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Organizers of the annual Joint Services Open House at Andrews Air Force Base describe the event as a chance to show the public what the armed forces are about. But this year's show falls within a month of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, and veterans who survived the battle say that makes it special.

The three-day show, which begins Friday, will include ceremonies to honor veterans who fought in D-Day — the bloody invasion on June 6, 1944, that led to tens of thousands of casualties and established an Allied toehold in France — according to Robert Yarborough, the event's director.

Toward the beginning of each day's show, members of one group, E-Team Skydiving, will jump from a plane carrying the flags of every Allied nation that took part in the invasion. The last jumper will hold a 140-pound American flag the size of an NBA basketball court, Yarborough said.

"I can't wait to get there, to tell you the truth," said William Doyle, 94, who was in the U.S. infantry on D-Day. "It makes me feel good that people are recognizing what the soldiers did… I'm anxious to see all of it, every bit of it."

Doyle lives at Charlestown, a retirement community in Catonsville. He plans on going to the show with three other D-Day veterans who also live at Charlestown, he said.

The show will also include a skywriting plane, the Army's Golden Knights precision parachute team, performances by the Army's 82nd Airborne, the Air Force's Thunderbirds and private pilots, as well as displays of military hardware from every branch of the U.S. Armed Forces.

The events on Friday, which are restricted to U.S. Department of Defense card-holders, retirees and invited school groups, begin at 10 a.m. The public is invited to shows that start at 9:45 a.m. Saturday and 9:35 a.m. Sunday. A detailed schedule is available on the JSOH Web site, www.jsoh.org.

Dominique Launay, the president of Texas-based Liberty Jump Team, will take part in the D-Day commemorations, which start at the beginning of each day's events. His 11-member team will wear World War II-era uniforms and jump from a vintage C-47.

For Launay, a retired French paratrooper, the event is personal. He was 11 when he met his first D-Day veteran in 1978 — more than 30 years after Allied forces drove the Nazis from his country — and he said he saw him "like people see a movie star, like John Wayne."

"You need to remember what these guys did," he said.

The event is also personal because Launay plans to wear on the back of his uniform a photo of his friend, an American service member who died in Iraq in 2006. Launay — whose team includes military personnel from America and other countries as well as civilians — said the real point of the show is to remind the public of what veterans did in his country.

"We do it for the public, so they know what happened 65 years ago," he said.

Frederick King, 91, also lives at Charlestown. The retired B-26 pilot said he still has vivid memories of zigzagging above France to avoid German fire.

"You never saw so many airplanes in the sky," King said. "The thing I really remember is all the ships in the water, and all the planes in the air, and the burning B-24s."

King said he is looking forward to the show, which he said will be a chance to remember service members who did not survive the invasion. He said it will also be a chance to reminisce with surviving veterans—a population that he said is growing smaller each year.

"[It will be nice] just to be with my buddies there," he said. "It's sort of a tribute to the people we knew who have passed away, and who died during the war."

If You Go

Joint Services Open House

When: Events are scheduled to run 9:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday; 9:35 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday; Gates open at 8 a.m. each day.

Where: Parking at FedEx Field in Landover with shuttles provided to Andrews Air Force Base

Admission: Free

Information: www.jsoh.org

E-mail Greg Holzheimer at gholzheimer@gazette.net.