OUISTREHAM, France (AP) — The captain of the giant Royal Navy battleship called his officers together to give them a first morsel of one of World War II’s most closely guarded secrets: Prepare yourselves, he said, for “an extremely important task.”

“Speculations abound,” one of the officers wrote in his diary that day — June 2, 1944. “Some say a second front, some say we are to escort the Soviets, or doing something else around Iceland. No one is allowed ashore.”

The secret was D-Day — the June 6, 1944, invasion of Nazi-occupied France with the world’s largest-ever sea, land and air armada. It punctured Adolf Hitler’s fearsome “Atlantic Wall” defenses and sped the dictator’s downfall 11 months later.

The diary writer was Lam Ping-yu — a Chinese officer who crossed the world with two doz

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