By SYLVIE CORBET and DANICA KIRKA (Associated Press)

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — World War II veterans from the United States, Britain and Canada are in Normandy this week to mark 80 years since the D-Day landings that helped lead to Hitler’s defeat.

Few witnesses remain who remember the Allied assault. The Associated Press is speaking to veterans about their role in freeing Europe from the Nazis, and what messages they have for younger generations.

PAPA JAKE

“Thank you, guys. Thank you.” Sitting in a wheelchair in front of the graves of fallen comrades at the Normandy American Cemetery, D-Day veteran Jake Larson wanted to let them know out loud that they are the real heroes for giving their lives for the liberation of France and Europe from Nazi Germany — not him.

The 101-year-old American, best known on social media under the name “Papa Jake,” with more than 800,000 followers on TikTok, Larson said “I’m a ‘here-to.’

“People say what is a ‘here-to’? I say I’m here to tell you I’m not a hero. It’s those guys up there that gave their life so that I could make it through. That’s what a ‘here-to’ is.”

Larson likes to describe himself as “the luckiest man in the world.”

“How is it possible that I went through five battles, plus landing on Omaha Beach without getting a scratch? Say there is a God. God just protected me.”

Born in Owatonna, Minnesota, Larson enlisted in the National Guard in 1938, lying about his age as he was only 15.

In 1941, his guard unit was transferred into federal service and he officially joined the Army. In January 1942, he was sent overseas and was stationed in Northern Ireland. He then became the operations sergeant and assembled the planning books for Operation Overlord.

He landed on Omaha Beach in 1944, where he ran under machine-gun fire and made it to the cliffs without being wounded.

“I’m lucky to be alive, more than lucky. I had planned D-Day. And everybody else that was in there with me is gone,’’ said Larson, who now lives in Lafayette, California.

FLOYD BLAIR

Floyd Blair, 103, served as a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps. On June 6, 1944, he flew in two support missions across Omaha Beach as the Allied invasion began.

“I saw one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. The color of the water changed,” he recalled Tuesday as he was paying tribute to fallen comrades at the American cemetery of Colleville-sur-Mer.

“Those poor guys on the ground deserve all the credit they can get. The paratroopers, the armored forces, the ground troops. They are the ones,” he said.

After D-Day, Blair participated in missions to support and protect Allied troops. His targets included German tanks, troop trains and other threats to the advancing troops and his radio was tied directly into the U.S. tanks on the ground.

BOB GIBSON

“I’m living on borrowed time now,” Bob Gibson, 100, said enthusiastically as he arrived at the Deauville airport in Normandy. “I want to see the beach again.”

Gibson was drafted into the Army in 1943 and was sent to Britain. On June 6, 1944, he and his unit landed on Utah Beach in the second wave.

“Terrible. Some of the young fellows never ever made it to the beach. It was so bad that we had to run over (them) to get on the beach. That’s how bad it was,” he said.

Gibson drove an M4 tractor with guns, engaging the enemy day and night. He continued to serve through Normandy and headed to Germany.

“You wake up at night every once in a while too. It seems somebody’s shooting at you. But we were glad to do it. That was our job, we had to do it, right?’’

Gibson, of Hampton, New Jersey, pondered the time that’s passed since then, and said this will probably be his last D-Day anniversary in Normandy.

LES UNDERWOOD

Les Underwood, 98, a Royal Navy gunner on a merchant ship that was delivering ammunition to the beaches, kept firing to protect the vessel even as he saw soldiers drown under the weight of their equipment after leaving their landing craft.

“I’ve cried many a time … sat on my own,’’ Underwood said as he visited Southwick House, on the south coast of England, the Allied headquarters in the lead-up to the Battle of Normandy. The event Monday, sponsored by Britain’s defense ministry, came before many of the veterans travel to France for international ceremonies commemorating D-Day.

