Commemorations to mark the 82nd anniversary of D-Day in Normandy have started, with French schoolchildren walking across Juno Beach to mark H-Hour, the time at which British servicemen were deployed.
Serving military personnel, the grandson of British Commander Field Marshal Montgomery and pipers from the Jedburgh Pipe Band marched with the schoolchildren on Saturday morning.
Nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed on June 6 1944 to fight Nazi-occupied France.
While the exact number of German casualties is unknown, historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing.
On the Allied front, a total of 4,414 died.
The Battle of Normandy, which followed the landings, saw 73,000 Allied lives lost with 153,000 men wounded.
Veterans who lost friends on the very same beaches made the journey to France and will be attending the annual Ceremony of Remembrance at the British Normandy Memorial.
Key figures in the success of the landings are being honoured, including Field Marshal Montgomery.
Later, his grandson Henry Montgomery is set to complete the final day of his journey “In Monty’s Footsteps” by walking more than 22km across Sword, Juno and Gold beaches – at the very time the first troops landed.
Each step of his two-month journey across Britain and north-western France honoured the lives of more than 22,000 men and women whose names are engraved on the British Normandy Memorial.
He is joined by Will Ramsay, grandson of Admiral Ramsay, Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces on D-Day.
This year the smallest number of Normandy veterans will attended the ceremony since the memorial opened in 2021, with only six confirmed.
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