RICHARD Hammond drove Monty’s Rolls Royce to D-Day commemorations in France yesterday – amid warnings the 80th anniversary was a last chance to link youngsters with the heroes that won Europe’s freedom.
The legendary TV presenter revealed he had goosebumps retracing the journeys of Britain’s top wartime general Bernard Montgomery.
Monty’s gleaming Rolls Royce Wraith landed in Normandy three days after D-Day in 1944, on the orders of Winston Churchill, to reassure the newly freed French that the Allies wouldn’t retreat.
Hammond said the journey was “incredibly moving” as he met veterans and French civilians who remembered seeing the car 80 years ago.
He told The Sun: “We know this car has driven these roads before.
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“It is genuinely moving. It humanises vast events and makes you realise what took place.
“It was awesome turning up in Monty’s Rolls Royce, I had goosebumps.”
He added: “Not everyone who sees it knows it was Montgomery’s staff car but people see it and applaud.
“It is so regal, so majestic this car says, ‘Calm down, everything is ok. We’ve got it’.
“That’s what Montgomery wanted to say. It’s a statement of calm.
“And that’s what people wanted to know when they had been living in a time of chaos and death and destruction.”
More than 150,000 troops took part in the largest invasion in history on June 6 1944 that began the Nazi’s retreat from France, and ultimately led to Hitler’s defeat.
Today’s anniversary has added poignancy as so few World War Two veterans are still alive.
Soldiers in their teens on D-Day are all in their nineties today. There is only “a handful” still alive.
Hammond’s passenger Brigadier Mike Caldicott said: “This is probably the one of the last big D-Day events where we have living veterans.
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“Younger generations need to see and understand what happened here.
“By passing on that legacy we can try and avoid the same mistakes being made again.
“To be part of that is a huge honour.”
He said Churchill had ordered Gen Montgomery to take the car to Normandy as a show of Britain’s intent.
He added: “As D-Day approached Winston Churchill decided it would be a really powerful message if the head of the Army was in Rolls Royce Wraith.
“Nothing cries, ‘We are here to stay, we are here to win, than the Rolls Royce.”
The car had been kept at the Royal Logistics Corps museum and was occasionally used to drive Princess Anne, the unit’s Colonel in Chief.
But Brig Caldicott said the car was falling into disrepair until a chance meeting with petrol head Hammond at Car Fest last year.
He said: “The car was mechanically sound but the body work was tatty, the wood was rotting. It was starting to deteriorate.”
Hammond agreed to help restore and bring it back to France.
They sailed from Portsmouth on Tuesday and visited Juno Beach, Monty’s HQ and Arromanches, a centre of commemorative events next to Gold Beach where the first British troops landed 80 years ago.
