emphasized and celebrated.”

When they’re gone

With the march of time, the veterans’ groups are only getting smaller.

The Best Defense Foundation, a non-profit that has been organizing their trips to Normandy since 2004, last year brought 50 veterans for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. This year, the number is 23.

Betty Huffman-Rosevear, who served as an army nurse, is the only woman. She turned 104 this week. The group also includes a renowned romantic: 101-year-old Harold Terens and his sweetheart, Jeanne Swerlin, were feted by France’s president after they tied the knot in a symbolic wedding inland of the D-Day beaches last year.

D-Day veteran Jake Larson, now 102, has made multiple return trips and has become a star as “Papa Jake” on TikTok, with 1.2 million followers. He survived machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha, making it unhurt to the bluffs that overlook the beach and which in 1944 were studded with German gun emplacements that mowed down American soldiers.

“We are the lucky ones,” Larson said amid the cemetery’s immaculate rows of graves. “They had no family. We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive.”

As WWII’s survivors disappear, the responsibility is falling on the next generations that owe them the debt of freedom.

“This will probably be the last Normandy return, when you see the condition of some of us old guys,” King said. “I hope I’m wrong.”