Seventy-five years after the world’s largest amphibious assault, just hundreds of veterans remain out of a 287,000-man flotilla, most of whom are marking their last major anniversary of D-Day.

George Westlake (Photo courtesy Vicki Tiemeyer)

The precise number is unknown, but as their ranks thin, the National World War II Museum estimates fewer than 1,000 men who took part in the June 6, 1944 invasion are still living. Most are in their late 90s or early 100s. They are among the last survivors of what Tom Brokaw termed "the greatest generation."

George Westlake, 100, is one of them. He boarded a ship in England the night of June 5 before reaching of the French coast in the wee hours of June 6.

“It was a very noisy, wild day with lots of wounded coming back to the ships and lots of bodies in the water,” Westlake, then a 25-year-old United States Army captain, told the Washington Examiner.

Westlake’s 3rd Tank Destroyer Group was unable to land on the short Omaha Beach — the most fiercely contested of five landing beaches, and where most of 2,500 Americans died — because of barriers impeding wheeled artillery and tanks.

“There was nothing we could do about it. We were sitting ducks, you might say, and we just prayed you wouldn’t get hit. The Germans were just firing away willy-nilly,” he said.

George Westlake rose to become a colonel in the U.S. Cavalry. (Photo courtesy Vicki Tiemeyer)

The tank group sat about 500-1000 yards from the beach on a barge. Some infantry troops storming the beach drowned as they stepped into waves with 100 pounds of gear. When the tanks were finally able to come ashore, some sank in the sand.

“There was no plan as to what we were going to do,” Westlake said, pausing to change a hearing aid battery halfway through an hour-long interview. “The plan was to get the boats onto the sand. That was the only plan we got.”

When he hit the beach, Westlake, who rose to become a colonel in the U.S. Cavalry, recalls lots of trash but few bodies, which had been cleared off despite the continued threat of German mortar fire. The artillery and tanks helped change the equation of the invasion force, giving firepower to the Allies’ beachheads.

A few days later, on June 11, 18-year-old Clarence Dotson disembarked, bodies still floating offshore.

"Sitting in the [water] was frightening because we were helpless. We were bombed and shelled,” Dotson said. "I realized life expectancy was not very much. A lot of my comrades were killed."

Now 93, Dotson said, "I want people to know about the sacrifices young people did to make the world free of Nazism."

Such remembrance was on display in England and Washington on Wednesday morning. As President Trump and Queen Elizabeth II participated in a Portsmouth ceremony marking the armada’s departure from the southern England, author Alex Kershaw recounted, during a memorial event, stories from The First Wave, a book in which he profiles various young participants of the invasion.

But underscoring the turning of a historical chapter, no D-Day veterans were able to attend an event near the White House at the ritzy Army and Navy Club, due to declining health.

And on Wednesday afternoon, Washington’s World War II memorial was bereft of any veterans from the war. International tourists and children milled about in the muggy weather. The fountain-filled venue has been a gathering place for the fewer than 400,000 WWII vets believed to be alive — three-fourths of whom are projected to die before the next five-year anniversary.

One attendee of Kershaw’s event, 96-year-old Eli Linden, joined the Normandy invasion a few weeks after it began and was wounded in the early-July Battle of the Hedgerows.

“I knew D-Day had started because I was in my tent [in England] with a lot of other people, and we could, at like 1:00 in the morning, hear planes going over,” Linden told the Washington Examiner.

When Linden, then 20, joined the fray, he was struck in the back by shrapnel a short distance inland, and sent back to England to recuperate. When he returned to the front line, he was captured near the German border.

Linden, who is Jewish, was wearing a dog tag stamped “H” for “Hebrew,” so he dug a hole and buried it before being shoved into a Nazi tank. His religion didn’t come up at a POW camp before being liberated by Soviet troops.

Westlake, like Clarence Dotson, went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge and through the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. (Photo courtesy Vicki Tiemeyer)

Westlake and Dotson, on the other hand, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and through the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.

As Allies advanced, Westlake recalled admiring a pair of abandoned German military boots in the field. He picked them up, hoping to keep the sleek pair, but found they were heavier than anticipated — filled with rotting feet.

As his generation fades into history, Westlake said he wants younger generations to reflect on possible lessons.

“We were hopelessly unprepared. We turned a blind eye to what other people were doing," he said, adding: "Whatever happened in the past is a pretty good indication of what's going to happen in the future. I say, just be alert."

Retired Col. George Westlake watches as his great-grandson, Roman Rehn, center right, 4, and great-great grandson, Jaden George, right, 10, blow out the birthday candles at the Lewis Army Museum Feb. 21. ( Bud McKay/Joint Base Lewis-McChord Garrison Public Affairs)

Julio Rosas contributed to this report.