D-Day: A Houston-area veteran reflects on wartime

HOUSTON – June 6, 1944, is a day burned into history as a critical turning point of World War II.

Thursday marked 75 years since Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France to push back the Nazi Germany enemy, and the world is reflecting on the sacrifices made on that fateful day.

"I just have all these facts," said retired Lt. D.A. Buell. 

Scribbled in a book of poetry are the facts Lt. Buell said turned the tide of history. 

"We dropped 7.9 million bombs," he said. 

Operation Neptune was the code name, though we know it best as D-Day.

"In World War II, I was assigned to a B-24 squadron," Buell said. 

Buell was in the Navy, not assigned to Normandy. Rather, he was north, in England, where three weeks prior, his task was to get ready. 

"We had four squadrons, of 18 planes each, there for the purpose of clearing ... the English Channel of all the German submarines," he said. 

The Nazi submarines were everywhere, and in order for the plan to work in Normandy, they had to go. 

"We did this by flying 24 hours a day -- control patterns. And at the end of the time, we'd cleared all the submarines out," he said  

Now, the world joined in to watch the sacrifice that turned out to be the beginning of the end. 

"The GIs who boarded the craft that morning knew that they carried on their shoulders not just the pack of a soldier but the fate of the world," President Donald Trump said. 

"We owned 54 miles of what was the Atlantic wall. We had taken that away from the Germans," Buell said. 

Buell was 21 then. He is now 95 years old. 

He said war is for a young man. But stories from the battlefield, from those who changed the world, are timeless. Especially when shared from the source, those young at heart. 

"I told my children many a time: I weep for you. You'd never know the patriotism that we had in World War II," he said.