Portsmouth, England/Merville, France
Reuters
Britain and France paid tribute on Wednesday to those who took part in D-Day, promising to “always remember” the sacrifices made by the Allied soldiers who invaded France by sea and air to drive out the forces of Nazi Germany.
With guests waving British flags, appearances from veterans, recollections and readings – and some tears in Queen Camilla’s eyes – the British ceremony took place in Portsmouth, the main departure point for the 5,000 ships that headed to Normandy for the on 6th June, 1944, operation.
Pictures are shown on a screen during a D-Day national commemoration event in Portsmouth, Britain, on 5th June, 2024. PICTURE: Kin Cheung/Pool via Reuters
“Today we come together to honour those nearly 160,000 British, Commonwealth and Allied troops who, on 5th June 1944, assembled here and along these shores to embark on the mission which would strike that blow for freedom and be recorded as the greatest amphibious operation in history,” King Charles III said.
Britain’s King Charles III attends a D-Day national commemoration event in Portsmouth, Britain, on 5th June, 2024. PICTURE: Leon Neal/Pool via Reuters
“Let us, once again, commit ourselves always to remember, cherish and honour those who served that day and to live up to the freedom they died for.”
About 4,400 Allied troops died on D-Day.
“War is a nonsense, really. But in this case, it was necessary,” said Royal Navy veteran gunner Bob Gravells, who ferried troops to the Normandy beaches.
“I’m proud that I played a very small part in freeing Europe. A very small part,” Gravells, 99, told Reuters in Normandy.
The main ceremonies will take place in France on Thursday with world leaders and royalty including US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Britain’s King and Queen.
With war raging in Ukraine, on Europe’s borders, this year’s commemoration will carry special resonance.
Veterans gathering in Normandy
British and US veterans were already assembling on Wednesday near Benouville Bridge, codenamed Pegasus Bridge during D-Day. Thousands of tourists also gathered along the D-Day beaches and visited World War II cemeteries. Collectors drove army jeeps, and US, Canadian, British and French flags adorned buildings.
Nearby in Merville, where the British 9th airborne parachute regiment launched an assault to take a German battery to facilitate the arrival of troops from Sword beach, hundreds of soldiers and tourists took part in a solemn ceremony.
According to officials, only one man from that regiment is still alive and is now too frail to travel.
The RAF Red Arrows perform a fly-past during a D-Day national commemoration event in Portsmouth, Britain, on 5th June, 2024. PICTURE: Kin Cheung/Pool via Reuters
Local people determined to keep alive the memory of the 6th June landings dressed in uniforms from the period to represent the various units that took part in the assault.
“These men came here to make the world a better, more peaceful place,” said Paul Hill, president of 9th batttalion regiment association.
“Sadly after 80 years we have lost our veteran friends one by one,” he said. “Their stories are still with us and must be passed on.”
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Macron paid tribute on Wednesday to French resistance fighters in Brittany and to civilian victims of Allied bombardments carried out as part of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy.
“Eighty years later, the Nation must recognise with clarity and strength the civilian victims of Allied bombings, in Normandy, and elsewhere on our soil. We must bring this memory into full light,” Macron said in Saint-Lo, a city largely destroyed by Allied bombings.
“Without concealing anything, but without confusing anything. Because the inhabitants of Saint-Lo never mixed hatred or resentment with their sorrow,” he said.
Saint-Lo was targeted by Allied bombings because it was a key transport hub, and they wanted to prevent Germany from being able to use it to push back the Allied troops.
“Saint-Lo [is] a martyr city, sacrificed to free France,” Macron said.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Achille Muller, 98, last survivor of the Free French Forces, attend a ceremony to pay homage to the Saint Marcel maquis, a force of French Resistance fighters during World War II and the French SAS (Special Air Service) paratroopers, in Plumelec, Brittany, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy, France, on 5th June, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Benoit Tessier/Pool
Eighty-seven year-old Michel Finck, who is from Saint-Lo, was among those who had come to listen to Macron.
Speaking to Reuters ahead of the speech, he cried as he recalled D-Day.
“Our house was destroyed. Families in our street were decimated. The family transport business was also destroyed, and we left for Cherbourg [a town over 80 kilometres away],” Finck said.
He left on foot with his brother. At one point, German soldiers helped them cross a bridge.
“There were planes, bombs…this is not something you forget easily,” he told Reuters, shedding more tears. The family survived, and they later returned to live in Saint-Lo.
Trauma
The city of 12,000 people at the time was 90 per cent destroyed. Only two streets were left undamaged.
“This trauma turned our city into the ‘capital of the ruins’, as playwright Samuel Beckett wrote,” the city’s mayor, Emmanuelle Lejeune, told Reuters.
Colette Poirier, four at the time, was from nearby Belval. She recalls that, with her family, in the early hours of June 6th, they tried to sleep outdoors, to try and hide from all the planes flying over.
She also has happier memories.
“In the following days we saw jeeps with Black soldiers, it was the first time I saw Black men. And the chewing gums (they handed out)! Since we hadn’t had much sugar during the war we were very keen, but we had no idea how to eat them.”
Poirier said German soldiers occupied the family farm, and as a consequence she spoke German as a kid. She was amazed, she said, at the speed of reconciliation between France and Germany at the time.
Fick and Poirier were both waiting for Macron to give a speech in tribute to Saint-Lo’s civilian victims of D-Day.
– With reporting by MICHAEL HOLDEN in London, UK
