It was a story that took months of planning and coordination across a half-dozen countries and two continents: the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that marked the turning point for the Allied victory in World War II. The Associated Press has had a presence on the beaches of Normandy since the actual invasion in 1944, but AP’s teams in Europe knew that the 2019 event would require an extra effort – it was likely the last major anniversary that veterans who fought in the battle would be alive to tell their stories.
AP journalists in Europe and the U.S. set out to produce the their most compelling and creative coverage to date of a D-Day anniversary in hopes of creating stories, video and photos that captured not just the history but what D-Day meant in today's context, with the ties among European countries and the U.S. the most fractured since the end of WWII.
Paris-based senior producer Jeff Schaeffer, photo editor Bertrand Combaldieu and staff in the U.K. and U.S. went to work laying out detailed plans of the distinctive coverage. They brought together reporters in all formats and in multiple countries months in advance to come up with a plan on how to own coverage of this crucial anniversary.
Among just some of the highlights:
British D-Day veteran Leonard ‘Ted’ Emmings, who was a naval coxswain on a small craft that landed 36 Canadians on Juno beach in France, poses at Southwick House near Portsmouth, England, May 9, 2019, in front of the map used to plan the Normandy D-Day landings. Southwick House was the nerve center of D-Day, the forward headquarters of the Allied forces preparing for the invasion of Normandy.
AP Photo / Matt Dunham
D-Day veteran Frank Mouque, a Chelsea Pensioner at London’s Royal Hospital Chelsea military retirement home, poses for a portrait during a D-Day 75th anniversary event at the veterans home, May 13, 2019. Mouque was a sapper (engineer) and corporal in the British Royal Engineers. On D-Day he landed on Sword Beach carrying 21 pounds of explosives to blow down telegraph poles.
AP Photo / Matt Dunham
World War II veteran Johnnie Jones,Sr., 99, poses at his home in Baton Rouge, La., May 28, 2019. He remembers wading ashore at Normandy and coming under fire from a German sniper. He also remembers discrimination when he came home. “I couldn’t sit with the soldiers I had been on the battlefield with. I had to go to the back of the bus,” said Jones, who went on to become a lawyer and civil rights activist.
AP Photo / Gerald Herbert
Dennis Trudeau, a Canadian paratrooper who landed in Normandy on D-Day, poses for a photo at his home in Grovetown, Ga., May 21, 2019. On D-Day he parachuted into a dark, flooded field and one of his buddies was soon lost to friendly fire. Within hours Trudeau was captured by German forces, spending the duration of the war in a POW camp. By the time the war was over he had gone from 135 pounds to about 85.
AP Photo / Richard Shiro
World War II veteran Norman Harold Kirby holds photos from his time as a soldier as he poses at his home in Lions Bay, Canada. May 20, 2019. On D-Day, Kirby’s landing craft hit a mine in the water. He abandoned his heavy gear, including his machine gun, and swam to Juno Beach with “my knife, fork and spoon.” Many who couldn't swim died in the water.
AP Photo / Elaine Thompson
German D-Day veteran Paul Golz poses at his home in Koenigswinter, Germany, after an interview with the AP, May 17, 2019. Golz and his comrades were taken prisoner by an American patrol on June 9, 1944, three days after the Allied landing.
AP Photo / Martin Meissner
Vincent Corsini, a World War II U.S. Army veteran in the 29th Infantry Division, poses for a photo in Burlington, N.C., May 24, 2019. Corsini landed at Normandy on D-Day and later took part in the liberation of the strategic city of Saint-Lo. “I wouldn’t change my experience for a million dollars,” he said, adding: “I wouldn’t go through it again for a million dollars.”
AP Photo / Gerry Broome
Steve Melnikoff, who came ashore at Normandy on D-Day with the 175th Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, sits in his home in Cockeysville, Md., May 21, 2019. His unit was part of the bloody campaign to capture the French town of Saint-Lo, moving through fields of thick hedgerows that provided perfect cover for German troops.
AP Photo / Steve Ruark
U.S. veteran Frank DeVita, whose job on D-Day was to lower the ramp of his landing craft to let U.S. troops out at the Normandy beach, poses at his home in Bridgewater, N.J., May 14, 2019. “I was so scared because I knew when I dropped that ramp the bullets that were hitting the ramp were going to come into the boat,” he says. He estimates that when he dropped the ramp, 14 to 15 troops were immediately felled by German machine gun fire. For the 75th anniversary of D-Day he expected to make his 12th trip back to Normandy.
