Category Archives: France

Arts, Britain, France, History, Second World War

Normandy Memorial Statue

D-DAY MEMORIAL

Three British soldiers are depicted here charging up the beach and into the hellish unknown, their camaraderie beautifully captured in bronze.

THE dwindling band of brothers who took part in the greatest military operation of all time will, on Thursday, 6 June, have their first sight of the new monument to their 22,442 comrades who never came home. They have been waiting 75 years for this moment.

The monument has just been erected on the spot where so many young men charged ashore and gave their all. It will be formally unveiled on Thursday – the anniversary of D-Day – in front of veterans, bereaved families and world leaders including the Prime Minister and the French President.

The monument, which is beautifully captured in bronze, is a depiction of the camaraderie of three British soldiers charging up the beach and into the hellish unknown. Standing 9ft tall and weighing several tons, the three figures are not based on any individuals and deliberately carry no regimental markings or insignia. The great D-Day invasion of France on June 6, 1944 involved hundreds of thousands from all the Services and the Merchant Navy, too. The ultimate purpose of this colossal multinational endeavour, however, was to put Allied infantry on French soil and keep them there.

That is why the award-winning sculptor David Williams-Ellis has distilled the essence of D-Day into this powerful and dynamic study of that quintessential hero – the ordinary British soldier doing his duty.

“They are in standard battle dress and in my mind one is a lance corporal and the other two privates,” said Mr Williams-Ellis. He spent months researching every aspect of the invasion and talked to many veterans before embarking on this great undertaking.

“There is no rank on them, it’s just a suggestion. I wanted it to be a scene expressing camaraderie and leadership. I will leave the viewer to judge which is the lance corporal.”

Mr Williams-Ellis has also sought to represent the three main fighting components of a standard infantry section. One figure is armed with a Bren light machine gun, one has a Sten machine gun, with the other clasping the trusty Lee Enfield .303 rifle.

“He is just about to get the rifle into his shoulder and fire… I wanted to create something that really had energy.”

The statue is the first phase of a memorial that will not be completed for at least another year. Spread across a 50-acre site at Versur-Mer, overlooking a ten-mile stretch of sand codenamed “Gold Beach”, it will feature stone columns engraved with the names of every serviceman under British command who perished in the invasion and the subsequent 77-day Battle of Normandy.

Among the women honoured will be two brave nurses who were still tending to the wounded when their hospital ship, the Amsterdam, was sunk off Juno Beach.

Every other allied country involved in the landings has long had a national memorial on French soil. Not so Britain – until now. The omission has been a source of disappointment to the veterans who are still raising funds. For them, Thursday’s inauguration ceremony will be a very happy milestone.

Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff and a trustee of the Normandy Memorial Trust, said: “Anyone who talks to the veterans and to the loved ones of those who fell can be under no illusion about how much this memorial means to them. Now it’s really happening.”

The project has been made possible thanks to a £20million grant from the Treasury’s Libor Fund (of penalty fines from errant banks) plus donations from the philanthropist Michael Spencer. Thousands have also been donated by readers of a British national newspaper. However, a further £7.5million is still urgently needed to complete it.

TO understand how the events of 1944, resonate to this day, just listen to some of the heartbreaking messages and testimonies on the memorial’s website. They include the stories of men like Squadron Leader Jack Collins DFC and Bar, from Newcastle, a Typhoon pilot who was killed leading 245 Squadron over Caen in 1944.

His son Mike Collins was four when he died. He talks movingly of his excitement, as a toddler, on seeing his father’s picture in the paper, not realising it was a report of his death. Like all the relatives of those who fell, Mike now cannot wait to see the memorial take shape and to see his gallant father finally included on the Roll of Honour.

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European Union, France, Germany, Government, Immigration, Italy, Politics

The desperate migrants’ route across Europe

EU IMMIGRATION

IN the freezing passes of the Italian Alps, migrants march slowly up an icy incline as they head for France.

The mountains have become an unlikely route for Africans looking for a new life across the border.

Thousands are thought to have tried to traverse the range over the last few months alone, wearing clothing that is unlikely to protect them from the extreme conditions.

Faced with the policies of Italy’s Right-wing government, asylum seekers who arrive by boat on the country’s Mediterranean shores have headed north instead to reach France.

From there they can move on to Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland and – ultimately, for many – Britain.

The latest route used by desperate migrants is increasingly coming to the attention of populist Right-wing political groups that have risen to prominence on the back of Europe’s migrant crisis.

Already, Italy has swung heavily to the right, with interior minister Matteo Salvini turning migrant boats away from harbours. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has made stopping immigration a cornerstone of his philosophy, and young conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for an “axis of the willing” to strengthen borders. Anti-immigrant MEP Christelle Lechevalier – of the renamed French right-wing National Front, now National Rally – last week tried to make political capital out of African migrants crossing from Italy into France at the ski resort of Montgenevre.

Some 26 European nations are in the supposedly border-free Schengen zone, which makes it possible to cross between member states without border controls. But faced with the prospect of mass immigration, police at several border posts are increasingly turning away new arrivals and sending them back to Italy.

As a result, migrants are turning to mountain passes, ski resorts and hiking trails to avoid official checks.

Snow-free in the summer, the Alps are a far less dangerous hike. And even if migrants are caught and sent back to Italy, they can always try again.

