KALAMAZOO, MI – Eric Bauchet used the word "amazing" at least five times in a seven-minute phone call.

Phoning from Normandy, France, Bauchet's sincere emotion seeped through the speaker.

On the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the Stevensville Lakeshore High School marching band performed in a parade through Omaha Beach, the site of one of the most infamous battles in American history.

"It was an amazing experience," said Bauchet, chairman of the multi-year project that sent the Lancers overseas.

The band began playing at the Les Braves monument on the beach around 9:30 a.m. local time, Bauchet said. Joined by World War II vehicles, some of which were manufactured by Michigan-based companies, the Lancer band marched through Omaha Beach and surrounding streets.

After the performance, the band went down to the beach for an emotional, solemn moment of remembrance and observation.

"Every kid, every band director, every parent that was there, everybody was crying," said Bauchet, who has two children in the marching band. "It was such a strong emotional moment."

Students collected sand from the beach to send back to high schools in Michigan. On Thursday, the Lancers made their first of two cemetery visits where they sprinkled sand from across Michigan on the graves of American soldiers.

Later on Friday, the band held another concert in front of the National Guard Memorial on Omaha Beach. They then traveled to the first French town liberated by Allied troops in World War II, Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where crowds were so thick they had to condense their formation from six members in a row to three.

At one point, the band saw President Barack Obama land at a nearby cemetery to deliver his D-Day anniversary speech.

"It was one experience that the kids are not ready to forget," Bauchet said. "It will be with them for the rest of their life."