HM Queen Elizabeth II, Arromanches, Normandy, 6 June 2004.
The Queen's words, spoken to the assembled veterans of the D Day landings, struck a chord with the millions who watched the commemoration events on television.
The Queen was standing before 142 veterans from the 14 different countries that had taken part in this historic enterprise. Behind her, shimmering in the brilliant sunlight was the beach of Arromanches-les Bains, the centre point of the landings on Lower Normandy's Cote de Calvados in which 150,000 young waded ashore to death or glory 60 years ago.
When the first wave of troops staggered ashore in the early hours of 6 June, 1944, they were weighed down by over 50 lbs of equipment and sea sodden uniforms.Most were mired in vomit from seasickness after an appalling crossing in what proved to be the worst summer weather for decades. Many drowned while wading ashore, cut down by enemy fire before they reached dry land.
The 12,000 veterans who had returned this year in the autumn of their lives to remember their fallen comrades carried walking sticks, not guns. Their smart blue blazer jackets were weighed down by medals not ammunition packs and the warm welcome they received was of kisses not bullets.
There was a certain irony in this biggest and last major D Day commemoration which drew an estimated one million visitors to the normally quiet Normandy countryside. With so many heads of state in attendance, the French were taking no chances with security. The historic beaches Sword, Juno, Gold, Utah and Omaha where the British 3rd and 50th Divisions, the Canadian 3rd Division, the American 1st, 29th and 4th Divisions landed became a war zone once again.
Mirage jets screeched overhead with orders to shoot any unauthorised plane out of the sky. Navy frigates and aircraft carriers were stationed offshore to deter waterborne terrorists and 15,000 soldiers and policemen, covered by carefully positioned snipers on the rooftops and helicopter-borne sharpshooters, patrolled the countryside lanes inland. The inhabitants of some villages unfortunate enough to be in the middle of this political jamboree were ordered to stay indoors under a dawn-to-dusk curfew.
For most of the veterans, now in their 80s and 90s,(the oldest was 101),this would be their last visit to the beaches, and the war cemeteries where their comrades in arms lie. "I shall not return," said one bemedalled veteran who was on his tenth annual visit to commemorate the landings. "It has become too much of a jamboree."
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