Remembering D-Day

Four Vermilion Parish men remember where they were June 6, 1944 - D-Day Invasion..
Lorcey Sonnier, Ivan Breaux, Gen. Bob LeBlanc and Loubert Trahan remember the day well.
Sonnier, who is 90, was sitting in his gunner seat in the back of a B-17 bomber plane heading to Normandy.
“That day” would be known as “D-Day.” The official name of it was called, “Overload.” It was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944.
The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes and 150,000 service.
Sonnier said he had it better than the soldiers on the ground.
“We had it easy because we were 10,000 feet in the air,” said Sonnier. “It was also cloudy. There were so many planes in the air that there was no way you could turn around if your plane had trouble.”
Sonnier said the D-Day Mission was his 16th. He would fly a total of 30 combat missions.
Today, Sonnier and his family are heading to New Orleans to take place in a special ceremony in the World War II Museum.
Gen. Bob LeBlanc was stationed in England, sitting patiently with Gen. Patton’s Army ready to move into France after the first day of the invasion.
LeBlanc and Patton’s Army arrived on Utah Beach 10 days after the invasion.
Utah Beach was the code name for the right flank, or westernmost, of the allied landing beaches during the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
“We had to go into the water,” remembers LeBlanc. “There was no fighting because we had taken the beach before we arrived.”
Breaux, like Sonnier, was a tail-gunner during the war. But at the time of D-Day, he was a military guard, protecting the planes on his base. He said he remembers the planes taking off heading to Normandy.
Sonnier served four years from 1941 to 1945.
Loubert Trahan of Maurice visited Normandy, France recently. He and friends had a chance to tour the museum on Omaha Beach, and visited the Normandy Cemetery. He, friends and others were in Europe touring the country. They visited the cemetery and walked along Omaha’s Beach.
Trahan, who was 12 at the time of the invasion, said his visit to the beach, “Was emotional.”
Trahan recalls the day because of friends and relatives who were overseas at the time of the invasion.