COURSEULLES-SUR-MER, France -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Prince Charles joined 99 Canadian D-Day veterans on Juno Beach Friday to mark the 70th anniversary of the greatest seaborne invasion in history.
Harper says Juno Beach is where Canadians bled on D-Day.
Eighteen-thousand Canadian troops took part in the allied landing on the beaches of Normandy.
Harper said it was difficult to understand the courage it took to advance through minefields and barbed wire under fire from mortars and machine guns in order to punch through Hitler's Atlantic Wall.
He said Canadians can take enormous pride in the fact their troops played "such a pivotal role in ensuring the success of the D-Day landings," which he called a turning point in history.
Harper told the veterans they had travelled a long way to be close once more to fallen comrades and what they did there seven decades ago will never be forgotten.
Canada's salute to the 359 Canadians who died on the first day of the battle was unveiled yesterday at the Juno Beach Centre.
One of the hardest groups of troops hit was D Company of Queen's Own Rifles, which lost half its members in their first moments on the beach as they sprinted 180 metres from the water to the seawall.
Each soldier is commemorated on a metre-high marker bearing a plaque.
By late August 1944, Canada had lost more than 18-thousand casualties, including five-thousand dead, in the Normandy campaign.
