D-Day, the pivotal World War II operation during which the Allied troops invaded France's Normandy on June 6, 1944, marks its 78th anniversary Monday.

On this day, more than 160,000 soldiers stormed the French coast to take on the Nazi German fighters. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The day is billed as “the beginning of the end of war in Europe.”

Here are some quotes, courtesy from USA Today and the National World War II Museum, to share on this day:

1. "As our boat touched sand and the ramp went down, I became a visitor to hell. I shut everything out and concentrated on following the men in front of me down the ramp and into the water." — Pfc. Harry Parley

2. "This operation is not being planned with any alternatives. This operation is planned as a victory, and that’s the way it’s going to be. We're going down there, and we’re throwing everything we have into it, and we’re going to make it a success." — Dwight D. Eisenhower

3. "This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred." — Winston Churchill

4. "Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win." — Stephen E. Ambrose

5. "It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century ... came down to a battle for a slice of beach only 6 miles long and 2 miles wide." — Barack Obama

6. "I crawled in over wounded and dead, but I couldn't tell who was who, and we had orders not to stop for anyone on the edge of the beach, to keep going or we would be hit ourselves. ... I ran into a bunch of my buddies from the company. Most of them didn't even have a rifle. Some bummed cigarettes off of me. ... The Germans could have swept us away with brooms if they knew how few we were and what condition we were in." — Pvt. Charles Thomas

7. "That road to V-E Day was hard and long, and traveled by weary and valiant men. And history will always record where that road began. It began here, with the first footprints on the beaches of Normandy." — George W. Bush

8. "The first night in France I spent in a ditch beside a hedgerow wrapped in a damp shelter-half and thoroughly exhausted. But I felt elated. It had been the greatest experience of my life. I was 10 feet tall. No matter what happened, I had made it off the beach and reached the high ground. I was king of the hill, at least in my own mind, for a moment." — Sgt. John Ellery

9. "For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate." — Franklin Roosevelt

10. "Sixty-five years ago in the thin light of gray dawn, more than 1,000 small craft took to a rough sea on a day that will be forever a day of bravery. On that June morning the young of our nations stepped out on those beaches below and into history. As long as freedom lives their deeds will never die." — Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Rare Photo from D-Day Invasion
Rare Photo from D-Day Invasion Reuters
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