"It's kind of costly to go over there but what the hell's money on something like that?" he said.

Bud and Thelma first visited Germany, spending time at Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and the concentration camp at Dachau. They stayed in Paris before arriving at Normandy two days after the anniversary. There were still thousands of people seeing the sights.

The Mohrs toured all the war memorials near the five beaches on the famous 80-mile coast. Bud walked Omaha Beach and was within a few feet of where he sat on D-Day.

"I was glad to go back, but It was sad. It was very painful. It just made me feel like we're doing it over again," he sighed. "The place looks pretty well the same except for the cemetery."

Bud brought back some pine cones from the Allied Cemetery and some dirt from where the D-Day monument sits.

"I'm sure glad I went back, because the way they fixed that cemetery up where my comrades died, their families should be sad but proud. Maybe a lot of people wouldn't care to go back, but they should," he said.

Bud wanted to take the new Channel under the English Channel. He said he'd had enough of the rough sea when he was in the Navy and wanted a smooth ride between France and England. But the tunnel was not yet open. It seems like D-Day was just a few weeks ago, he said.

"Now that it's been 50 years, It's something else. You get to feel like you were pretty important. It's really something to still be alive to tell about it and go back and see it now," he said.

Mohr wishes now that he had stayed in the Navy and filled out a 20-year career. The food was good and he liked sleeping in a hammock.