Army Staff Sgt. William Owens was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross at a ceremony for extraordinary heroism displayed during the Allied invasion of Normandy more than eight decades ago.

From the Stars and Stripes archives: A lone soldier looks out through the haze into Cambodia, on a rare quiet morning in South Vietnam, Mar. 11, 1968.

U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa led a naval history symposium and a NAVEUR-AF band concert, featuring a newly commissioned composition memorializing this year’s D-Day observance.

Japan’s Emperor Naruhito and his family prayed on Wednesday in Okinawa for all the war dead in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II that was fought on the southern Japanese island 80 years ago.

Soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division were part of a convoy of vintage World War II vehicles weaving through back roads near Carentan, France, where American paratroopers fought just days after the D-Day landings.

From the Stars and Stripes archives: Third-graders peek at their report cards on the last day of school at the Mannheim Elementary School, their faces betraying they passed the year with flying colors, in Mannheim, Germany, June 8, 1964.

From the Stars and Stripes archives: An Iraqi laborer mixes cement while working on what will become an Iraqi Special Forces barracks near Baghdad, July 11, 2005.

From the Stars and Stripes archives: Soldiers move through a village north of Chu Lai in Vietnam, 1968.

From the Stars and Stripes archives: Infantry troops taking part in the Carbide Ice exercise roll through the village of Koenigstein in the Vilseck-Grafenwoehr area in Germany, Feb. 3, 1969.

The USS Enterprise, now set to be dismantled in a contract worth half a billion dollars, was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier when it was commissioned in 1961. It was the only vessel of its class to be built, and 1,123 feet, was the longest ship to ever serve in the U.S. Navy.