The D-Day 80th Anniversary event in Portsmouth honoured the sacrifice made by 4,414 Allied troops when they set off from the seaside town for France.
Among the veterans watching was JJ Chalmers, a close friend of Prince Harry and an Invictus Games medallist and trustee. He served in the Royal Marines before suffering life-changing injuries from an IED while serving in Afghanistan in May 2011.
Speaking after the ceremony, the former Strictly Come Dancing star told the Mirror: “It was amazing. I’m stuttering, because it’s like an emotional release after. It kind of covered the array of emotions of sorrow reflected and equally joy, and there’s happiness. And there’s a sense of celebration of what was done 80 years ago, and the amazing sort of human endeavour.
“I can begin to relate to what they went through because I was a Royal Marine. My job was to land on beaches and do that job. I have been on a landing craft, and the doors have come down, and I’ve run on. We’ve fired rifles and aircraft have gone overhead.
“But no one was ever shooting back at me. So while I can understand the mechanics of what happened, I can’t begin to understand the severity of what was happening to the individuals."
Queen Camilla meets D-Day veteran Eric Bateman following the UK's national commemorative event (Getty Images)The scale of the combat faced by the D-Day veterans is also hard to fathom, even for a former Marine. JJ continues: “The scale is unimaginable, not just the loss, but the amount of people that it took to get people from here in Portsmouth, and from all across the world, onto the beaches of Normandy. It’s just it’s hard to wrap your head around.”
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But it was hearing the younger voices at the service that really stayed with him. D-Day veteran Eric Bateman’s great-granddaughters, Annabel and Imogen, paid tribute to the veterans saying: “Without them, we would not have the freedom we enjoy today. We will always remember them.”
Without keeping the memories of WWI alive with the help of younger voices, JJ says: “It will just become stories, it will just become history. We should never forget the lessons that were learned, but we have to make a conscious effort not to.”
JJ, who has a daughter Hailey, seven, and son James, five, says, “My kids are just about the age where I would begin to share this specific piece of history, but they’re very aware of my history. Their middle names are Sam and Olivia, after Oli and Sam - friends that I lost in Afghanistan
“So they’re very aware of conflict and the repercussions that it has not just on those that are gone, but those that survive. You want to raise them to have an appreciation of what’s happened in the past, but also to know that they have their today and have their future because of what’s happened in the past."
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