CBS MORNINGS co-host Tony Dokoupil anchored today’s broadcast live from Normandy, France, to mark the 80^th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Dokoupil spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and World War II veterans Onofrio “No-No” Zicari and Seymour Nussenbaum.

“History is not melodrama, it’s tragedy,” Dokoupil told viewers as he honored the service of his grandfather, Rudy Dokoupil, who was an aerial engineer aboard a B-24 bomber during World War II.

CBS News correspondents Charlie D’Agata, Ed O’Keefe and Natalie Morales also joined today’s broadcast. Morales spoke with Holocaust survivor Trudie Strobel to see how her mother’s lessons in stitching saved her life.

Highlights from Today’s Broadcast:

• “There’s a debt, a debt that we can’t possibly repay to those who came here in defense of freedom”: Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Dokoupil what the sacrifices of those troops who stormed the Normandy beaches 80 years ago on D-Day mean to him and to “international order.” WATCH HERE

• Secretary Blinken on American weaponry being used inside of Russia: “Look, we’ve adjusted, we’ve adapted all along. What the president said the other day was because Russia was massing its forces on the Ukrainian border, launching attacks against Ukraine from just over the border in a place that the Ukrainians couldn’t get to them without the authorization to use our weapons to do so, that we needed to adjust that, to adapt to that. And so, our weapon, the weapons of others, are being used in this case to go at the Russians as they’re mounting attacks on Ukraine.”

• Secretary Blinken on America’s role in the world: “If not for America, chaos, lawlessness. And ultimately, the things that we take for granted, the democracy that we take for granted, that would be in jeopardy.”

• At age 21, Onofrio “No-No” Zicari was one of more than 150,000 American and Allied troops storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Now 101, Zicari told Dokoupil what it was like to live through it, and shared what he hopes people remember: “What war brings – nothing but misery.” WATCH HERE

• The lives of as many as 30,000 American soldiers were estimated to be saved by the so-called Ghost Army during World War II, a unit tasked with driving “the Germans crazy,” surviving member Seymour Nussenbaum told Dokoupil, by building fake tanks and other false targets. WATCH HERE

• Trudie Strobel, a Holocaust survivor, worked alongside her mother, a seamstress forced to sew clothes for Hitler’s army in a labor camp. Strobel told Natalie Morales that her mother’s lessons in stitching saved her life twice and shared how her own tapestries carry her story. WATCH HERE

• Dokoupil’s grandfather Rudy was an aerial engineer aboard a B-24 bomber during World War II. He flew 33 raids over Europe, records show. On the 80^th anniversary of D-Day, Tony reflects on the long-term impacts of the violence: “History is not melodrama, it’s tragedy.” WATCH HERE

• “It’s the simplest memorials at the end of the day that I think are the most moving, and that help us make good on a promise to never forget what the sacrifice was here.” Dokoupil shares his final thoughts on the 80^th anniversary of D-Day. WATCH HERE

Please credit CBS MORNINGS in your coverage.

Download photo here: http://bit.ly/3IMB4HO

Photo credit: CBS News

***

Press Contacts

Samantha Graham, CBS News Communications

GrahamS@cbsnews.com

Anna Gibson, CBS News Communications

GibsonA@cbsnews.com