It was an ordinary day. Reading a story titled "It feels very lonely': After 80 years, just a few remain." Story began with...Dick Ramsey was on board the USS Nevada off the coast of France during the Allied invasion on D-Day, June 6, 1944 - 2 1/2 years after the battleship nearly sank in shallow water at Pearl Harbor during the infamous attack by Japanese airplanes. Painstaking repair work had placed the durable Nevada, badly damaged by bombs and a torpedo, back into action. Ten 14-inch, .45-caliber guns were used in the Allies' Operation Neptune on D-Day to bombard German artillery at Utah Beach as well as cannons and tanks miles inland, Ramsey said. The USS Nevada was the only battleship to have fought on D-Day and was present at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii during Imperial Japan's attack on December 7, 1941. Now 80 years after D-Day, Ramsey is one of only two living crew members of the Nevada. The other, Charles Sehe, 101, the only person to serve on the Nevada both during the Pearl Harbor attack and on D-Day, is in hospice care in Minnesota, he said. "It feels very lonely," said Ramsey, who at age 100 is talkative and spry. "We're down to two people." On Wednesday, one day before the 80th anniversary, Ramsey arrived at Normandy - his third trip there to celebrate D-Day - for the first of two days of ceremonies commemorating the attack agains the German armed forces. "Eisenhower had requested some battleships with big guns," Ramsey said in an interview. "So, they sent them the three oldest battleships in the Navy - the Arkansas, the Texas and the Nevada." Outside Utah Beach, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Morton Deyo ordered the Nevada to open fire, Ramsey said. "The Nevada had the honor of firing the first shot" Ramsey said. So goes the story of one Mr. Dick Ramsey, one of the few remaining veterans of the USS Nevada. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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