The names of 22,442 soldiers under British command who died on D-day and the subsequent Battle of Normandy were engraved in stone as a permanent reminder of their sacrifice as a new British Normandy memorial was unveiled on Sunday, reports The Guardian.
The ceremony on a hill at Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach, where thousands of British and allied soldiers swarmed ashore on the morning of June 6th 1944, heard a video message from the Prince of Wales, the patron of the Normandy Trust, who said he regretted that Covid had made it impossible for him to be present in France.
He said this was not a reflection of the “enormous regard and admiration in which we hold our veterans” or that it “diminished our gratitude for the men and women whose names are now engraved in stone over Gold Beach”.
The British and French flags flying over the memorial would be “a reminder of the enduring and important ties between our two countries,” Prince Charles said.
Today, 77 years on, the surviving veterans of D-day were defeated in their efforts to return to France, not by war or even growing old unlike their fallen comrades, but by coronavirus.
For a second year, the former service personnel who took part in the largest sea invasion in history that marked the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany, were absent even as their numbers dwindle.
Three veterans living in France were present: Briton David Mylchreest, 97, formerly a 2nd lieutenant with the 43rd Wessex Division, who lives in Normandy and who landed at Arromanches six days after D-day.
“It’s a great privilege to be here today. We have wonderful cemeteries in the area and this is a final permanent reminder. It’s a reminder of the 22,000-plus young men who were gone so we could live the sort of lives we have now,” Mylchreest said.
Also present were American Charles Norman Shay, 96, from Connecticut, decorated for his valour in the second world war and the Korean war, who came ashore on Omaha Beach aged 17. and Léon Gaultier, 97, a Breton living in Normandy, who landed on Sword Beach on D-day as one of a first wave of French commandos to storm the beachfront and who is the last surviving member of the Kieffer commando of the Free French navy.
The ceremony was attended by the French armies minister, Florence Parly, who quoted Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches …” speech.
“Winston Churchill became the symbol of a people who would never surrender” Parly said. “We know what we owe the soldiers of liberty. Today we pay homage to the British soldiers. France will never forget. France is for ever grateful.”