VER-SUR-Mer, France — VER-SUR-Mer, France (AP) — King Charles III came to northern France on Thursday to pay tribute to the 22,442 British soldiers who died in the Battle of Normandy.
He also came to honor a generation.
It is a generation that sacrificed and fought and died and waited during five long years of war and then sent its youngest and bravest to fight its way to the beaches of Normandy and battle through machine gun fire and artillery explosions to start the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.
It is also a generation that is quickly passing into history, with the youngest D-Day veterans now approaching their 100th birthday. This is a reality the king knows firsthand after losing his mother and father, both World War II veterans, in the last three years.
So Charles on Thursday thanked, perhaps for the last time, the old soldiers and their missing comrades during ceremonies at the recently completed British Normandy Memorial, overlooking the beaches where UK soldiers landed. 80 years ago.
He said that although the number of living veterans was dwindling, “our obligation to remember what they stood for and what they achieved for all of us can never diminish.”
“Eighty years ago, on D-Day, June 6, 1944, our nation – and those who stood alongside it – faced what my grandfather, King George VI, described as the ultimate test,” said Charles. and the entire free world, that a generation of men and women in the United Kingdom and other allied nations did not waver when the time came to face this test.”
The British ceremony featured performances from singers including Tom Jones, as well as testimonials from D-Day veterans. Queen Camilla was seen wiping away a tear while actor Martin Freeman read memories of 99-year-old Joe Mines, recalling that “I was 19 years when I landed, but I was still a boy.”
Charles, 75, ignored his recent cancer diagnosis to attend the ceremony for British veterans, although he chose not to attend the larger international ceremony a few miles away. Prince Williamthe heir to the throne, will replace the king at that event near Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, joining heads of state and veterans from around the world to mark the anniversary.
The king is slowly returning to public-facing duties after being sidelined for three months following his cancer diagnosis. Although doctors are encouraged by his progress, Charles is still receiving treatment and your schedule will be adjusted as necessary to protect his recovery, Buckingham Palace said last month.
With a limited schedule, it is no surprise that the king chose to focus on the sacrifices of British soldiers.
As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the king is a symbol of the nation and a unifying force for the military that stands above partisan politics.
Charles, who spent five years in the Royal Navy, also has a deep personal connection to the Second World War generation. His father, Prince Philip, served in the navy during the war, and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, trained as a military driver and mechanic during the final months of the conflict. Queen Camilla’s father served in the army and was twice awarded the Military Cross, Britain’s third highest military honor.
“Those men and women who took part in D-Day were not fighting for the government of the day, they were fighting for the Crown,” said Michael Cole, a former BBC royal correspondent who first covered Charles more than 50 years ago. back.
“The troops swear loyalty to the king. That’s how it happens. And that’s how it works in this country. Therefore, it is very, very important that the king participates” in the D-Day religious services.
The D-Day landings had been a dream of wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill since the US entered the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
They finally became a reality on June 6, 1944, when nearly 160,000 Allied troops from the U.S., Britain, Canada and nine other countries landed in Normandy. At least 4,414 men were killed and another 5,900 were listed as missing or injured when Allied forces breached the Nazis’ heavily fortified “Atlantic Wall” to secure a foothold in Northern Europe.
By the end of August, more than 2 million men had crossed the English Channel, beginning the march to Berlin that ended with Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945.
The King and French President Emmanuel Macron led dignitaries in laying wreaths at the British Normandy Memorial. It is outside the town of Ver-sur-Mer, overlooking Gold Beach, one of three beaches where British troops landed on D-Day. Almost 62,000 British soldiers landed that day, or 40% of the total invasion force.
The names of all 22,442 soldiers who died under British command during the largest Battle of Normandy are engraved on the memorial’s limestone columns. For the 80th anniversary events, 1,475 gigantic black silhouettes were installed around the memorial to represent the British troops who died on D-Day itself.
Britain’s monarchs have taken a leading role in honoring the country’s war dead since Charles’s great-grandfather, King George V, presided over the burial of an unknown First World War soldier at Westminster Abbey in 1920.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
