The Scottish Sun

BRITISH paratroopers will drop in on Normandy on June 6 to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day – the freedom of Europe from the Nazi yoke.

European events this year pay tribute to the Battle of Arnhem and other epic moments that led to the German surrender. BILL TODD looks at what you can see.

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THE D-Day Anniversary Air Show at RAF Duxford, Cambs, takes place today and tomorrow. It will feature aircraft similar to what would have been seen over the Normandy beaches. Visit iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/iwm-duxford/air-shows.

HMS Belfast, the last surviving Second World War Royal Navy Cruiser of her type in the world, played a significant role in supporting the Normandy landings.

The ship, moored on the Thames in London, reportedly fired one of the first shots on D-Day itself. This weekend she will mark the 70th anniversary by hosting family D-Day themed activities on board. They include a self-guided trail around the floating museum, left, medal making and T-shirt painting activities – as well as the chance to meet an HMS Belfast veteran and witness the ship’s 4in guns being fired. See hmsbelfast@iwm.org.uk.

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NORMANDY

IN Operation Overlord, Allied forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast on D-Day – the largest amphibious and airborne assault in history.

More than 60,000 British troops went ashore on day one. First to land were the airborne forces who captured Pegasus Bridge and freed the first building, the Cafe Gondrée (memorial-pegasus.org).

The invasion was followed by the Battle Of Normandy, bloody fighting that raged into August before the capture of Caen – where William the Conqueror is buried – and the liberation of Paris.

D-Day commemorations include a firework display on June 5 across 24 towns along landing beaches. A ceremony to mark the liberation of Ranville, the first village to be freed, will be followed by a parachute drop by 16 Air Assault Brigade.

The Queen and Prince Philip will be on Sword Beach on June 6 to mark the 70th anniversary.

Other events include a picnic on Omaha Beach, vintage vehicle rallies and reconstructions of Allied camps.

The Liberation Tattoo from June 7-9 will bring together 650 British, French, Belgian, Canadian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, American and German military musicians. There will be Second World War re-enactments at Ambleteuse, just north of Boulogne, in July.

Bethune, north of Arras, will mark its liberation on August 29-31.

Permanent features of the invasion beaches include Pegasus Bridge.

At Arromanches are the remains of the floating prefab mulberry harbour.

Just outside Bayeux is the largest British Second World War cemetery in France, with 4,144 Commonwealth graves.

On the cliff above “Bloody” Omaha Beach, featured in the film Saving Private Ryan, is the cemetery for 9,387 US dead.

And in St Mère Église, a model of a US paratrooper John Steele hangs from the church tower to mark TRIBUTE . . . St Mère Église para, where he was trapped as above, and Omaha Beach site the battle raged below.

Go: NORMANDY: Leger Holidays has a D-Day Landings In Normandy tour by coach via Calais.

The four-day tour, from £249, visits the invasion beaches and landing grounds. The five-day tour, from £309, includes inland battlegrounds.

See visitbattlefields.co.uk.

Brittany Ferries offers a 70th Anniversary D-Day self-drive tour which includes Port en Bessin, Arromanches and Caen, from £238. See brittanyferries.co.uk/holidays/ FRANCE LINKS: the70th-normandy.com normandy-dday.com

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BELGIUM

THE Battle Of The Bulge was a last desperate offensive by the Germans to halt the relentless Allied advance.

Large tank formations attacked through the dense Ardennes forest in December, 1944, achieving complete surprise. It was America’s costliest WWII battle in terms of casualties.

The attackers besieged the town of Bastogne but when the Germans demanded its surrender the American commander sent the classic one-word reply: “Nuts!” The town of

Mons will celebrate its liberation from September 5-7 with Tanks In Town, the biggest parade of historic armoured vehicles in Europe.

Go: BELGIUM: Leger Holidays has four and five-day trips available for clients to explore the Battle Of The Bulge. Features include the Siegfried Line, Bastogne, Malmedy and the Band Of Brothers defence of the village of Foy. The tour costs from £269. For details see visitbattlefields.co.uk or call 0844 846 0808.