“I used to get flashbacks. And in those days, there was no treatment. They just said, “Your service days are over. We don’t need you no more.’’’

GEORGE CHANDLER

George Chandler, 99, served aboard a British motor torpedo boat as part of a flotilla that escorted the U.S. Army assault on Omaha and Utah beaches. The history books don’t capture the horror of the battle, he said.

“Let me assure you, what you read in those silly books that have been written about D-Day are absolute crap,” Chandler said.

“It’s a very sad memory because I watched young American Rangers get shot, slaughtered. And they were young. I was 19 at the time. These kids were younger than me.”

BERNARD MORGAN

About 20 British veterans gathered on the deck of the Mont St. Michel ferry bound from England for northern France, as crowds gathered on the deck and along the shoreline to wave and cheer for them on their voyage to D-Day commemorations.

“It was more pleasant coming today than it was 80 years ago,’’ chuckled Royal Air Force veteran Bernard Morgan, who worked in communications on D-Day.

MARIE SCOTT

On D-day, Marie Scott experienced British forces landing on the Normandy coast through her earphones. As a 17-year-old radio operator in the Women’s Royal Naval Service, she relayed messages to the Normandy beaches and waited for the recipient to open his channel and reply.

“I heard everything,” Scott, who will soon turn 98, said. “I could hear all the background noise, the machine gun fire, the bombs dropping, aircrafts, men shouting orders, men screaming. It was horrendous.”

“But I had the job to do,” she explained. “I had no time to be alarmed.”

“When you heard that amount of firepower, you knew there had to be casualties … It was an enormous price to pay. But the price we had to pay,” she said.

Scott was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit, for her role on D-Day, in 2019.

“Women are very important even in war. They may not be part of the fighting element, but we were very, very small cogs in an enormous wheel. And without those cogs, the wheel doesn’t work,” she said.

On Tuesday, Scott attended a ceremony at Pegasus Bridge, one of the first sites liberated by Allied forces from Nazi Germany. She said it was important for her to be back for the 80th anniversary commemorations, because “it evokes memories of a very special day for me, when I first realized the true horror of war I suppose. I think, probably, I grew up on that day so it’s important to come back. Very emotional but important.”

ANDY NEGRA

Andy Negra, 100, was born in Pennsylvania and was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943 and landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on July 18, 1944, with his unit. At that point he said, German forces were still only 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from the beach.

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“You didn’t think of dying. … You knew what you had to do. And when the time comes, you did it. That’s the way I looked at it,” he said.

“What could you be scared of if you don’t know what you’re going to be scared of? That was my philosophy. … So I was never scared. I had close calls, there was a lot of action. But until you entered into that action. Why be scared?”

Negra visited this week the Normandy American Cemetery of Colleville-sur-Mer and attended a series of D-Day celebrations with a group of about 50 U.S. veterans. The 80th anniversary “is the same as when I went through the towns during WWII,” he said. People “were in the windows, in the doorways and they were on the streets. The difference is there were not as many people then as there are now.”

Negra said he is still deeply moved by the warm French welcome in Normandy. “The celebration started when we liberated each town because they clapped and they’ve been clapping and saying nice things all the way from World War II, all the way until now,” he said.

RICHARD “DICK” RUNG

D-Day veteran Dick Rung was 19 when he was assigned to a tank landing craft that landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Now 99, the memory is still alive as he remembers time spent hosing down the deck of the blood of those killed.

“Two of the soldiers that got hit — badly hit — we couldn’t save them but we covered them with blankets and the blankets soaked up their blood. Finally, the skipper said ‘we can’t leave it like this’ so we got out the fire hose and we washed down the deck and the blood sort of disappeared,” he recalled.

“I was only a kid and most of the crew was too. I wasn’t trained for this,” he said. Rung’s craft stayed in Normandy for almost 5 months transporting troops, supplies and vehicles from larger ships to shore. He then headed to the Pacific Theater where he spent the rest of World War II. Describing the brutality of war, Rung concluded: “I’m a peacemaker, I’m not going to do this again.”

