Tears flow on pilgrimage for lost friends

VISITORS to war cemeteries can rarely fail to be moved.

And yesterday in Bayeux thousands of British D-Day veterans choked back their emotions in a moving pilgrimage to honour lost friends.

They had come to pay their respects in a service to commemorate the Normandy landings, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, French president Jacques Chirac and British prime minister Tony Blair.

But away from the assembled leaders, the day's real VIPs stood in brilliant sunshine on the cemetery's manicured lawns among the horse chestnut trees and the rows upon rows of white gravestones.

Veterans were solemn and tearful as the names brought back faces from their youth.

Bayeux was the first French town of importance to be liberated by the allied troops, the view from the graves dominated by the spires of the town's ancient cathedral.

It is home to France's largest Commonwealth war cemetery of WWII the 4,219 graves a testament to the savage fighting 60 years ago.

Across the road is the Bayeux Memorial commemorating the death of another 1,801 men.

Two old pals, stood contemplating the name of one private, cut down in his youth on D-Day.

Ken McDermott, 77, and Ken Mursell, 79, have been friends since they were schoolboys back home in Anfield, Liverpool.

Mr McDermott, joined the Royal Horse Artillery, on his father's advice, as there would at least always be clean water and fresh hay about, he was told.

His friend became a Regimental Sergeant Major with the Coldstream Guards, both were part of the "frolic" to liberate Europe.

"I felt the need to come back today because today's date, June 6, stays in the mind of people our age," Mr McDermott said. "It generates all sorts of feelings and emotions.

"I'm here because this grave stands before me now."

He was sent off to war with rosary beads by his Catholic family, Mr Mursell, a Protestant, carried a bible. Their separate schools fought each other over the religious divide in their home town.

But here all creeds and ranks were buried side by side, the Protestant next to Catholic or Jew, the major next to a private 'you were all in it together in 1944', they said.

"I think the intensity of the relationships you made under grave stress has a quality about them you can't recapture again in life," Mr McDermott said.

Mr Mursell, added: "We all saw each other at moments of weakness, you could look at a guy trembling, on the verge of cracking, and if you had a bit extra courage, you shared it with him, and helped to pull him back. You got strength from each other. It ties a firm knot."