MANCHESTER — Many decades have passed since he stood on the deck, a witness to events that would change the world, but Marcel Pinard remembers June 6, 1944, vividly.

“It was bad,” said Pinard, 83, reflecting on the blood spilled on what would come to be known as D-Day. “It ... it was bad. We lost a lot that day.”

Pinard, a lifelong resident of the Queen City, is marking today's 68th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy by recalling the battle that helped turn the tide of World Ward II in Europe. Pinard, who enlisted in the Navy on his 18th birthday, served aboard the USS Quincy, which was positioned about three miles off Omaha Beach.

“Our first big mission was D-Day,” Pinard said. “The night before the ship received a message from the task force commander, telling us that the greatest invasion in history, which we would be a part of, was under way. They called it the most vital battle of modern times...”

Pinard, the youngest of six children, followed his three older brothers into military service. Nemrod Pinard, the oldest, served as a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C. Clotaire and Laurier Pinard both served in the Army. Marcel was the only Pinard brother to take to the sea.

“I wanted to join right away, but I wasn't going in the Army,” said Pinard. “We didn't have anyone in the Navy yet, so I joined up.”

Pinard was assigned to the heavy cruiser Quincy. When D-Day arrived, he was helping to man the gun turrets on the ship, taking down German planes.

“We were hitting Cherbourg (France) hard with the 12-inch guns,” he said. “You could see flashes from German guns firing at us. Then 20 seconds later there would be a splash when one of the German shells hit near us. You had to hold your position; ships couldn't move because there were hundreds of other Allied ships offshore and thousands of barrage balloons overhead. It was unbelievable. You held your breath.”

Pinard was focused on the skies above, and didn't necessarily take in the carnage on the beach.

“We were too far offshore and couldn't see the men going ashore, but we watched scores of landing craft go by us filled with soldiers headed for Omaha Beach,” said Pinard. “I watched them go by from the bridge. If you were below deck, you couldn't see anything.”

After three days off the beaches of Normandy, Pinard and the Quincy headed south toward Marseilles and the invasion of southern France.

Once V-E Day came to pass, the Quincy was the vessel selected to take President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference, where he met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to decide the post-World War II fate of Europe.

“We were in Boston, and then we were sent down the coast,” said Pinard. “We knew the President was coming aboard when we headed to Newport News, Va., to have an elevator installed on the Quincy, so he could reach the admiral's cabin on the second floor.”

The ship then headed to the Middle East, and Pinard said Churchill, King Farouk of Egypt, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia all came aboard the Quincy to meet Roosevelt.

“King Saud slaughtered about 12 sheep aboard the ship,” Pinard said. “He hung their carcasses to bleed out from ropes attached to the destroyer's main stern guns. He pitched a tent on deck and was in the process of building a fire on the bow of the destroyer to roast the lamb.”

The purpose of the conference with the Middle East leaders was to allow Roosevelt to broker a deal allowing the U.S to tap into Saudi Arabia's oil reserves.

After transporting FDR back to Newport News, Pinard and the Quincy headed for the war in the Pacific and Okinawa. It proved to be the biggest battle in the Pacific during World War II, but was nearly over when they arrived. The Quincy took part in the shelling of Ryukyu and the iron plant at Kamaishi, Japan, before getting the word to exit the area with the rest of Adm. Bull Halsey's fleet.

“President Truman had authorized the atomic bomb to be dropped,” he said. “It wasn't long afterward we sailed into Tokyo Bay for the surrender.”

Pinard said the ship was anchored just off the battleship USS Missouri while the surrender ceremony took place.

Though nearly seven decades have passed, Pinard said he feels today's generation understands the significance of the events of D-Day.

“I think they do,” said Pinard. “I think they respect what we did there.”