Kirka reported from Portsmouth, England, and aboard the Mont St. Michel.

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — A pair of NASA astronauts have finally taken their historic ride on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner making its first-ever human spaceflight Wednesday morning.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams were back for a third time in a month once again taking a ride out to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 to climb on board the spacecraft sitting atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket that lifted off amid mostly clear skies at 10:52 a.m. to take the pair to the International Space Station.

“Let’s get going,” said Wilmore minutes before launch. “Let’s put some fire in this rocket and let’s push it to the heavens where all these tough Americans have prepared it to be.”

Let’s relive liftoff of #AtlasV carrying #Starliner #CFT for @NASA and @BoeingSpace! pic.twitter.com/MxlAZE45aK

— ULA (@ulalaunch) June 5, 2024

The pair are flying the Crew Flight Test mission, a followup to two uncrewed test flights of Starliner, the first of which came in 2019. That mission was a partial failure as it was not able to rendezvous with the ISS forcing a 2 1/2-year delay to Boeing’s program to remedy hardware, software and management issues. The second uncrewed test flight in 2022 made it to the ISS, but post-launch review and preparation for the CFT brought further delays with more hardware issues popping up.

But half a decade later, Williams and Wilmore were set to fly, entering quarantine on April 22. Finally, on May 6, they tried for the first time to take off from the Space Coast, but an issue with a fluttering valve on ULA’s upper Centaur stage scrubbed that attempt with about two hours to go on the countdown clock. Then a second attempt this past Saturday was scrubbed within four minutes of launch because of ULA computers not synching at the launch pad.

“I am very impressed with my colleagues for being such optimists and such professionals.” said NASA astronaut for future Starliner crew member Mike Fincke during NASA’s live commentary leading up to launch. “They’ve been in quarantine for a long time. You know we’ve been waiting for over five years to get Starliner launched, but they are very, very excited about today. You can see that they’re focused on getting the job done and they are very ready for this mission.”

In the end, the third attempt went smoothly.

“Everything was fine. No hiccups, no drama and nothing to worry about,” Fincke said. “So I was really happy for Butch and Suni and happy with the whole team. … Now we just got to get to space station.”

The duo began suiting up before 6 a.m. at KSC’s Neil Armstrong Operations & Checkout Building venturing out after 7:30 a.m. to climb aboard the updated Starliner-themed Airstream Astrovan for the ride over to neighboring Cape Canaveral and make their way back on board the Starliner spacecraft.

Before driving over, they played a traditional prelaunch game with chief of the astronaut office, Joe Acaba, not leaving until they had lost to Acaba — this time in a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. The idea is that losing that game is the worst thing that happens on a launch day.

“Speaking as a child of the 70s, a lot of us watched “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and Mr. Rogers would tell us to take our time to do it right, and that’s what we’re doing here,” Fincke said.

Just before 9 a.m., teams waited the conclusion of a weather brief before moving forward with hatch closure, but were given the go for hatch closure with less than two hours to go before launch.

“We are ready. We’re smiling out here, see you in a couple weeks,” said Wilmore.

Pictures: Launch day for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner on Crew Flight Test

The astronauts will spend just over 25 hours making their way to the ISS set to dock Thursday at 12:15 p.m., where they will spend about eight days on board before returning to Earth for a landing in one of five locations in the desert in the southwestern United States.

If successful, this will be the final required mission for Boeing under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to achieve certification and set up regular rotational missions to the ISS, sharing duties with SpaceX.

“We need that access,” said NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free. “So right now we have we have one provider giving us that access to the space station. This will give us a second provider, which means if we have a problem with either, we have ways to get our crews to and from station, which helps keep the tempo that we’ve had for 23 years of having humans in low-Earth orbit, but also that opportunity to get the crews back if there’s an issue at all and keep that presence going.”