BELGIUM LINKS: belgiumtheplaceto.be bastogne-tourisme.be.

TANK LIBERATION . . . centre of Mons and Sherman

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NETHERLANDS

killed and 6,500 taken prisoner. The story is told in Oosterbeek’s Hartenstein Museum, a former hotel in beautiful grounds used as British HQ. The Liberation Route in Holland has 80 audio information points across North Brabant, Arnhem, Nijmegen and the Veluwe.

Each is marked by a boulder and tells moving stories about local civilians and soldiers who fought there. Download the stories as MP3s at liberationroute.com/lr/luisterplekken.

Go: NETHERLANDS: The five-night Operation Market Garden coach tour run by Spirit Of Remembrance will cover Grave Bridge and the battles at Nijmegen and Arnhem as well as landing zones and the National Liberation and Airborne Museums.

Led by battlefield guide, Colonel Christopher Newbould, the tour will include a ceremony of remembrance at Oosterbeek cemetery, where local children still lay flowers on our soldiers’ graves, and, weather permitting, a commemorative parachute drop at Ginkel Heath. The tour is from September 18-22 and is £960pp, based on two sharing. Visit spiritofremembrance.com/page/market-garden-tour or call 01634 233 785.

NETHERLANDS LINKS: BRIDGE TOO FAR . . . battleground Arnhem as it is today marketgarden70.nl, holland.com OPERATION Market Garden in September 1944 aimed to capture a chain of bridges across Holland, giving Allied forces access to Germany.

But it went wrong from the start. Paratroopers from the 1st British Airborne Division landed on large formations of German tanks, and their radios did not work. Of the 11,000 British and Polish troops who went in, only about 700 reached Arnhem Bridge where they fought ferociously before surrendering after four days.

Only 2,198 men made it back. 1,300 were

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THE border region of Rureifel offers wonderful walking and cycling between Arnhem and north Luxembourg.

A former railway line is now a 100-mile cycle route. The Historisch-Literarische Wanderwege has hiking trails to the Siegfried Line (Westwall) network of bunkers and the “dragons’ teeth” tank traps where the Allies bulldozed into TRAP . . . German bunker Germany.

Go: GERMANY: One cycling tour leads from Arnhem via Nijmegen, Venlo and Roermond to the Eifel, site of the Battle Of Hurtgenwald (Oct-Nov, 1944). Another combines the Hurtgen Forest with the history of the Ardennes.

Prices for a three-night trip start at around £190 for a three-night trip. See rureifel-tourismus.de/projekte/ liberation-route-europe.html.

GERMANY LINKS: germany.travel/en

POLAND – a partner in the Liberation Route Europe tourist trail – has different memories of the war and is home to notorious concentration camp Auschwitz.

The Nazis left in 1945 but the Poles had no cause to celebrate as the invading Russians began 45 years of communist occupation.

The Polish focus is on the Warsaw Uprising and this year it celebrates the 25th anniversary of the first free elections after the war. Gdansk’s upcoming Museum Of The Second World War will be holding exhibitions in Warsaw next February and in Gdansk in March and opens to the public in 2016.

For more details, see muzeum 1939.pl/en/ Go: TOUR . . . Gdansk POLAND: Holts’s seven-day World War Two In Poland tour visits Gdansk, then called Danzig, where the Germans first attacked on September 1, 1939.

Also included are the Polish destroyer Blyskawica, Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair at Rastenberg, concentration camps and the ’44 Rising Museum.

The tour departs August 6 and costs £1,455 per person, based on two sharing. Visit holts.co.uk/tours/world-war-ii/ world-war-two-in-poland or call 01293 865 000.

POLAND LINKS: gdansk.pl/en/ p o l a n d . travel/en-gb/

c: SHARI ABBOTT

GERMANY

POLAND

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INFAMOUS . . . Auschwitz camp

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