Käneçohe resident Zane Schlemmer will be among 38 American D-Day veterans receiving the Legion of Honor tomorrow from France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as part of the 65th anniversary of the historic invasion to liberate Europe.

“On this occasion, President Sarkozy wanted to pay a special tribute to the veterans of WWII, acknowledging their sense of duty. France has always expressed its gratitude to those who helped liberate it from Nazi oppression,” the Consulate General of France in San Francisco said in a release.
Created in 1820 by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Legion of Honor is the highest decoration bestowed by France. The award will be made at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris.
France’s Consulate General said President Obama will meet with Sarkozy on Saturday and participate in ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of D-Day. A military ceremony will take place at the American cemetery of Colleville-sur-Mer. Both presidents are expected to make speeches.
Schlemmer was a 19-year-old sergeant with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and he remembers tracer rounds knifing through his silky canopy after he parachuted from a C-47 on D-Day — June 6, 1944.
“For a young kid, it was a baptism of fire,” Schlemmer said. He and five other men were sent to man an outpost about three miles west of Sainte-Mere-Eglise.
Schlemmer, now 84, was wounded on July 3, 1944, by friendly fire during a battle near La Haye de Puits.
This trip to France is his 12th. Over the years he developed friendships, and on one return trip he found that the farmer whose field he landed in had mounted a plaque on a rock in his honor. Schlemmer even got his own street: Rue Zane Schlemmer.
Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy, is considered to be the most decisive battle of World War II in Western Europe.
Before the battle, the German army still firmly occupied France and the Low Countries, the Nazi government still had access to the raw materials and industrial capacity of Western Europe, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.
Overlord proved a psychological and physical blow to German military fortunes from which they would never recover, the Naval History command said.
The landings began on June 6, 1944, with 160,000 troops. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft were involved. The landings took place on a stretch of Normandy coast divided into sectors known as Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.