‘Eternal debt’: 200 surviving veterans are focus of this

Memorials in England and Normandy were curated in the knowledge that it may well be the last opportunity to thank the former soldiers in person

At the dying of the day, as dark descended across the beaches of Normandy, where the blood of so many thousands was spilled 80 years ago, each of the headstones of the 4,600 men lying in the Bayeux war cemetery was aglow.

King Charles, in his first significant pronouncement since his cancer diagnosis in February, had spoken earlier in Portsmouth of the “eternal debt” owed to the 10,000 casualties who had embarked from England’s south coast with the awesome task of “replacing tyranny with freedom”.