05 Jun 2024
An event is to be held in St Albans city centre on Thursday to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Everyone is welcome to attend to pay their respects to those who took part in the landings on the Normandy beaches in 1944 and the battles that followed.
St Albans Mayor, Cllr Jamie Day, will lead the commemoration at 9am at the War Memorial on St Peter’s Street.
The Town Crier, Stephen Potter will make the official proclamation and then will introduce the Mayor, who will lead a minute’s silence in honour of the D-Day heroes.
Throughout the day, the Union flag will be flown from the roof of St Albans Museum + Gallery.
In the evening, as darkness falls, the Mayor will attend a beacon lighting at the village green by Highfield Park Centre at 9.15pm.
Beacons will be lit across the country at the same time including at Harpenden Common.
In London Colney, the subsidised lunch club at the Caledon Community Centre will have a D-Day themed lunch while the anniversary flag will be flown at the war memorial.
Earlier this week, piper George Carr played at the de Havilland Aircraft Museum in Shenley as part of the commemorations,
His selection of pieces included Highland Laddie, which honours the memory of Bill Millin, personal piper to Lord Lovat, who played the tune to pipe ashore troops during the landings on Sword Beach.
Later in the day, Bill played at Benouville Bridge, seized in the early hours of D-Day by British Airborne troops transported by Horsa gliders. The capture of Benouville and nearby Ranville Bridge ensured that allied troops could break out from the beach heads. They were later renamed Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge respectively, in memory of their liberators.
George played in the Museum’s Walter Goldsmith Hangar, which houses three wartime Mosquitos and the Horsa Glider exhibit. The Horsa was designed and built in secret in the early years of the war at Salisbury Hall, on the site now occupied by the Museum.
