It was not the profound silence of the moment of reflection, broken only by gentle birdsong, or even the spectacular sweeping flypast from the Red Arrows that left deep red, blue and white trails hanging in the almost cloudless sky, that most stirred the thousand people honouring the events of 80 years ago among the brilliant white French Massangis stone of the British Normandy memorial.
It was instead the words of Arthur Oborne, 100, which brought people to their feet in a spontaneous show of gratitude and sorrow over the burdens borne and lives prematurely ended by what King Charles had described as “the vast allied effort” launched on 6 June 1944.
Standing at the centre of the memorial site, opened in 2021 near the village of Ver-sur-Mer and overlooking Gold beach, Oborne, working hard to keep his voice strong and clear, recalled being shot in the lung by a sniper.
He had only been saved by his friend “Gummy” Gummerson, who strapped him up and got him back to a field hospital. “Gummy” was killed the next day along with 26 others in the 49th division of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, 6th Battalion.
“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 king and Queen Camilla were among those who rose to their feet as others dabbed the tears from their eyes. Oborne was one of fewer than three dozen British veterans of D-day able to travel to Normandy, which is at the centre of the commemorations.
The day had started with Pipe Major Trevor Macey-Lillie playing the lament Highland Laddie as he came ashore at Gold beach in Arromanches at 7.25am, the exact moment of the beach invasion in 1944.
British paratroopers recreated an airdrop behind German defences, although they were rather incongruously required to show their passports to French customs as a consequence of Brexit.
The main event was in Ver-sur-Mer, where the Normandy memorial has recorded the names of the 22,442 servicemen and women under British command who lost their lives on D-day and during the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944.
The ceremony, blessed with sunny weather quite unlike that of eight decades ago, when the rough seas added further peril, started with applause, as more than 30 veterans, some in wheelchairs, were shown to their seats in front of the dignitaries. Rishi Sunak was the first to speak.
“Eighty years ago, the weather broke and the greatest invasion force in history left the shores of Britain to liberate Europe,” the British prime minister said. “We are here today to remember the sacrifice of the tens of thousands who did not make it home. And we are here to honour the service of those who did.”
The first in the audience to be name-checked was Ken Cooke, 98, who had never seen a ship before he embarked on the one that took him to Normandy. Then there was Stan Ford, just 19 at the time, who was manning a gun turret on HMS Fratton when a torpedo struck, blowing him into the water. The ship sank in four minutes. Thirty-one of his shipmates were lost from a crew of 80.
The Royal Marine Dennis Donovan had landed on Juno beach alongside Canadian forces, Sunak recalled. “They fought their way off the beach and into bitter house-to-house fighting,” he said. “By the end of the first day, a quarter of his unit was dead or wounded.
“Ken, Stan and Dennis are here today, alongside dozens of their fellow veterans,” Sunak told the audience. “We are humbled to be with you and, for what you did that day, we will always be grateful.”
The king, switching between French and English, followed with a warning. “We recall the lesson that comes to us, again and again, across the decades: free nations must stand together to oppose tyranny,” he said.
More than 150,000 soldiers landed in Normandy on D-day but a total of just 200 veterans travelled for this week’s commemorations.
“Our ability to learn from their stories at first-hand diminishes,” the king said. “But our obligation to remember them, what they stood for and what they achieved for us all, can never diminish.”
The recollections of some of those in the audience were read out by actors. “I tried to forget D-day but I can’t,” the Royal Navy veteran Ron Hendrey, 98, said in words read by the actor Douglas Booth. “I’ve lived 80 years since that day, my friends have remained under the earth.”
Joe Mines, 99, in words read by the actor Martin Freeman, said: “I want to pay my respects to those who didn’t make it. May they rest in peace. I was 19 when I landed, but I was still a boy … and I didn’t have any idea of war and killing.”
During a moment of reflection, some of the veterans held the hands of their sons and daughters, many of whom are in their 70s.
The king concluded: “Our gratitude is unfailing and our admiration eternal.”
At the end of the event, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, who had been engaged in warm conversation with the king throughout the commemoration, awarded the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest award, to Christian Lamb, 103, who had helped map the D-day beaches.
“France will never forget the British troops who landed on D-day and all their brothers in arms,” Macron said.
