The Queen has always paid care and duty to the veterans of the Second World War, having grown up during the conflict and served herself as a mechanic with the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
Fifty years on from the successful D-Day Landings at Omaha Beach in Normandy, The Queen helped lead tributes to the veterans of this pivotal wartime operation in 1994, accompanied by world leaders in ceremonies in London, in Portsmouth (where soldiers departed for France), and then in France on 6 June 1994, exactly 50 years later.
Events in the lead-up to 6 June included a memorial unveiling to Canada’s Second World War soldiers at London’s Green Park, with The Queen and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien attending the ceremony.
On 5 June 1994, The Queen, accompanied by Prince Philip, Princess Anne, Prime Minister John Major, and heads of state from Canada, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, and other countries, watched a D-Day Fleet Review from the Royal Yacht Britannia at Portsmouth before re-tracing the journey undertaken by the Allied soldiers fifty years before.
Later that evening, speaking at a dinner in commemoration of the D-Day anniversary, The Queen spoke of how the invasion “proved what can be achieved, against daunting odds, when governments and people act together with conviction in a common cause.”
The Queen and Prince Philip also took part in D-Day commemorations in Arromanches, France, on 6 June 1994. The Queen reviewed the surviving Allied soldiers marching past the sands where the heads of states were gathered to remember the events of 50 years prior. The veterans were singing “’It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” as The Queen reviewed them.
The Queen and Prince Philip also visited the cemetery at Bayeux to view the graves of nearly 3,400 British soldiers—the veterans who were there reportedly came forward to get a better glimpse of The Queen.
In a speech, The Queen said: “Those of us who were far away can only imagine what it was like and stand back in admiration of those who planned and fought for the establishment of that hard-won bridgehead. It was you, and your comrades and allies fighting on other fronts, who delivered Europe from that yoke of organised barbarism from which the men and women of following generations have been mercifully free. They should remember that they owe that freedom to those who fought and defeated Nazism.”
In her Christmas Message of 1994, she recalled the commemorations: “I shall never forget the events in Normandy last June, when the representatives of the wartime allies commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the D-Day landings. We who were there, and millions of others through television and radio, paid fitting tribute to the courage of those who took part in that epic campaign. As Prince Philip and I stood watching the British veterans march past on the beach at Arromanches, my own memories of 1944 were stirred – of how it was to wait anxiously for news of friends and relations engaged in that massive and hazardous operation; of the subsequent ebb and flow of the battles in France and then in Germany itself; and of the gradual realisation that the war really was at least coming to an end.”
The Queen would attend the 60th anniversary of the D-Day Landings in 2004, and the 75th anniversary commemorations in 2019. In her speech on the 75th anniversary, she said: “75 years ago, hundreds of thousands of young soldiers, sailors and airmen left these shores in the cause of freedom. In a broadcast to the nation at that time, my Father, King George VI, said: “…what is demanded from us all is something more than courage and endurance; we need a revival of spirit, a new unconquerable resolve…” That is exactly what those brave men brought to the battle, as the fate of the world depended on their success.
“Many of them would never return, and the heroism, courage and sacrifice of those who lost their lives will never be forgotten. It is with humility and pleasure, on behalf of the entire country – indeed the whole free world – that I say to you all, thank you.”
