The Princess Royal has read an excerpt from the memoir of a D-Day sailor during a vigil at Bayeux War Cemetery.
Sub-Lieutenant Keith Symons, who was her husband's uncle, was in command of three landing craft at Gold Beach in the first wave on D-Day at the age of 20.
Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Sub-Lieutenant Keith Symons, who was her husband's uncle, was in command of three landing craft at Gold Beach in the first wave on D-Day at the age of 20.
Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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NewsTranscript
00:00 At 00.15 hours on the 5th of June 1944, General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Forces,
00:20 took the momentous decision to launch Operation Overlord, what we now call D-Day, the largest
00:29 sea and airborne invasion the world has ever seen.
00:35 After five years of war, all that time training and waiting, who knows what those sailors,
00:44 soldiers and airmen felt.
00:47 Eighty years ago today, charged with storming the Normandy coastline and beginning the campaign
00:55 to free Western Europe from Nazi tyranny.
01:00 One of those sailors was my husband's uncle, Sub-Lieutenant Keith Symons, who at the age
01:06 of 20 was in command of three landing craft at Gold Beach in the first wave on D-Day.
01:16 Recalling in his memoirs the evening of 5th of June, he wrote, "At last it was time for
01:24 our briefing.
01:26 Our confidence was dented by predictions that casualties in the first wave were likely to
01:31 be heavy.
01:33 Everyone was quite subdued.
01:36 But it was all very matter of fact.
01:39 They were in those days.
01:42 After supper, we sat around making light conversation and listening to the chaplain playing his
01:48 violin.
01:50 My cabin companion was a captain in the Greenhowards, a charming man who had been a solicitor before
01:57 the war.
01:59 We talked about what he would do when the war was over.
02:03 Sadly he was killed in France only a few weeks later.
02:08 Bayer was close to the landing beaches and it was the first city to be liberated by the
02:14 British on the 7th of June.
02:17 The city's hospitals were soon full of the wounded from the surrounding battlefield.
02:23 For those who could not be saved, this was their final resting place.
02:30 It is the largest Commonwealth cemetery of the Second World War in France and contains
02:36 4,140 Allied graves.
02:42 It is my honour as President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to continue to protect
02:48 their legacy.
02:52 The epitaphs on the headstones here capture the grief of those who loved these men.
02:59 One mother's words are "He is not dead whose memory lives in hearts that know and loved
03:07 him."
03:10 Eighty years on, let their memory still live on in our hearts.
03:16 Amen.