D-Day remembered
2004-06-06 15:58
Colleville-Sur-Mer - Between endless rows of white crosses, war veterans joined the leaders of 16 countries on Sunday to honour the memory of thousands of Allied troops who stormed the beaches of northwest France 60 years ago to free Europe from Nazi occupation.
Presidents George W Bush of the United States and Jacques Chirac of France stood side by side to lay wreaths in warm sunshine at the huge US military cemetery here overlooking Omaha Beach, scene of the bloodiest fighting.
At Bayeux, the first French town to be liberated one day after the Allies established their beachheads on June 6, 1944, Queen Elizabeth II greeted British former servicemen, some frail in wheelchairs, some spry, all proudly wearing campaign medals.
Offshore, modern landing craft stood by, a reminder of the vessels which, Bush said, led "the greatest armada anyone had ever seen" to land 135 000 men on 100km of coastline under blistering fire from German defences. Some 20 000 more dropped in from the skies.
Sunday's ceremonies began with a lone bagpipe player greeting the dawn at Gold, one of the five codenamed beaches.
Sunrise
Hundreds of people gathered in silence to watch the sun rise through sea mist over sands which 60 years ago had run red with the blood of 4 000 Allied soldiers killed on the first day.
Many had spent the night there after watching a spectacular firework display stretching from Sword, the most easterly beach, past Juno, Gold and Omaha to Utah in the west.
A British navy veteran, Harold Addie, told Sky television that the explosion of fireworks reminded him of the original D-Day.
"It was just like the battles was starting up again," he said. "It was the one day in your life you always remember. I can't remember what happened last week, but I'll never forget that day."
The visitors, many collectors of military memorabilia, dressed in World War II uniforms, moved quietly about the glistening sands as the tide, already low, continued to ebb.
The silence and warmth made a striking contrast with the day of the landings, which had been delayed for 24 hours by foul weather.
"They had waited for one break in the weather, and then it came," Bush said.
"Only the ones who made that crossing can know what it was like. They tell of the pitching deck, the whistles of shells from the battleships behind them, the white jets of water from enemy fire around them, and then the sound of bullets hitting the steel ramp that was about to fall."
Million poppies
In one of the most poignant ceremonies on Saturday, a vintage Lancaster bomber dropped one million poppies into the sea, which streaked out in long red eddies, like the blood of the men cut down by machinegun fire as they waded ashore.
At the cemetery here, a piece of territory ceded to the US by France, field artillery boomed out a 21-gun salute from the clifftops.
The two presidents stood side by side as the mournful strains of the Last Post rang out. Their wives, Bernadette Chirac and Laura Bush, stood on the red carpet that flowed down from the pillared memorial on a rise in the heart of the graveyard.
Later, they and other world leaders were to gather at Arromanches, between Omaha and Gold beaches, where the remains of one of the Allies' most daring and imaginative exploits can still be seen.
The Mulberry harbours were large concrete casings, towed across the Channel from southern England and sunk in a great semi-circle about two kilometres wide, to form a man-made port on the exposed shore.