Veterans gather to remember D-Day

Seniors who stepped into the Oasis Senior Center event space Friday morning to commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Normandy enjoyed a trip back to 1944.

Singer Bonnie Bowden belted out selections from the Great American Songbook as veterans and their wives nodded along to the familiar tunes.

A veteran in a forest green military dress uniform adorned with various medals took his wife’s hand and twirled her around the dance floor in front of the stage.

More than 150 seniors, many of them veterans of World War II and Vietnam, enjoyed music, lunch and conversation at the Oasis Senior Center’s celebration of the 71st anniversary of D-Day.

D-Day is observed throughout the United States in memory of the 160,000 Allied troops who landed on the 50-mile stretch of beach in Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, to fight Nazi soldiers.

Thousands of ships and aircraft supported the invasion and while many of the forces were killed, by August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated. The battle is known as the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.

Although Newport Beach resident Don Bringham was too young to serve during World War II, he spent more than two years overseas in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War.

“I find it an amazing conflation of generations coming together to celebrate our liberty and those who fight for it,” he said of the celebration Friday.

He emphasized the importance of veterans, whom he called “walking history books,” sharing their stories with younger generations.

“Our job is to tell true stories about times that people may have forgotten,” he said.

Cornell Iliescu, of Costa Mesa, shared his experiences as a 6-year-old boy living in Romania during the Second World War.

He recalled an afternoon when he and his father were driving in their car and witnessed a U.S. B-24 Liberator bomber crash in a nearby field. Iliescu and his father managed to rescue three of the servicemen and took them into the woods to hide.

Iliescu’s father went back to the crash site to see if he could rescue anyone else while the young boy stayed behind with the soldiers.

Iliescu bonded with the servicemen during their four days together. One soldier gave him a pair of pliers, while the other handed him an American made pencil. The now 76-year-old has held onto the pencil and the pliers for seven decades.

The third soldier put what appeared to be a wrapper in his hand. After noticing the boy’s confusion, the soldier unwrapped the silver and popped a piece of candy in the child’s mouth.

“That was my first taste of Hershey’s chocolate,” Iliescu recalled.

His love affair with America began at that moment, he said. By 1975, Iliescu had escaped from Communist controlled Romania and became a United States citizen. He has made it his mission since to “pay back and honor the greatest generation of Americans,” he said of the men like the soldiers he met as a young boy.

Iliescu owns an auto shop at 2085 Placentia Avenue in Costa Mesa where he has restored dozens of military vehicles. He also turned the inside of the shop into a museum to honor veterans.

“I always wanted to be an American kid,” he said. “Now, I am truly an American.”