Reflections of Thetford Issue 3

D-Day Remembered

School Community Art Project

Written by Amber Pullen

Thursday 6th June 2024 is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Heritage and Education Officers from Thetford Town Council have been working with local schools to create an art installation that will be displayed at Thetford Guildhall, to remember and commemorate those that were involved in D-Day. D-Day, also known as Operation Overlord, took place on the 6th June 1944 after being delayed for 24 hours due to bad weather. Allied forces launched the largest combined naval, air and land operation in the history of warfare. D-Day marked the beginning of the Normandy Campaign to liberate Northwest Europe from German occupation. Operation Overlord unsurprisingly took over a year to plan.

D-Day involved simultaneous landings of tens of thousands of troops on five separate beaches in Normandy. US troops at Omaha and Utah, Canadian troops at Juno and British troops at Gold and Sword.

The operation started in the early hours of the 6th June with paratroopers being dropped behind enemy lines to secure the areas behind the beaches, capture bridges, cut off roads and deactivate artillery positions. Next the navy bombarded the German defences along the beaches in preparation for the troops landing. At 6:30am the landings began starting with Omaha and Utah beaches. In total, 7000 ships delivered 160,000 troops on D-Day alone.

There is not one exact figure for the number of people that died on D-Day with numbers ranging from 4,000 to 10,000 for Allied and German forces.

Thetford Primary and Secondary Schools have taken part in photography and woodwork projects with Thetford Town Council, to remember and commemorate those who fought on D-Day and soldiers from Thetford who lost their lives in the Second World War. The project will culminate in an art installation at the Guildhall.

Photography Project

Year 9 and 10 photography and history students from Thetford Academy and Thetford Grammar School have been working on a photography project to commemorate those who lost their lives on D-day.

The art installation will consist of photographs taken by the students of their peers dressed as soldiers from the Second World War. Each portrait of a student will represent 25 men that were killed on the 6th June 1944, using the figures from the Roll of Honour on the British Normandy Memorial.

The students that took part in the project, completed a photography workshop with Martin Angus, who has been a photographer for over 20 years. The session focused on portrait photography, Martin taught the students about different styles of portrait photography with a focus on building a relationship between the photographer and model. He spoke about the importance of making the person as comfortable as possible to capture the essence of who they are in their photo.

“It makes me feel great to participate and I believe I learnt a lot from taking the portraits” Luis – Thetford Academy.

The students then went on to take portraits of their peers with the guidance of Martin. They used some soldiers’ uniforms whilst having their headshots taken to recreate soldier portraits from the Second World War and make them look as realistic as possible. We were thrilled to see how professional and dedicated the students were when taking their portraits. We spoke about how they thought the soldiers would have felt whilst they were having

their photographs taken and the students really got into character whilst completing the work. With students commenting that “it felt like I was really there as the person” and “it was a unique experience.”

When asked how it made them feel to take part in this project for D-Day, students responded, “It made me feel a bit emotional, but I also felt happy that I got the opportunity” and “It makes me feel good as I contributed to the community.”

Woodwork Project

Year 5 and 6 students from Thetford Grammar School, Redcastle Family School, Norwich Road Academy and Admirals Academy have been working on a woodwork project, creating crosses to commemorate those from Thetford who died in the Second World War.

The art installation will consist of 45 crosses made by over 100 children. Each cross has a dog tag of the name of the soldier from the Thetford Roll of Honour.

“It felt good to know we still think about those who fought in WW2” Eryn – Thetford Grammar School

The resources for the students to make the crosses and dog tags were made for Thetford Town Council by Thetford Men’s Shed. Our Education Officer then visited the schools to lead a session with the students. In this session the students learnt about D-Day, including the planning and lead up as well as the day itself. The children went on to learn about the use of animals in D-Day and about paratrooping dogs. They learnt about paradog Glen and his handler Emile Corteil, both of whom are included in the book D-Day Dog by Tom Palmer. Sections from the

book were used to create their own black out poems about D-Day. A selection of these poems will be displayed alongside the art installation. Tom Palmer has also very kindly donated a signed copy of his book and signed bookmarks for students to win that have entered the black out poetry challenge. Finally, the students made their crosses for the fallen from Thetford. This included colouring in a remembrance poppy and a soldier’s silhouette. The last touch was hanging the dog tag on their cross. The dog tag contained their soldier’s name, regiment and date of death, if known. These will be hung in the Guildhall alongside the photographs from the project with the senior schools.

When asked for 3 words to describe the project and how it felt to take part in it the students said “Commemorative, enlightening and interesting”. They also said, “It felt amazing to make the crosses for them and commemorate those from Thetford.” All the work from the local students will be open for the public to come and view from 11am-9pm on Thursday 6th June in the Guildhall upper gallery. Their work will also be included as a moment of reflection at the Guildhall World War Experience on the 7th and 8th June where visitors will be taken on an immersive theatrical tour.

Tickets are now on sale and can be bought at: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/the-carnegiethetford/e-jbaryz

Special thanks to Martin Angus for working on the photography project, Magic Floor Productions for providing us with costumes, Tom Palmer for his help and book donations and Thetford Men’s Shed for making the resources for the woodwork project. Finally, a big thank you to all the students who have taken part in the projects, we appreciate all your hard work to help remember what happened 80 years ago.