AP Photo / Andres Kudacki
– Emotional on-camera interviews and intimate photo portraits by a team of photographers in the U.S. and Europe, and a compelling text story about how they remember nearly daily what happened during D-Day. New Orleans administrative correspondent Rebecca Santana found several American D-Day veterans by contacting groups that sponsor trips to Normandy.
British soldiers march past the ruins of a church in the war-torn town of Pont-L'Eveque, in the Normandy region of France, in August 1944, left, and a view of the same location on May 10, 2019.
AP Photo / Thibault Camus
– Paris photographer Thibault Camus spent hours going through the AP archive looking for historic images of Normandy’s bombed-out churches and buildings and then painstakingly set out to find those same locations for an impressive “then and now” photo gallery.
– Schaeffer and Washington-based producer Julian Styles teamed up for an all-formats story featuring rare color footage shot by Hollywood director George Stevens of D-Day. The story featured an interview with Stevens’ son.
Spelunkers rappel down a well shaft into a quarry in Fleury-sur-Orne, near Caen, Normandy, May 17, 2019. The cavern, inaccessible to the public but visited by an Associated Press team, is one of the best-preserved makeshift bomb-shelters in Caen, a 1944 time-capsule filled with traces of the civilians who hid there and their ordeals.
AP Photo / John Leicester
A child’s bicycle quietly rusts in an undeground quarry in Fleury-sur-Orne, near Caen, Normandy, May 17, 2019. Archeologists are making 3-D models of the network of tunnels that served as a bomb shelter for hundreds of civilians during the battle that followed D-Day.
AP Photo / John Leicester
Cutlery rusts beside an enamel lid in an underground quarry in Fleury-sur-Orne, near Caen, Normandy, May 17, 2019.
AP Photo / John Leicester
A spelunker inspects empty bottles left by WWII refugees in a quarry in Fleury-sur-Orne, near Caen, Normandy, May 17, 2019. Without the huge underground stone quarries that sheltered thousands of people in and around Caen, the civilian toll of roughly 20,000 French dead in the battle for Normandy might have been steeper still.
AP Photo / John Leicester
Paris reporter John Leicester and video journalist Alex Turnbull got an exclusive look at the caves where civilians hid during D-Day and the weeks after. Bottles, bowls and a rusty bicycle left behind 75 years ago still remain. In addition, Leicester teamed up with Atlanta video reporter Sarah Blake Morgan, who also interviewed several veterans, for a story looking at two men living on opposite sides of an ocean who discovered via DNA tests that they were brothers who shared the same father, an American GI who fought on D-Day.
AP’s hub for D-Day content compiles all the extensive spot and enterprise coverage, including strong stories by reporter Danica Kirka, video journalist Ben Jary and photographer Matt Dunham among others in the U.K., and the Brussels-based team of photographer Virginia Mayo, news editor Raf Casert and video journalist Mark Carlson.
Thanks to the cross-continent teamwork and significant planning and customer outreach, the play was superb. Dozens of customers used the video packages, with the George Stevens piece and drone footage of Normandy getting the most use. The photos and text stories have been mainstays on front pages across the United States and Europe since the package started rolling out, culminating with standout spot coverage of the anniversary. Newspapers have been featuring the content prominently in special sections about the anniversary.
“Your D-Day stuff has been superb ... in short, we’re LOVING the AP’s work and ready to go with any spot-news offerings.”
— Jason Adrians, national editor, Lee Enterprises
Customer feedback has been extremely positive, including these comments from Jason Adrians, the national editor for Lee Enterprises, which has about 50 publications in the U.S.: “Your D-Day stuff has been superb; we released our four-page preview section this morning, and much of it was from the AP. We’ve also used pretty much every other D-Day story you guys have offered on our daily and weekend budgets, too. So, in short, we’re LOVING the AP’s work and ready to go with any spot-news offerings you guys have on the way for next week.”
For outstanding effort, sensitivity and creativity that gave the AP’s audiences unparalleled and memorable D-Day anniversary coverage, Schaeffer, Leicester, Combaldieu, Camus, Turnbull and Santana – supported by their many colleagues in Europe and the U.S. – share AP’s Best of the Week honors.