GROVEPORT, Ohio — Thursday marks 80 years since 160,000 Allied forces landed in Normandy for the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France. One of those soldiers was Johnstown native Don Jakeway.
Jakeway was a paratrooper during the Normandy invasion. He was just 19 years old when he jumped out of a plane, marking the beginning of the mission.
He passed away when he was 96, but his friend Warren Motts is sharing his legacy.
“He was an absolutely, unbelievably humble person. He kept saying if he survived this, he would do everything he could do to help people,” said Motts, who is the founder of Motts Military Museum in Groveport.
“These young kids came down in the dark not knowing what was below them. They were shooting at them when the planes went over. The German artillery was trying to shoot the planes down,” Motts said.
Jakeway was injured in Normandy when he was shot in the face by a German sniper. He received two Purple Hearts for his service.
“They strapped him into a cot in the ambulance, and as they were going back to the station the ambulance went off the road and down into a ditch into the river and killed everybody in the ambulance but him,” Motts said. "A lot of his friends died and like I said he could not understand why he didn't die, it bothered him that he lived, and those other guys died."
In 2014, Jakeway and Motts visited the Normandy beaches.
“We're going through the fields and he's pointing out the places where things happened," Motts said.
Motts is hoping Jakeway's legacy will live on.
“We are in this room with all his family, and he looked at me and he said, 'You know these people wouldn't be here if I hadn’t made it and it gives me chills even talking about it'."
A total of 4,414 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself, including 2,501 Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.