As the Last Post ended at the British Normandy Memorial, all was silent on the hill overlooking the D-Day beaches apart from the sound of birdsong.
The few remaining Normandy veterans able to stand for the minute’s silence struggled to their feet to remember the time 80 years ago when the air was filled with terror and death and their friends fell around them.
The UK national commemorative event at the memorial in Ver-sur-Mer, overlooking Gold beach, featured tears and standing ovations, as well as the King, the prime minister and the French president offering their admiration and gratitude to all those who died and fought for the liberation of Europe.
More than 1,000 guests were seated amidst the limestone pillars that bear the names of the 22,442 people killed under British command on D-Day and at the Battle of Normandy.
Serena Fass, 86, sat among them to remember her father, Lieutenant Colonel John Ernest Fass, of the Welsh Guards 1st Battalion, who was killed in his trench on June 30, 1944, only hours after receiving a telegram telling him of the birth of his first son, Michael. Asked what it meant to be attending the ceremony, she said: “It means everything.”
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The 41 Normandy veterans who attended were welcomed to the memorial with a standing ovation and applause as they were wheeled to their positions under the shade of two marquees. Among them was Ronald Hendrey, 98, from Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, an able seaman aboard HMS Ulster on D-Day, helping to fire the guns on the beaches.
Addressing the memorial ceremony, he said: “I will never forget the captain’s words. He said, ‘You are about to go into France to begin the liberation of Europe. I want you to give 101 per cent to our efforts in the next 24 hours’. We were terrified. I have never known a ship go so quiet because everyone was thinking the same thing. ‘Is this my last day on Earth?’
“It still makes me emotional — all that loss. See, I try to forget D-Day but I can’t. When I come here, I have one purpose. It’s to think of the boys. It is so important that we share this same Earth once more in Normandy.”
Rishi Sunak told the seated veterans: “We are humbled to be with you and for what you did that day we will always be grateful.”
Standing at a podium in the middle of the memorial square, the prime minister told the guests they were here “to remember the sacrifice of the tens of thousands who didn’t make it home and we are here to honour the survivors who did”.
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“Men like Ken Cooke, who is here today,” Sunak said. “He was 18 years old, had never been on a boat before — he had never been on a beach before — yet with his regiment, the Green Howards, he landed in the first wave to storm Gold beach.”
The veterans may say they are not heroes and only did their duty, Sunak continued, but “that humility is so much a part of why they are truly the best of us.”
“Your actions freed a continent and built a better world,” Sunak told them. “You risked everything and we owe you everything.”
During the ceremony, music was provided by the Band of the Royal Air Force Regiment, while songs reflecting the fallen’s sacrifice were performed by Tom Jones and Johnny Flynn.
Arthur Oborne, 100, was given a standing ovation after being supported to stand at the podium to pay a tearful tribute to a friend who saved his life on the battlefield before being killed the next day.
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Oborne, who landed at Gold beach on June 12, 1944, as a private in the 49th division of the Duke of Wellington regiment, 6th Battalion, recalled being shot in the lung by a sniper and being saved by his friend “Gummy” Gummerson, who strapped him up and got him back to a field hospital. Gummerson was killed alongside 26 others from his unit in an ambush the next day.
“I wish I could tell him that I have never taken his sacrifice for granted and will always remember him and our friends,” Oborne, from Portishead, Somerset, told the crowd. “So Gummy, thank you my old friend.”
The crowd rose to their feet and gave Oborne a rousing round of applause as people wiped away tears. Those present also heard the words of a French civilian who was a teenage girl on D-Day and who still lives in Normandy.
“My family joined the resistance [after the fall of France] and my brother Jean-Pierre was arrested for his efforts and later died in a concentration camp,” she said in an address read out to the memorial service. “When I think of the Allied soldiers, the feeling I reckon is like experiencing a second birth. They saved me from a world of war and terror and gifted me a future filled with hope.”
French schoolchildren dressed in white T-shirts then handed each veteran a white rose.
