Pembridge and Shobdon RBL Trip to Normandy
The Pembridge and Shobdon branch of the Royal British Legion recently visited the site of the D Day Landings. Setting off from Pembridge at 2am and catching an early morning sailing from Portsmouth to Caen, the 16 strong party were able to squeeze a lot into our 3-day trip.
A mix of visits with historical themes and sharing the moving and poignant experiences of the soldiers of the invasion fleet and those involved in the Pegasus Bridge operation. This daring operation involved 6 gliders landing in the dark on a strip of land between a canal and a river. Many of the glider pilots were trained at RAF Shobdon, they typically carried 30 soldiers of the 6th Airborne Division who crash landed into battle.
Bromley O’Hare, one of our party, had created a memorial of Pegasus Bridge in the form of three circling gliders which is displayed at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire. Bromley was able to see for the first-time parts of the gliders he sculpted and a full-size reproduction of one of them.
We experienced some living history too. The lady who runs the cafe on the approach to the bridge, as a girl aged seven, watched the routine of the German guards. She chatted about this with her mother, unaware that she was in the Resistance. These details were relayed back to London where the intricate and successful plans for the attack were being made. Her parent’s cafe and home by the bridge was the first house in France to be liberated on 6th June 1944.
We laid a wreath at the new British War Memorial at Gold Beach where British and Canadian troops landed, and the Mulberry Harbour was constructed. We said together the words “We will remember them.”
Based in the historic town of Bayeux, we visited the cathedral and the Bayeux Tapestry, and the Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy. At Arromanches a 360-degree cinema gave us some inkling of what the battle to liberate Northern France was like for the civilians caught in the crossfire. Everywhere we went the French people were very friendly and we saw more Union Jacks than Tricolors flying in every small town along the Normandy coast.
Graham Hudson, Chairman Pembridge & Shobdon RBL
