British memorial opens in France to remember D-Day heroes

A MEMORIAL was unveiled in northern France on Sunday (6) in the memory of servicemen and women, including from the Commonwealth, who died under British command on D-Day in the summer of 1944 and subsequent battles that followed.

"It is truly a memorial fit for heroes,”  British ambassador to France Ed Llewellyn told guests at the memorial, adding that he is looking forward to visiting it again, "not as an ambassador, but as the father of three young Franco-British children.”

Opened on the 77th anniversary of Normandy landings, the British Normandy Memorial is situated on a hillside in the Normandy village of Ver-sur-Mer and overlooks Gold Beach, one of three beaches where British forces landed on the morning of June 6, 1944, to begin the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi occupation.

The memorial, built at a cost of £33 million met by both the UK government and private donors, is the first Normandy site commemorating some 22,442 servicemen who fell under British command.

It consists of a series of 160 standing white stones where the names of the soldiers are inscribed in chronological order; there is also a French memorial dedicated to the estimated 20,000 French civilians who died in Normandy as a result of bombing and fighting.

Known as the largest sea assault in history, the allied invasion of Normandy saw more than 80,000 Commonwealth personnel (including soldiers from then undivided India fighting under the British army) storming five Normandy beaches. About 4,300 were killed, wounded or went missing in action on D-day.

Britain's Prince Charles remotely on-screen attends the official opening ceremony of the British Normandy Memorial on the 77th anniversary of D-Day on June 06, 2021 in Ver-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. (Photo by Stephane Mahe-Pool/Getty Images)

Since Covid-19 restrictions prevented British survivors from travelling to France for the event, some 100 veterans gathered at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire to watch the ceremony via video link.

Prince Charles, who is also a patron of the Normandy Memorial Trust, described the memorial as "long overdue.”

"It has been for many years a concern to me that the memory of these remarkable individuals should be preserved for generations to come as an example of personal courage and sacrifice," he told veterans and their families gathered in Staffordshire in a broadcasted video message.

Until now, the main site of pilgrimage for paying respects to those who died under British command has been the cemetery in the nearby town of Bayeux that used to see about one million visitors annually before the pandemic struck.