D-Day hero’s war warning
D-DAY veteran George Chandler yesterday warned children at a Downing Street event not to make the same mistakes that his generation did over participating in war.
George, 99, told the 10 and 11-year-olds from Hayfield Cross primary in Kettering: “Nobody ever wins a war – one side gives in, and that doesn’t mean to say you’ve won a war if the other side has decided they’ve had enough.
“So let me ask you sincerely to make sure that you, all of you, don’t make the same mistakes that we made in going to war because there’s nothing grand or what have you about war.”
George, from Brighton, was a 19-year-old Able Seaman when he landed on Omaha Beach during the Allied invasion of Normandy almost 80 years ago.
D-Day veteran and exRAF sergeant Bernard Morgan, 100, saluted as the pupils applauded him at the educational event. He recalled the horror of seeing bodies for the first time, on Gold Beach.
He said: “They were mainly all Allied soldiers who had arrived in the morning in the small landing craft, but unfortunately they’d been dropped off in deep water. “With the equipment and weapons they were carrying, the poor soldiers dropped down in the water and drowned, and that was a very sad sight. Paying tribute Bernard, from Crewe, added: “The people I’d like us all to remember are the sailors, soldiers, airmen, airwomen and civilians who gave their lives for the freedom that we have today – those people should never be forgotten.” Rishi Sunak’s wife Akshata Murty greeted the pupils who toured No 10, sitting at the Cabinet table and learning about Second WorldWar PM SirWinston Churchill. They also took a 1940s-style bus to HMS Belfast. The cruiser saw action on D-Day on June 6 1944 and is moored close to Tower Bridge as part of the Imperial War Museum.