June 6th 2014

Today is the 70th Anniversary of D Day, June 6th 1944. The largest ever seaborne invasion in history.

I have spent the morning listening to the recollections of the soldiers and sailors with a tear in my eye. Even though I was born 20 years after D Day, my parents who were teenagers in 1944 made me very interested in the history of World War 2 from an early age. In my safe, pampered life I can not imagine how it felt for my mother to be evacuated at the age of 8 to the Lake District to escape the bombs. Nor how my father as a child felt spending night after night in an air raid shelter, not knowing if they would survive the night as the drone of planes overhead heralded another bombing of the River Tyne shipyards. My maternal grandfather was an arctic convoy Merchant Navy Captain working to the Royal Navy and my paternal grandfather being Foreman electrician at Redheads Shipyards in South Shields was exempt from fighting but regularly slept and worked 7 days a week 24 hours a day there to ensure the ships were repaired and back out to sea. I remember him recalling how a Royal Navy ship (I forget the name) came in to be repaired after being bombed and burnt out, only to discover it was the ship his brother-in-law had been killed on. Again, imagining how he felt knowing that doesn't come easy.

The two generations that fought in World War 1 and World War 2 really were a breed apart. Tough, stoical, no nonsense people who just stood their ground and fought for their very existence. Only now are many of them talking about their experiences. For the lucky ones who survived they just locked the horror away and began life again after the war. I do not think we will see their likes again.

That invasion is being celebrated, if that is the right word, as the last major commemoration of this event by living veterans at Arromanches beach and elsewhere. As one commentator of the events today summed up very well while talking to a veteran " I know of teenagers today who have temper tantrums if their broadband connection fails, at 19 you ran down a landing craft ramp into a hail of bullets" The veteran replied " I ran without thinking, my best friend died instantly we hit the beach and my other friend was shot directly infront of me, he probably died saving me from that bullet - my only aim was to run as fast as I could, I had no other thought, other than to live" 




copyright AP via BBC

  And that comment above anything else I've heard today brings about a poignant memory for me which sums up why we should remember these now elderly men. The image above is of an American veteran taken at the ceremony at Aramanches this morning, I don't know his name. Around 15 years ago I took my parents over to the Normandy beaches as my father in particular wanted to visit somewhere as a child he had heard so much about. I remember parking the car near Gold (Arromanches) beach and walking onto the wonderful sandy beach, still littered with remnants of the Mulberry Harbours. My father walked off and stood for 20 minutes by himself by the waters edge looking in the direction of Britain. I didn't join him but watched him from one of the Mulberry wrecks, wondering what was he thinking? As I stood there four men in their 70's came up to me and asked me if I could take their photograph together next to the Mulberry wreck. I did and then we struck up a conversation. They were American and all had been on the beach on day 1 of D Day. Like the veteran above, I never got to know their names but they told me all about their experiences and none of them had been back to this beach since June 1944. I vividly remember one of the group explaining to me in a most matter of fact way, how he ran off the ramp of the landing craft and sinking into the soft sand on the beach, his adrenaline kicked in and he sprinted towards the cliffs for protection. He only stopped running when he found shelter half way up the cliff and then as his company joined him they fought their way up to the top and over. It took many hours under heavy gunfire to cross the beach and scale the cliff.

Poignantly he then added "I've come back today as I never saw this beach at the time" I was a bit unsure what he meant and so he added " the landing craft hit the beach and I ran, just ran, I didn't know where I was, or what I was running to, it was blind terror driving me forwards as I ran, I was focused on a concrete wall in front of me that was all.... I had no idea what was happening around, behind or infront of me although the noise was so deafening if felt like it was silent, a strange feeling.... so coming back today is the first time I've been able to see the beach I ran over......it's a very long way"

There was a pause as a tear filled his eye and he looked away from me and out to sea. Without looking at me he added with a now broken voice, "so many friends died here I can still see their faces......."

After a while he composed himself and thanked me for taking the photographs, adding "I'll not come back again, its too painful".

I watched the four men walk back towards the town. They are the only people I have ever met who were on the beaches on D Day. I met them as strangers and they left as strangers and we will never meet again. Yet in that brief 10 minutes we stood on Gold beach together there was a connection. The selfless action of complete strangers 20 years before I was born, allowed me to live as free a life as I wanted as a young man 35 years later.

And that is why today is important, Lest We Forget.