King Charles III honours a generation that fought, died and waited for freedom

VER-SUR-MER (AP):

King Charles III came to northern France on Thursday to honour the 22,442 British troops who died in the Battle of Normandy.

He also came to honour a generation.

A generation that sacrificed and fought and died and waited through five long years of war, then sent its youngest and bravest to claw their way on to the Normandy beaches and battle through machine-gun fire and artillery blasts to begin the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944, D-Day.

It is also a generation that is quickly passing into history, with the youngest D-Day veterans now nearing their 100th birthdays. That is a reality the king knows firsthand after losing his mother and father, both World War II veterans, over the last three years.

So Charles on Thursday said thank you, perhaps for the last time, to old soldiers and their missing comrades during ceremonies at the British Normandy Memorial overlooking the beaches where UK soldiers landed 80 years ago.

While the number of living veterans is dwindling, “our obligation to remember what they stood for and what they achieved for us all can never diminish,” Charles said, wearing the uniform of field marshal in the British Army.

“Eighty years ago on D-Day, the 6th of June 1944, our nation – and those which stood alongside it – faced what my grandfather, King George VI, described as the supreme test,” he said. “How fortunate we were, and the entire free world, that a generation of men and women in the United Kingdom and other allied nations did not flinch when the moment came to face that test.”

Forty-one of those veterans, medals pinned to their blazers, were guests of honour Thursday, sitting in the shadow of sandstone columns bearing the names of all those who died under British command in the Battle of Normandy. Four told their stories, including Joe Mines, who as a 19-year-old soldier was tasked with clearing mines from the nearby beaches on D-Day.

“I wasn’t a man, I was a boy, and I didn’t have any idea of war and killing,” Mines said in a letter read by actor Martin Freeman. “I was lucky. Yeah, I had lots and lots of luck.”

“So why would I come back? Well, this is the last and only opportunity for me,” Mines said. “The last there will ever be. And it’s because of the lads. I want to pay my respects to those who didn’t make it. May they rest in peace.”

Charles, 75, shrugged off his own recent cancer diagnosis to attend the ceremony for British veterans, even though he chose to skip the larger international ceremony a few miles away. Prince William, the heir to the throne, stood in for the king at that event near Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, joining heads of state and veterans from around the world to mark the anniversary.

The king is slowly returning to public-facing duties after being sidelined for three months following his diagnosis. While doctors are encouraged by his progress, Charles is still receiving treatment and his schedule will be adjusted as needed to protect his recovery, Buckingham Palace said last month.

With a limited schedule, it’s no surprise he chose to focus on the sacrifices of British soldiers.

UK monarchs have taken a leading role in honouring the nation’s war dead, ever since Charles’ great-grandfather King George V presided over the burial of an unknown soldier of the First World War at Westminster Abbey in 1920.

As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the king is a symbol of the nation and a unifying force for the military who is above party politics.