Wilmore and Williams will spend time on both the way up and down from the ISS testing out manual control overrides among other facets of the mostly automated spacecraft.

“There’s a thought of how things should be, but then there’s the reality how things need to be,” said Wilmore ahead of the launch attempt. “That’s what this test is all — everything we do is test. It’s been a process over the years that is such a benefit in all aspects of the capabilities of this spacecraft, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”

The pair are former Navy test pilots and veterans of two spaceflight each, with both having traveled on board Russia Soyuz capsules as well as the space shuttle. Wilmore is commander and joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2000 while Williams joined in 1998.

Williams was given the honor to name the capsule after it landed, and dubbed it Calypso, in deference to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau’sfamed vessel. The zero-gravity indicator for the mission follows the maritime theme, a stuffed narwhal that is also named Calypso.

The flight comes just over four years since SpaceX made its first crewed flight to the ISS with its Crew Dragon spacecraft, which has since flown 13 times carrying 50 humans to space. That includes the four members of Crew-8 awaiting along with the rest of the seven-person crew of Expedition 71 aboard the ISS.

Starliner is only the sixth ever U.S.-based spacecraft to fly with NASA astronauts following Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttleand SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. Williams is the first woman to fly on an orbital test flight among NASA’s spacecraft.

Starliner will also become the first U.S.-based capsule to make a land touchdown as Crew Dragon, Apollo, Gemini and Mercury all made waterlandings, as will the Artemis program’s Orion capsule that has yet to fly with humans. Russia’s Soyuz, though, features land touchdowns.

It also marked a return of human launches from Cape Canaveral’s launch pads, which last saw a crewed flight in 1968 with the launch of Apollo7. Every Apollo mission afterward as well as the space shuttle and Crew Dragon launches have come from nearby Kennedy Space Center.

It’s the first time an Atlas V has flown with humans as well, although earlier iterations of the Atlas rocket flew several human spaceflights in the early 1960s including John Glenn’s historic trip to space as the first American to each orbit in 1962.

This also marked the 100th launch of an Atlas V rocket, and Wilmore had a special message for ULA after launch.

“They’ve been a member of the family for a long time, but now it’s official, and we want to welcome them to human spaceflight,” he said.

By AAMER MADHANI (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine has used U.S weapons to strike inside Russia in recent days, according to a Western official familiar with the matter.

The weapons were used under recently approved guidance from President Joe Biden allowing American arms to be used to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden’s directive allows for U.S.-supplied weapons to be used to strike Russian forces that are attacking or preparing to attack. It does not change U.S. policy that directs Ukraine not to use American-provided ATACMS or long-range missiles and other munitions to strike offensively inside Russia, U.S. officials have said.

Ukrainian officials had stepped up calls on the U.S. to allow Kyiv’s forces to defend themselves against attacks originating from Russian territory. Kharkiv sits just 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Russian border and has come under intensified Russian attack.

In advancing in the northeast Kharkiv region, Russian forces have exploited a lengthy delay in the replenishment of U.S. military aid. In addition, Western Europe’s inadequate military production has slowed crucial deliveries to the battlefield for Ukraine.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that he could not confirm that Ukraine had used U.S. weapons at targets in Russia.

“We’re just not in a position on a day-to-day basis of knowing exactly what the Ukrainians are firing at what,” Kirby said. “It’s certainly at a tactical level.”

According to a June 3 report from the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces struck a Russian S-300/400 air defense battery in Belgorod Oblast, likely with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, on June 1 or June 2. The air defense system was located roughly 60 kilometers (about 40 miles) from the current front line in northern Kharkiv Oblast and more than 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the city of Kharkiv, which is within the range of HIMARS, the institute reported.

Confirmation of the strikes comes as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, visited Qatar, which along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has been a key mediators in prisoner swaps and other negotiations between Russia and Ukraine since the war began.

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Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed to this report.