Jake Larson returned to Normandy, France, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion — in which he had participated — and he told Christiane Amanpour that he knew exactly what he and his fellow soldiers had been fighting for.
Amanpour began by asking Larson whether he remembered what it was like to step out of the landing craft into the water, and he was adamant: “Like it was yesterday.”
He went on to say that the “17-year-old pilot” had dropped them off a bit short of the mark he was supposed to hit, so that when he and the others stepped off the landing craft, they had immediately been neck-deep in the water.
“I got out of the landing craft and I had water right up to my chin,” he said. “He let us out a little it too far, but he was just a 17-year-old pilot for that boat.”
“You were all kids,” Amanpour exclaimed.
“We were all kids, yes,” Larson agreed.
Amanpour then asked whether he had known at the time what it was he was fighting for — and he said that all of them had known exactly what was at stake.
“Definitely. That we knew. Every one of us — every one of us was prepared to give our life to kick Hitler’s a** out of Europe!” he said. “And we did! We lost quite a few — we lost friends. I lost friends. But we were soldiers. We were prepared to give our life.”
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