'A sobering experience'
<p>Austin Bishop, of Dalton Gardens, checks out Pointe du Hoc recently on the coast of Normandy in northern France. The German army fortified the area with concrete casements and gun pits. On D-Day, the U.S. Army captured Pointe du Hoc after scaling the cliffs.</p>
Austin Bishop returned from Normandy with a new appreciation for the sacrifices made on D-Day.
Bishop, of Dalton Gardens, recently returned from a week-long trip of shooting video for the nonprofit Greatest Generations Foundation for today's 70th anniversary of the Allied invasion during World War II.
"I don't cry much, but I did going into the cemetery on Omaha Beach," said Bishop, who owns Sure Shot Video. "I learned that I knew nothing about World War II. It was a sobering experience."
Bishop said touring the memorials and cemeteries puts life into perspective.
"It's difficult to complain about things after you learn about what went on (in Normandy)," he said.
Bishop said he was familiar with several of the sites from playing war video games.
"But I wasn't familiar about what took place there and the severity of what happened on that day," he said. "I don't remember learning about it in school, just from what I knew from the video games."
The Normandy landings on June 6, 1944 - termed D-Day - led to the restoration of the French Republic and an Allied victory in World War II. Allied casualties on D-Day were at least 12,000.