Monday Memory: D-Day 2014

The King, Queen, and the Prince of Wales were all in Portsmouth this morning commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, which is, of course, tomorrow June the 6th. The event included William reading from the diary of Captain Alastair Bannerman, a solider who landed on the beaches on D-Day, which was, by all reports, very moving. William also told a veteran who asked after Kate that the Princess is “getting better” and wished she could have been present for the ceremonies this week. Princess Anne is already in Normandy for commemorations today. Tomorrow, Charles, Camilla, and William will all be at various locations in Normandy, France, to mark the Allied invasion.

Given this schedule, my Monday Memory this week is a throw-back to June 6, 2014. A decade ago, William and Kate, then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, participated in the 70th anniversary events at Gold Beach, Arromanches-les-Bains, Normandy.

For the day, Kate recycled a McQueen coat she had debuted in Blenheim, New Zealand, just two months before, and paired it with a black Sylvia Fletcher topper she had worn to christen the Royal Princess cruise ship (wearing Dalmatian print, if you recall). She was wearing her sapphire and diamond drop earrings and carrying one of her Bayswater clutches by Mulberry.

This was the couple’s first official visit to France, and they started the morning with a tea with veterans. At the time, the Huffington Post reported this sweet story:

When she [Kate] sat down to talk to Arthur Jones in Arromanches, he asked her: "Is it OK to kiss a Princess?"
Laughing, she replied: "Of course it is."
Mr Jones, a desert rat from the 7th Armoured Division, seized the moment and gave Catherine a kiss on the cheek.
Afterwards, Mr Jones, from Wolverhampton, said: "As the prince (William) left he said to me 'Were you chatting up my wife?'
"I told him I only gave her a kiss.
"William laughed but I'm chuffed I've chatted up a princess. I bet I'll be picked up now and taken to the Tower of London.
"It was a lovely kiss - she is very sweet and very lovely. I lost my wife 10 years ago, and I'm on my own now, so I don't get many opportunities for kisses any more.
"I always thought Kate looked beautiful, but she has a very down to earth personality - it was like she was one of us."

Afterward, the couple moved to Gold Beach where William laid a wreath and addressed the gathered crowd. Gold Beach was the central beach of the five beaches invaded in the dawn of June 6, 1944. The British forces were assigned this landing, and they took it at the cost of 400 men.

I have aways liked this coat—both its pretty cornflower blue color and the unusual design. I did not love the hat ten years ago, and I still don’t love it today. That said, the hat worked for her back then in a way that I think it would not today.

I peeked at the post I wrote so many years ago, and the closing paragraph I included the following lengthy reflection:

I have been sifting through some of the news reports from the day, especially those that are reporting on the veterans, many of whom are in their nineties, and have still returned for this 70th anniversary. I am struck by how they aren't there to be honored, but to honor. They have returned to pay their respects yet again to their fallen comrades, to the men who did not come home. On one of my trips to France I visited Omaha Beach and the Normandy American Cemetery and I walked those white rows reading the places, sometimes the names, but mostly the places: Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New York, South Carolina, California--they had come from every corner of the United States and over 4,000 miles from kin and country I was overwhelmed with grief that these men had never come home, not even in death. It reinforced the completeness of the sacrifice they all made in their commitment to their duty, to their country, to freedom, and to honor. Today's events highlight for us all that their sacrifice, their courage, and their loss was not in vain. All the men of the allied forces, of every nationality, who heroically fought their way through the surf and across those bloody beaches, in addition to the French Resistance who met them and found them shelter, contributed to an effort that liberated Europe and ultimately crushed the aggressive and repressive Nazi regime that threatened civilization. They freed a continent and changed the world. It is the most extraordinary story and it is gratifying to see the world stop and mark this momentous event and these heroes, living and dead.

It has now been over a dozen years since I visited the Normandy beaches, but with this anniversary so close after our Memorial Day, I was just at a national cemetery to pay my respects to our war dead who did make it home. The intervening years have left me with many thoughts today, but chief among them is the simple hope that all those men did not die in vain.