Three helicopters dropped one million red rose petals over the Statue of Liberty on Friday in New York City in honor of D-Day's 70th anniversary.
The nonprofit group The French Will Never Forget spent about $100,000 in preparation for the show and froze the 1,200 pounds of petals so they would stay fresh. After the petals fluttered to the ground, 13 World War II veterans were honored with a 21-gun salute on Liberty Island. Two 60 x 30-foot flags -- one American, one French -- were also unfurled at the statue's feet.
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The French government gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States as a gift. It arrived in New York in 1885 aboard a French ship.
"We want to show appreciation,” Rod Kukurudz, a member of The French Will Never Forget, told the New York Post. “If it weren’t for the sacrifices, heroism and courage of all American solders killed in Normandy, who knows where France, or the world, would be now.”
On June 6, 1944, military forces from the U.S., United Kingdom and other Allied nations stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied Normandy, France, in the largest sea invasion in history. The battle, though deemed necessary for defeating Hitler's military, was brutal. At least 4,413 Allied soldiers died that day.
President Barack Obama is in France on Friday, where he will meet with French President François Hollande at a ceremony at the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, the final resting spot of 9,387 U.S. soldiers.