Luc-sur-Mer. Normandy. France.

Today we went to visit the beach where my dad Leslie Milford Smith, landed on D-Day in June 1994.
When I was around 16 years of age, I asked him a lot of questions about his time then, as a young man of 25 years of age. He wouldn’t talk about it, except for now and then maybe a funny story, like his sergeant who commandeered a hen from a farm and took it with him. It laid an egg for him fairly regularly!
I have a very old photo of him which my dad took, of the hen, which became known as Clara, sitting on the sergeant’s shoulder.
Dad then found a book with his regimental history of the landings in 1944 and annotated the margins with notes. Stories which he couldn’t tell me but wrote down instead.
I took the book with me today, and have a photo of me standing on the beach holding it.
It was so very moving to be there.
If he had not returned I and my sister would never have existed.
I’ve included two photos in extras where he has commented.
As we had finished some lunch at a very pleasant beach side café, a man came along and asked me if we would be vacating our table soon, as he had noticed us gathering our things together.
He and his wife were looking for a table in the shade.
All this was in French, to which I replied in French and we had a conversation. They wanted to know where I was from, so I told them what we were doing. They were very moved when I showed them dad’s book.
They wanted to know all about him, and how old he was at the time.
A very special day paying homage to my dad and others who were there at the time. Silently watching the sea whilst standing on the sand where I wrote his name.