A 92-year-old veteran said his mind was completely blank as he watched fellow soldiers die during the taking of Juno Beach.
Cobourg, Ont. resident Alex Adair was just 20 when he and a group of Allied soldiers stormed the French beach on June 6, 1944. The taking of Normandy served as a foothold to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during the Second World War.
Adair told CTV Toronto he remembers German mortar bombs crashing into the boat he was in as the group of soldiers floated to shore.
"They knocked me for a loop," he told Austin Delaney, sitting in front of the Cenotaph in Cobourg.
"This one was so close it blew me up in the air. Down I came. It happens in a flash."
He said his boat knocked into a Teller mine, a German land mine capable of destroying an armoured vehicle. The mine blew up the front of the boat, killing the soldiers who rode in the front.
Adair survived because he was sitting at the back. He made his way to the sand as the barrage of bullets and mortar bombs continued.
"They had it on us like a tent. We couldn't see them and they could see us," he said of the German forces firing upon them. The German troops were tucked in bunkers, while Allied soldiers had nowhere to hide.
When asked how he felt watching soldiers die in front of him, Adair recalled: "My mind is blank, honest to God. My thoughts are, 'I'm still alive, anyway.'"
Adair said he was scared but his adrenaline level was high and he knew he had a job to do.
"You put up a false front," he said.
He survived D-Day, but broke his hip hitting the ground during another mortar attack. He made his way to Holland to recover and wait out the end of the war.
As Adair healed, Allied troops managed to expand their hold on the beaches of Normandy and into mainland Europe.
He came back to Canada after the war ended, more than a year after D-Day.
On Remembrance Day, he said his thoughts will be with the friends he made during the war who didn't survive the Normandy landings.
