Donald and Melania Trump will today join European leaders in Normandy to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day where Theresa May today paid tribute heroes who ‘laid down their lives so that we might have a better life’.
In a moving ceremony at dawn today a lone piper played a lament marking the exact moment in 1944 British troops first landed in France and charged across the sand towards their Nazi foes.
Mr Trump and Mrs May join Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau this morning at the five D-Day beaches: Gold, Utah, Omaha, Juno and Sword and meet veterans who fought for freedom.
The President, who will visit Omaha this morning with his First Lady, took off from Shannon in Ireland after tweeting: ‘They did not know if they would survive the hour. They did not know if they would grow old. But they knew that America had to prevail. Their cause was this Nation, and generations yet unborn’.
He wrote as he prepared to leave his Irish hotel for France: ‘A big and beautiful day today!’
Above Gold Beach Theresa May and President Macron attended the inauguration of a new monument listing the names of all 22,442 members of the British armed forces who died in the campaign in northern France over the summer of 1944.
The centrepiece of the new memorial is a bronze sculpture of three British soldiers charging up the beach, and it has been funded by the Normandy Memorial Trust and thousands of Daily Mail readers.
Speaking at the inauguration service, the Prime Minister paid tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice, saying: ‘They laid down their lives so that we might have a better life and build a better world.’
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