At H-hour on D-day, army chaplain Cpt Leslie Skinner struck out for Gold beach. “This is it. Running for beach by 0700. Under fire by 0710. Beached at 0725,” his diary records. “Man either side of me wounded. One lost leg. I was blown backwards onto Bren Carrier but OK. Made it to beach, though I had hell of pain in left side.”
Skinner’s diary, given to the Imperial War Museums (IWM), charts the Battle of Normandy from the beach landings of 6 June 1944 through three months of attrition warfare in hedgerows and in towns and villages that are now household names: he landed with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry tank regiment at Asnelles, a couple of kilometres from Arromanches, where Winston Churchill’s vision of a portable port was realised in the engineering miracle of the Mulberry harbours.
On the back of the 75th anniversary of Operation Neptune, the seaborne phase of the Allied landings, Normandy is preparing for another invasion this summer.
More than 2 million remembrance tourists are expected to retrace Skinner’s footsteps and those of the other 156,000 Allied troops who landed on that day, at myriad museum exhibitions and around preserved key landmarks.
As veteran numbers diminish and with D-day poised to pass from living memory into history, the 75th anniversary is likely to be the last big official commemoration of the largest ever amphibious assault, which led to the liberation of Europe.
“The importance of the 75th anniversary has given extra bite this year,” said Michael Dodds, director of Normandy Tourism. “I think this will be the last time there will be a large number of veterans. So, Normandy is making a big effort. They never get blasé about arriving British, American and Canadian veterans coming over. ”
Hundreds of veterans, now in their tenth decades, are expected to travel for ceremonies on 6 June on Normandy’s now serene beaches, scenic clifftops, and stark cemeteries.
At sunset, thousands will gather in Arromanches’ seafront square overlooking the ghostly remains of “Mulberry B”. Senior royals and dignitaries are expected to join more than 300 Normandy veterans transported by the Royal British Legion on a specially chartered ferry. Veterans are also being offered free passage on Brittany Ferries’ various crossings.
At Ranville, the first village to be liberated, more than 30 veterans, transported by the Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, will be joined by 1,500 guests on 5 June for a ceremony at the Pegasus Memorial Museum. The memorial is dedicated to the 6th Airborne division; the British parachutists and glider-borne soldiers dropped in the early hours of D-day to secure vital crossings over the Caen Canal and River Orne. Renamed Pegasus Bridge on 26 June 1944 in honour of the division, it would form the hinge of the D-day operation.
“Nothing in front of you has changed. It is exactly the same as it was 75 years ago. Even the power lines are still here,“ said museum curator Mark Worthington, standing by a restored part of the bridge, rescued from rusting in a field and bought for the symbolic price of one franc.
On 5 June, the skies over Ranville will once again be filled with hundreds of parachutists as part of Daks Over Normandy, a series of planned events re-creating the historic air drop from over 800 Douglas C-47 Skytrains (Dakotas). This will follow on from Daks over Duxford on 4 and 5 June, when up to 40 Dakotas, the largest number in one place since the second world war, will go on show at the preserved airfield at IWM Duxford in Cambridgeshire, before taking off for the mass cross-channel flight to Normandy.
Skinner, who died in 2001 aged 89, recorded a grim journey inland from the beaches. Extracts from his diaries today form the Padre’s Trail, which guides visitors through the land warfare exhibition at IWM Duxford, then home to the USAAF 78th Fighter Group.
He writes of the gruesome task of recovering bodies from “brewed-up” (burnt out) tanks, nicknamed “Tommy Cookers”, and holding brief funeral services before burial in shallow graves. He insisted on doing it alone. “Horrible mess. Fearful job picking up bits and pieces and re-assembling for identification... Less men who live and fight in tanks have to do with this side of things the better. My job. This was more than normally sick-making. Really ill–vomiting”, one entry records.
Those Skinner buried would later be reburied in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Bayeux, where thousands will gather with veterans and dignitaries on 6 June for a British commemoration among its 4,648 headstones. It will be preceded by a service in the Gothic splendour of Bayeux cathedral.
One of the most visited of Normandy’s sites is the Normandy American Cemetery in Coleville-sur-Mer. It overlooks Omaha Beach – or “Bloody Omaha” – where US troops suffered around 2,400 casualties on D-day. The US president, Donald Trump, is expected to join around 9,000 for a ceremony there on 6 June, when both US and French flags will be placed on each of the 9,387 marble crosses and 149 Stars of David precisely aligned.
Churchill, who masterminded much of Operation Overlord – the codename given to the overall land, naval and air operation – from the subterranean IWM Churchill War Rooms off Whitehall, had hopes of witnessing D-day in person from HMS Belfast, which led the fleet of Bombardment Force E. Only a most diplomatic letter from King George VI, a copy of which is in the adjoining Churchill Museum, persuaded him otherwise.
So it was not until 12 June that Britain’s prime minister would finally set foot on Normandy soil. By then, HMS Belfast was in the thick of it. Having fired her first shells on a German battery at 05.27 on D-day, she would fire 5,000 more over the course of the next weeks, while also acting as a hospital ship. Now a floating IWM museum, moored near Tower Bridge, the log on the Admiral’s Bridge lies open on the page of D-day.
However, while Normandy continues to commemorate its past, it is also looking to a new future in conflict resolution. Ahead of the D-day commemorations, the second Normandy World Peace Forum, due to be attended by five Nobel peace prize winners, will be held on 4 and 5 June in Caen, much of which was reduced to rubble in the Battle of Normandy.
“Normandy benefits from a huge notoriety worldwide because of the Battle of Normandy, ” Dodds said. “So, we want to be known not as a theatre for war, but as a region that defends the universal values of liberty and peace, and holds a world peace forum every year.”
• This article was amended on 23 April 2019. An earlier version referred to “the 6th Airborne division;the British parachutists and glider-borne soldiers dropped ahead of D-day”. In fact they were dropped in the early hours of D-day.
