Final farewell to the beaches of freedom
The Liberators Return | Normandy celebrations may be the last for many of those who fought Hitler 70 years ago
SEVENTY years after he endured the horrors of D-Day, a veteran summed up how much it meant to Britain’s wartime heroes to honour their fallen comrades on Friday for what might be the last time.
Bernard Jordan, 89, was told by staff at his care home in Sussex that he would not be able to travel to France for the ceremony because they could not organise transport for him.
However, the Royal Navy veteran refused to take no for an answer. Showing all the determination that got him through the Normandy invasion, he pinned his medals to his chest, grabbed his raincoat and caught a bus to France.
After prompting an international missing person’s alert and a police inquiry, he joined hundreds of his friends to commemorate the heroism and sacrifice of those who did not survive the largest seaborne invasion in history.
His disappearance prompted staff at the care home to raise the alarm on Thursday. The police searched the area and contacted nearby hospitals and bus and taxi companies.
The extent of Jordan’s resolve to join his old comrades only became clear when another veteran, thought to be slightly younger than him, told the police that the missing pensioner had taken a bus to Ouistreham. Garry Dunn, a councillor and friend of Jordan for almost 40 years, said: “It makes me proud to be British because he is a proud Briton.
“He was always very modest about the war. I know he was involved in D-Day, but he would never talk about it. He is the perfect example of a generation that did their duty, but didn’t feel they had to tell people what they had done.”
Jordan received a hero’s welcome when he returned home.
US President Barack Obama led world leaders on Friday in paying tribute to the thousands of troops who gave their lives to liberate Western Europe from the Nazis.
He told an audience of veterans, mostly Americans, that they had breached “Hitler’s wall” and secured today’s era of democracy and freedom.
The returned soldiers, their medals glittering in the sun, were honouring their fallen comrades on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The queen joined 400 Commonwealth veterans for an open-air service at the British military cemetery in Bayeux.
She paid tribute in a brochure to the “immense and heroic endeavour” of the soldiers who took part in the invasion, making “incredible sacrifices”.
The day saw some 20 heads of state, royalty and prime ministers come together, mingling with veterans on the beaches of northern France, where the biggest amphibious assault in history
These men waged war so that we might know peace. They sacrificed so that we might be free. They fought in hopes of a day when we’d no longer need to fight. We are grateful to them
was launched on June 6 1944.
Obama spoke from the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where almost 10 000 men were buried on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, the site of some of D-Day’s most intense and bloody fighting. He described the landings in vivid terms, recalling that “by daybreak, blood soaked the water” and “thousands of rounds bit into flesh and sand”.
Visibly moved, the president, whose speech was interrupted by a lengthy standing ovation from the assembled audience when he ac- knowledged the surviving veterans present, said: “By the end of that longest day, this beach had been fought, lost, refought and won — a piece of Europe once again liberated and free. Hitler’s wall was breached, letting loose [General George S] Patton’s army to pour into France.”
He told the veterans, many of whom were confined to wheelchairs and were in all likelihood attending the anniversary events for the last time: “Gentlemen, we are truly humbled by your presence.
“These men waged war so that we might know peace. They sacrificed so that we might be free. They fought in hopes of a day when we’d no longer need to fight. We are grateful to them.”
He described Omaha as “democracy’s beachhead”.
“Our victory in that war decided not just a century, but shaped the security and wellbeing of all posterity. Our commitment to liberty, our claim to equality, our claim to freedom and to the inherent dignity of every human being— that claim is written in the blood on these beaches and it will endure for eternity.” — THOSE FALLEN: Normandy veteran Ken Scott, 98, an infantry sergeant with the Durham Light Infantry which stormed Gold Beach, looks at headstones in the Bayeux Cemetary