Club Event Red Beret Normandy pilgrimage Mon June 3 – Sat June 8 No 2 April 2019 People Battery facelift makes good progress Gordon’s road WORK on the 1.5 million euro (about £1.375 start at the end of this season. in Normandy million) upgrading of the Merville Battery Sylvie Dupont, Museum President of the museum, which started this year, is making Merville Battery, told Red Beret, that the very good progress, say officials. It is planned sad aspect of the project, was the number of A NEW ROAD in Merville- to inaugurate the new missing veterans, who were ‘regulars’ for many Franceville will be named buildings – reception, years on the D-Day pilgrimages and who had Rue Gordon Newton after the shop and car park – on passed away late last year. long-time secretary of the 9th June 5, eve of the 75th She offered her best wishes to veterans and Parachute Battalion Reunion anniversary of D-Day. their families for 2019. Club, who died on September The project includes a Coinciding with the Battery ‘facelift’, will be 30 2018. Garden of Remembrance. a spectacular Son et Lumiѐre (Sound and Light) Gordon will be the third A hanger is also to be reconstruction of the historic assault with 150 veteran to be so honoured built for the C-47 Dakota, local people taking part, on June 6, 7, 8 and 9. following the wartime CO, Lt which has a permanent The organisers expect 2,000 spectators each Col Terence Otway, and Major Sylvie Dupont: home on the Battery site. night. Bill Mills, a club chairman for missing veterans This work is expected to Daks in Normandy, Page 8 many years. Red Beret regrets to report that, in addition to Gordon, Farewell message to the veterans the club has lost over the past few months Cecil Hughes MBE, Joseph Holmes, Vincent Museum is on track to join ‘Top Leonard, Geoffrey Pattinson, and Ronald Tucker. Ten’ of Normandy’s Obits, pages 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7 Doors open memorial venues - Paz to ladies IN AN emotional farewell to was time to hand over. AFTER half a century of being the 9th Parachute Battalion The ”remarkable” restructuring a male-only bastion, the club Reunion Cub after stepping project of the museum will committee has now acquired down from his long- need a lot of time and energy two women members. standing role as President in the next two years. He said Jill Moore, daughter of the of the Association Franco- that Sylvie Dupont, his Deputy late Gordon Newton, and Tina Britannique, Olivier Paz, at the commune, who succeeds Hill, wife of Secretary Paul Mayor of Merville-Franceville, him in the association, will be Hill, are the first ladies to join said the veterans of the club in charge of the project “helped Olivier Paz: great honour the committee since the club’s had been an important part of by our devoted and enthusiastic formation in the 1960s. his life over several decades. Pascaline (Dagorn), directrice Honour medals that he was Jill thought the women could “Those who forget the past of the museum.” “so honoured myself to pin on often give a slightly different have no future”, he said. Furthermore, both he and your lapels... the 9th Battalion perspective on club matters, “Merville and the 9th Battalion Beatrice Guillaume,Vice- veterans are a part of my life while Tina said she was very have a future”. President of Calvados and have played an important pleased to become more He anticipated that the Department Council, will sit part in who I am today. To be involved with the veterans. - museum, converted from on the new board. your Patron and a MBE is a the wartime gun battery, and “I have often said during the great honour”. now undergoing a substantial three decades as Mayor of He paid tribute to both the upgrading, may “very soon” Merville, my greatest emotions, British and French members of join the top 10 memorial sites my greatest happiness were the association, including those in Normandy. with you,“ he told the veterans. who had passed away “We make the bet that we’ll He recalled the events that had “We have tried to preserve have 100,000 visitors a year at marked the Merville legend – the memory of the Merville Jill and Tina: welcomed the Merville Battery”, he said. the naming of Colonel Otway Battery fighting and the allied “My first pilgrimage nearly 10 “This is possible thanks to you Street in 1993, the successive soldiers’ bravery. So to the 9th years ago made so much of an and your Club as well as the anniversaries, the sound and Battalion veterans let me say: impression on me”, she said. battery staff lights show, the curry suppers, your valiant battalion will be Chairman Tony Lea said the “For 25 years, you organized and the many Legion of recorded in history.” change was “absolutely great”. pilgrimages to the site of your In remembering the exploits feats, you