D-Day: World leaders to gather for international ceremony at Omaha beach
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00:00 Now later on this afternoon the commemorations are to move a little
00:04 further down the road in Normandy to Omaha Beach itself. That's where the
00:09 international ceremony will be held. We'll be bringing you much of that live
00:13 here on the channel and our reporter Claire Packler is there right now. She
00:18 joins me on the program. Claire just tell us first of all what's to happen later
00:22 on today at that international ceremony. Who's coming?
00:28 Certainly this international ceremony here at Omaha Beach. The focus really is
00:34 on the veterans, on their words. There'll be a look back at what happened here 80
00:39 years ago to the day told through the words of veterans and their families.
00:44 American families, Canadian families, British families, French families too. So
00:49 the focus really is on their bravery, their their sense of self-sacrifice,
00:54 their commitment to liberating France starting here in Normandy. There'll also
01:00 be plenty of music in the ceremony. I've just been speaking to some young people
01:04 from a youth choir who will be performing and they told me some of the
01:08 songs that they will be singing. We'll have the Chant des Partisans, which is a
01:12 very famous French song. It's very much associated with the French resistance.
01:16 We'll also have Blood on the Rises which you will certainly know the tune to even
01:21 if you're not sure what the name of the song is. And that is very much associated
01:25 with American paratroopers. Of course thousands of them landed behind enemy
01:30 lines here in Normandy. They landed behind those lines because inland
01:35 positions were crucial as well. The beaches were crucial but so
01:39 were those inland positions. And we'll also hear that youth choir singing Ode to
01:44 Joy which is of course the European anthem too. Emmanuel Macron will make
01:48 another speech and there'll be a flypast, an international flypast in the
01:53 skies above our heads. And of course the ceremony will close with that. Not before
01:57 though we hear the Marseillaise, the French national anthem being sung by the
02:00 French Army's choir as well as the Franco-Italian singer Lea Desandre.
02:04 And Claire look you've produced several excellent reports in the run-up to
02:09 today. So explain to us why this event, the 80th anniversary of D-Day, is so
02:16 important. Why so many visitors, French and foreign, still head to the beaches
02:22 where you are? What's so interesting is that over the decades there's this been
02:28 this constant flow of visitors from the United States, from Canada, particularly
02:32 from the UK as well which is of course just across the waters behind
02:36 me, just across the channel. And there are real strong links between locals here in
02:41 Normandy who know that they owe their freedom to the Allies who came and who
02:47 landed on the beaches here in Normandy 80 years ago. And there are these very
02:52 strong links first with the veterans but also with their children, with their
02:55 children's children who continue to come here. Many are here today paying their
03:00 respects to the men and women who gave their lives on D-Day but of course also
03:05 in the three-month Battle of Normandy that followed. And you only have to take
03:09 a quick drive around the roads here and you'll see American, Canadian, British,
03:13 Australian flags up all around the place and certainly international visitors are
03:18 always welcome here in this part of Normandy.