Remembering

After another sensational breakfast we headed off to Pegasus Bridge to meet my mum and dad at the Café Gondrée. It was a lot busier than the last time we were there - lots of veterans and current service men and women. There were as many WW2 vehicles as current ones in the town, and pipers and medical ships and people in WW2 uniforms. There was a really special atmosphere.
After our hot chocolates we headed over the bridge to the Pegasus Memorial museum. It was so interesting looking at all the artefacts and pictures. One display showed soldiers as they looked in 1944 next to pictures of them now. As we were reading their stories a veteran came up to us and pointed at a bit of the text that said lots of returning soldiers never talked about their experiences. He said that was him. 
There were pipers piping - the first of many we saw today - and hearing them play Amazing Grace was something I can't even begin to describe.
We walked on the original bridge, looked inside a replica of one of the gliders which crash landed close to the bridge in the early hours of D-Day.
They landed fifty metres from their target - a feat so remarkable that the Russians thought the whole thing was staged as it was impossibly good!
We headed to picnic benches by the river for our picnic. We got it all set out  and had just started eating when the heavens opened. Proper torrential rain! We got soaked and all our food got soaked. Rubbish!!
We retreated to the camper and dried out before driving to Colleville-sur-Mer to watch more pipers and then following them in a procession to the statue of Bill Millin (Lord Lovat's piper who featured in The Longest Day) by the beach. The son and grandson of Piper Bill Millin took part in a lovely commemoration ceremony by his statue.
Then it was to the cemetery at Hermanville. It's a lovely small tranquil cemetery - 1003 graves, all beautifully maintained.
A ceremony started not long after we got there. More wonderful pipers, English and French national anthems, a speech from the Mayor and a very moving sounding of the Last Post. 
The Little Misses had bought crosses at the museum and chose graves to put them on. 
Miss L chose W.E. Kennedy. Wallace Edward Kennedy, a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers who died on D-Day, 6th June 1944, aged 26.
Miss E chose a grave marked "A soldier of the 1939-1945 war". With typical sensitivity she said she wanted to let someone know she was thinking of him when he wouldn't have ever had any visitors as no-one knew who he was.
This is why we came.

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.  
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.