Normandy, France - June 5, 2024

For this 80th anniversary, heads of state and VIPs will be received by Emmanuel Macron in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, one of the small towns bordering Omaha Beach. With its museum, its Monument to the Brave and the American cemetery, it is one of the main points on the D-Day Route, which runs along much of the Normandy coastline and has become a circuit visited by hundreds of thousands of people every year.

In anticipation of the official commemorations, festivities are already taking place on the beaches and squares of the coastal villages, with picnics and music concerts, starting this weekend, 1 June. Fireworks and festivities are scheduled to continue throughout the summer, echoing the gigantic hope that those American, British and Canadian (but also French, Australian, Polish, Norwegian, Belgian, Czech and Greek) soldiers carried with them.

In some villages, such as Sainte-Mere-l'Eglise, the actions will be particularly spectacular: there, where the paratroopers were dropped on the night of 5-6 June 1944, the operation will be repeated with hundreds of soldiers of different nationalities coming down from the sky. Each of them will undoubtedly think of John Steele, whose parachute got caught in the bell tower of the village church. That event is one of the most memorable scenes from the film The Longest Day, starring John Wayne. Steele was eventually saved, while his comrades were slaughtered by the Nazis in the square below his feet. The soldier's name is commemorated in many places in Sainte-Mere-l'Eglise. Similarly, the name of the Gondree family is remembered in Benouville and Ranville: their cafe, metres from the Pegasus Bridge that links the two villages, was the first liberated house in continental Europe. Its owners were resistance fighters, who passed information for months to the British troops before the landing on Juno Beach.

Images in association with JIP29.

SHOTLIST
1. Various US Hercule C130 overflights over Sword Beach.