Earlier this year there were reports of migrants using the Col de l’Echelle mountain pass into France through thick snowdrifts. At the end of their eight-mile journey, African migrants would simply knock on the first door they saw.

Up to half a million migrants are thought to be in Italy, despite the fall in the number arriving – usually from lawless Libya – in boats across the Mediterranean.

Widespread public reaction to Europe’s migrant crisis has prompted EU nations to belatedly close off entry points and movement routes (as well as proposed detention centres in the Med to process asylum applications). German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the migrant summit agreement as a success, with its vague talk of promises of cash for Third World countries to help them control population flows and loosen proposals to tighten border controls within the EU.

But no European country, let alone any African one, has yet agreed to host a migration centre. Mrs Merkel’s firm grip on Germany, which she has led since 2005, has weakened in recent months. Interior minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian CSU party, was so incensed with last week’s deal that Mrs Merkel’s governing alliance was in serious jeopardy of collapsing. There were fears he was on the verge of ordering German police to start turning new arrivals away (in direct defiance of Mrs Merkel’s wishes).

Last Friday’s summit agreement failed to nail down any firm agreements on exactly how migrants arriving in EU countries on the Mediterranean coast could be dispersed elsewhere.

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Britain, France, Military, Syria, United States

Debrief: Syrian strikes on Assad’s chemical storage units

SYRIA

BRITISH military commanders were so concerned about Russian retaliation during the missile strikes on Syria that two RAF fighter jets were kept back at high readiness to guard the airbase in Cyprus.

As RAF Tornado GR4s flew to help launch cruise missiles against the Assad regime, two Typhoon fighters stayed behind, poised on the runway at the base in Akrotiri.

. See RAF Tornados to be withdrawn in 2019

British commanders feared Moscow could (and it remains possible) launch an immediate act of revenge and so kept the Typhoon jets at high readiness to scramble and shoot down any incoming missiles.

The Pentagon included the two jets in a list of assets that took part in the assault under the cover of darkness last Saturday, even though they remained at the British base.

The military operation unfolded early, with British, US and French forces co-ordinating extremely precise strikes on Assad’s chemical stockpiles.

At about 2am UK time, RAF warplanes helped wipe out a chemical weapons storage plant in just 120 seconds without even entering Syrian airspace.

Four British Tornado jets fired a total of eight Storm Shadow cruise missiles, each worth £750,000 at the Him Shinshar chemical weapons storage facility, 15 miles west of Homs. It was struck by a further 14 missiles fired by the French and the US and razed to the ground.

The RAF Tornados were protected by a further two Typhoon fighter jets that flew in escort to an area north of Cyprus designated as a ‘firing box’.

A total of three suspected chemical weapons facilities were hit by 105 missiles fired from warplanes and jets from the three allies.

The other facilities have been confirmed as the Barzah research and development centre in greater Damascus, which was hit by 76 US missiles, and the chemical weapons bunker facility at Him Shinshar – four miles from the storage facility – which was hit by seven missiles fired from French Mirage fighter jets. Rafale fighters from France were also involved in the operation.

Tornado GR4

RAF Tornado GR4s from Akrotiri in Cyprus launched Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Syria that has set back Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities by many years.

The mission was set in motion at 10:30pm last Friday in a telephone call between Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson and his counterparts in Paris and Washington. The Prime Minister was then informed that the mission would soon be under way.

At 1am four Tornado jets and two Typhoon jets took off from RAF Akrotiri. They returned to base safely and landed at about 2:15am. Russia did not use its missile defence system to fire back, despite claims from the Kremlin it had shot down weapons in response.

It can also be confirmed that Syria fired 40 surface-to-air missiles but none of them hit the incoming missiles and most of them were fired after the last Syrian target was already destroyed.

In a Cabinet meeting held last Thursday, the Defence Secretary talked through the procedure and the efforts made into minimising the risk of civilian casualties and protecting troops.

Theresa May travelled to Chequers on Friday, where at about 11pm she filmed a video message announcing she had approved the mission. The RAF was then duty bound to act.

Mrs May’s video message was broadcast at 2:10am on Saturday, just after she received a call confirming RAF jets were back on the ground and safe.

Images seen showed the tense final preparations at Akrotiri before the operation was launched. One showed a Flight Lieutenant carrying a pistol holder and inspecting a missile attached to the wing of the Tornados.

Each GR4 was flown by a two-man crew drawn from the RAF’s 31 Squadron, known as the Gold Stars. These airmen form part of 903 Expeditionary Air Wing based at Akrotiri. Crews have been conducting air strikes on Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since 2015. All eight British missiles found their targets.

Early indications suggest that President Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities have been set back many years. The target choices have been described as being ‘very methodical’.

 

THE USE of an Astute-class submarine armed with Tomahawk missiles was ruled out in the hours leading up to the strike. Despite this, Russia was duped into launching a naval operation to find a British attack submarine that was excluded from the mission.

It was decided that the Storm Shadow cruise missiles on the RAF Tornado jets were the best assets available.

However, intelligence suggests that one kilo-class Russian hunterkiller left its position at Tartus in Syria to find the British submarine. Two Russian frigates and an anti-submarine aircraft were thought to have also been pointlessly searching for it.

The final plans drawn up for the strikes did not include a UK submarine. The Russians were simply outsmarted.

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