gave substance to Reunion club’s £1,000 towards memorial of the 9th Battalion, it was the legend and you made the imperative, he said, that “we Merville Battery an exceptional THE 9th Parachute Battalion men and women who died on ALL play a part, English or and major D-Day venue”. Reunion Club has donated D-Day and in the Battle of French, male or female, and M Paz, who recently became £1,000 towards Britain’s Normandy. The memorial is that we are one big family.” President of the Mayors’ Union new national memorial to expected to be inaugurated The committee has agreed to of Calvados, said that after 28 be built at Ver-sur-Mer, on June 6. purchase a stock of 9th Para years’ involvement with the near Arromanches, to ladies’ scarves to match the Merville Battery he thought it commemorate the 22,442 47-acre home, Page 2 men’s ties. THE BRITISH NORMANDY MEMORIAL 2018 INTERNATIONAL COMMEMORATION REPORT 47-acre home for new British memorial in Normandy PRESIDENT Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Theresa May have promised to attend the formal inauguration during the 75th anniversary of D-Day on June 6 of Britain’s new memorial to honour the dead of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. The planned memorial, which overlooks Gold Beach at Ver-sur-Mer, where the 50th British infantry division landed, commemorates the loss of 22,442 servicemen under British command. Also honoured will be the thousands of French citizens who lost their lives. ED LLEWELLYN, the British ambassador, pledged Britain’s The memorial will be built on 47 acres of cliftop continued support for the memorial when he spoke at the international land, which offers visitors a view of the remains of the commemoration at the Merville Battery last year. wartime Mulberry Harbour off Arromanches, where “We have liberated the land of William the Conqueror”, he said. “I hundreds of ships unloaded supplies for the Allied would especially like to thank the Normans for the way they watch over armies. our dead and welcome our former fighters.” Its columns will record the names of the men and Pictured (l to r), Ed Llewellyn, veterans Philip Ward, Gordon Newton, women who lost their lives between D-Day and August Cyril Tasker, and Fred Glover, with Geneviève Darrieusecq, Secretary 31 when the Battle of Normandy officially ended. of State to the Minister of the Armed Forces. (Inset) Artist’s impression The centrepiece will be composed of three 9ft high of the new memorial. bronze figures of uniformed men by British sculture David Williams-Ellis mounted on a 9ft high granite plinth. It was a conversation with Hours of June 6 were ‘decisive for Normandy veteran George Batts in 2014 that led Nicholas Witchell, the BBC journalist, France, Europe and the world’ to set the ball rolling. Batts ENVOYS of 11 countries liberty. friends, our brothers-in-arms.” had pointed out that the involved in WW2 gathered She stressed that we all had The international United States and Canada had at the Merville Battery on a duty to protect our history, commemoration day, she said, memorials in Normandy but June 6 last year in a two-hour and the memory of those who was a tribute to the British not Britain. ceremony to mark the liberation fought during this war so that paratroopers, who captured the Witchell linked up with of Europe. we could live in freedom. She Merville Battery, as well as architect Liam O’Connor, Earlier in the day wreaths revealed that her uncle was the other Allies involved in the designer of the Armed Forces were laid at the war cemetery killed in the fighting when he fighting. memorial at the National at Ranville, where most of the was just 27. She described the impending Arboretum in Staffordshire, 6th Airborne Division’s dead Geneviève Darrieusecq, project to upgrade the Battery and plannning began. In are buried. Secretary of State to the Minister museum as a “wonderful 1917, the British government Nearly 1,000 civilian and of the Armed Forces, said that tool for the transmission of confirmed £20 million military guests, and the public the hours of June 6, 1944 were memories” LIBOR funding for the main crowded into the Battery for the decisive for France, Europe and France, she said, also saluted components. region’s D-Day international the world. Noting that veterans its own civilians, who had paid Donations, including £1,000 commemoration under dark of the 9th Parachute Battalion a price for liberation. Nearly from the 9th Parachute skies with occasional rain - were present at the ceremony, 20,000 people lost their lives in Battalion Reunion Club, have “reminiscent of the sullen she said that “France knows the bombing, fighting and the been coming in steadily ever weather of 1944”, noted Michel what we owe to our allies, our repression under occupation.