It’s the End of an Era!

In two days it’ll be the 80th anniversary of D-Day - a pivotal day which turned the tide of the Second World War and so changed the course of history.

Those of you who read my post last week will know about the charity I co-founded with my dear old Dad back in 2009. D-Day Revisted was established to offer financial and practical assistance to WW2 veterans who wished to return to the battlefields of Europe where they once fought and pay tribute to those they left behind. In doing this we hoped to give our treasured veterans a platform to share their stories far and wide so that future generations would better understand the realities of war and so seek to avoid it at all costs.

So this isn’t a post about photography per se, instead it’s my clumsy final tribute to an extraordinary generation, around fifty of whom are on their way to Normandy now to revisit the communities they helped to liberate eight decades ago.

Any D-Day veteran living today will be around a century old. That in itself is incredible and to be making the long journey to France by car and ferry and car again is no easy task at 100 years of age. It speaks to how important it is to them to be in Normandy on that day. To represent the friends who never made it home from the war as well as those who have passed away since and tell their story. Having been privileged enough to have countless conversations with veterans over the years as they relive their experiences, I feel like I have some inkling as to what it means to them to be there this week but of course I’ll never fully understand. None of us can.

“You see their graves, I see their faces.” one veteran said to me once as we were standing in one of the many immaculate Commonwealth War Grave sites looking out across rows and rows of crisp white stones softened by loose and colourful flowers.

The Second World War is fast transitioning from living memory into the history books. If you’re a millennial like me, you’ll have a sense that all grandparents went through “the war”. In reality, most grandparents these days went through the summer of love! The world turns and everything is as it should be. But I do feel some sadness at the loss of the wartime generation. They were ordinary people, called upon to do extraordinary things. To suffer hardship, loss and serious trauma, but to keep going. To band together with a common sense of purpose and help each other. To be ready to sacrifice everything for a freedom which they might never see.

Having made a lot of octogenarian, nonagenarian and centenarian friends, my feeling is that their experiences in early adulthood made them humble and gave them a better sense of what is truly important in life. In the topsy-turvy world of war, they were forced to learn the hard way how precious life is. Most considered every day a bonus, mindful that it could have all ended on a beach in France on the 6th of June 1944.

D-Day Revisited has been a huge part of my life for 15 years and the veterans I have met along the way have helped to shape me into the person I am today. Being able to join them on their journey down memory lane and share their heartache along with what we would often call the “moments of merriment” has been such a privilege. Words cannot express the extent to which they have enriched my life and I’m pleased that each year I made sure to say as much to them.

That week in June each year was always sacred. In many ways it was the oddest of experiences, one moment you’d be holding a veteran’s hand in tears and the next you’d all be falling about in laughter. There was no judgement, only compassion, kindness and good humour. Between us all - the D-Day Revisited team, the people we built relationships with in Normandy, the D-Day veterans and their friends & families - we created such a community that every trip to Normandy felt like a family reunion. I was never quite able to put my finger on what it was that made it so special and then at the end of our very last trip in 2019, a wonderful lady called Vera Mitchell told me outright: “Your organisation is nothing to do with the war really. Well of course it is, but at the same time it isn’t. It’s about friendship.” And there it was. Why hadn’t I clocked it? It was all about friendship.

I don’t know how to conclude this really and I almost don’t want to because it feels like closing a door that I won’t open again.

As you can imagine, I have a massive collection of photographs to documenting D-Day Revisited’s 11 visits to Normandy in such excellent company. Ahead of the 80th anniversary I’ve been looking back over them and they have triggered so many powerful memories, from the saddest moments to the most hilarious! Now it’s my turn to “see their faces” as those friends we made are no longer with us. I always say that photographs appreciate in value with every passing year and I’ve rarely felt that so keenly as I have looking back over these pictures. They are priceless to me.

Over the past fifteen years we’ve said goodbye to so many veterans as the numbers naturally dwindled and that’s been hard, but I am so so thankful to have been able to call them my friends. I will treasure these photographs and the memories we made for the rest of my life. And I guess that’s how this ends, with sincere and heartfelt gratitude to this extraordinary generation for all they endured eighty years ago and for all they have given us since.