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King Charles, speaking in English and French, told the ceremony the lesson of the Second World War was that “free nations must stand together to oppose tyranny”.
“As the years have passed, the veterans of the Normandy campaign become ever fewer in number,” Charles said. “Our ability to learn from their stories first-hand diminishes but our obligation to remember them and what they stood for and achieved for us all can never diminish. That is why I am so proud that we have a permanent national memorial in Normandy.”
The King recalled how the idea for a national memorial came from the Normandy veteran George Batts, who passed away in 2022 aged 97. “He lived to see it built and explained on the day it was opened why it means so much. ‘We left a lot of mates behind and now I know they will never be forgotten’,” Charles said. He finished his address by telling the crowd: “Our gratitude is unfailing and our admiration eternal.”
The King and President Macron laid wreaths at the memorial, standing shoulder to shoulder as the national anthems were performed. The Red Arrows screamed overhead, trailing red, white and blue smoke, as the British national anthem came to a close.
At the end of the event, Macron awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest accolade, to a British woman who had helped map the D-Day beaches. Christian Lamb, now 103, worked alone in a tiny office in London to make sure British troops were in exactly the right place when they scrambled on to Normandy’s beaches under enemy fire during the D-Day landings.
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As a young Women’s Royal Naval Service officer, she painstakingly created detailed maps to show those fighting every railway, road, church, castle and feature that could be visible and from every angle.
Presenting the honour, Macron said: “You were one of those heroes in the shadows … as you say, you were just one piece of the jigsaw, but the success relied on the entire jigsaw. You were not on the beaches but you guided each step they took.”
Addressing all the veterans, Macron said: “France will never forget the British troops who landed on D-Day and all their brothers in arms. We are honoured by the ties of remembrance, friendship and loyalty that you have forged between our two countries. Let me thank you all for your bravery.”
Leaders draw a line to Russian breach of peace in Europe
The first time that Irving Locker and his fellow US veterans arrived in Normandy, it was amid the blood and death that accompanied the liberation of France (writes Adam Sage from Omaha Beach).
On Thursday Locker, from New Jersey, returned under a gentle blue sky to receive a standing ovation from a 4,500-strong French crowd and handshakes from more than two dozen world leaders at an international ceremony at Omaha Beach to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
There was the Prince of Wales, whose arrival drew admiring gasps from the French people who had turned out to honour the occasion.
There was President Biden, President Macron and Olaf Scholz, too, who were all greeted with applause, albeit not with the same level of enthusiasm as there was for the prince or the veterans.
Then there was President Zelensky of Ukraine, whose presence in Normandy offered a reminder that the European peace which cost so many lives in 1944 is cracking once again. Zelensky grasped the hands of the Americans who had landed at Omaha Beach in 1944 as they filed past him, many in wheelchairs.
Macron paid tribute to them in his speech: “Eighty years ago, they defied everything to liberate our nation … We are all children of the liberation.”
Macron had initially thought of inviting Russian representatives to the ceremony before changing tack at the last moment.
Instead, he used his speech to warn of the threat to peace in Europe that has followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Faced with the return of war in our continent and the calling into question of everything for which [the Allied troops] fought, let’s be worth of all those who landed here,” he said.
His words echoed those of Biden: “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. To do that would mean forgetting what happened on these hallowed beaches. We will not bow down.”
The French presidency had said last week that Rishi Sunak would be present at the Omaha Beach ceremony, too. In the event he was replaced by Grant Schapps, the defence secretary, who went almost unnoticed amid the heads of state and government.
Sunak’s absence offered an opening to Sir Keir Starmer, who attended the ceremony and had a chance to play the part of prime minister in waiting.
The undoubted stars of the show, however, were the veterans.
Eleven of them received the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest decoration, from Macron before the ceremony, three more afterwards.
Locker, now 99, recalled his feelings on June 6, 1944, in interviews. As he jumped into the water and headed for Utah Beach, he said, he kept telling himself, “Just say alive.”
