On 64th Anniversary, a D-Day Vet Looks Back

It’s not the horrors of Normandy that haunt Clifton Raynor these days; it’s the horrors of growing old. “Every day is a trying day for me,” the 86-year-old says. Raynor is part of a dying breed who saw D-Day firsthand, and today, on the 64th anniversary of that fateful battle, Newsday sat down to talk with him about it.

Raynor arrived on the third day, and what he remembers most are the bodies strewn through the hedgerows. Now, he and his fellow soldiers face another enemy. Of the 2.5 million World War II veterans yet alive, 945 die each day. “Without what we went through, there wouldn't be any United States today,” he said. "We wouldn't be living in a free world.” (More history stories.)