Ways to mark D-day

SIR – News of a planned pop concert to be held on Sword Beach on the 75th anniversary of D-day (report, June 23) has been met with a predictable response from veterans’ associations and families in Britain.

However, as survivors of the Second World War become fewer in number, perhaps the time has come to accept that remembrance must inevitably give way to commemoration, and that the latter can take many forms. Hushed reverence on its own risks excluding younger generations, to whom the torch must be passed if we are to continue to commemorate these events meaningfully.

It is also important to consider that, for those who died on D-day and in the battles to follow, age has not wearied them, nor the years condemned. As young men in the prime of life, they would doubtless have preferred to attend a Glenn Miller concert rather than go into battle. However, the fact that they did, and that many of them died in the process, means that people today, young and old, have the freedom to live their lives as they please. Peter Baker

Goring-by-sea, West Sussex