Retired 82nd Airborne Soldier travels to Normandy for 80th D-Day celebration honoring veteran best friend

FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (WTVD) — As the 80th D-Day commemoration approaches on June 6, a group of veterans from the 82nd Airborne Division traveled to Normandy for a series of tributes and celebrations.

A North Carolina soldier who flew to France is honoring a best friend and veteran who passed away before the trip. Retired Lt. Col. Dale Cremisio of the 82nd Airborne Division says he wasn’t even sure the trip would happen.

For months, he planned to go with his best friend, Col. Sam Kitchen, a 98-year-old World War II veteran from Gray’s Creek.

“I can’t emphasize enough how we sat there many, many nights and discussed coming to Normandy, what we would do, who we would see and the history.”

The two were supposed to travel together on a group trip organized by a French organization called Veterans Back to Normandy. Cremisio says he was looking forward to seeing Normandy with other veterans of the 82nd Airborne Division, some as old as 107, Cremisio says.

Kitchen, died a few weeks before his scheduled flight to France.

Once there, Cremisio continued the trip in honor of his friend.

“I’m proud and happy to be here, and it’s the trip of a lifetime. But I really wish old Sam was here with me,” Cremisio said.

Cremisio says he only joined the military in the late ’70s. But he says traveling to Normandy meant everything to his best friend because Kitchen was in the Marine Corps’ Pacific Theater when D-Day happened.

Cremísio says he hopes to bury a trinket for his friend on the beach in his honor. He says he was moved by the warmth and pride the people of Normandy showed him and his fellow veterans.

“(I) renewed my faith not only in my country, but in humanity itself.”

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The D-Day operation on June 6, 1944, is seen as the event that marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War. By land, air and sea, the US military and its allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in the largest invasion in military history, to begin a massive attack against German forces.