As the nation commemorates the 80th anniversary of VE Day, it takes us back to an extraordinary few Vernon, France, with which our home city Worcester has a friendship pact. It was here in August 1944 a fierce battle, involving the Worcestershire Regiment, to establish a bridgehead was fought and won. The men were ahead of the tanks rumbling across France in the march towards the Seine following D-Day and the mission was to establish a bridge which would support them at Vernon (all bridges between Rouen and Paris had been destroyed). A fierce battle ensued on one steep side of the river, leaving the men to fight yard by yard in wooded terrain. They succeeded in their mission but many of the Worcestershires paid with their lives. Vernon never forgot their sacrifice paying special tribute every August down the ensuing decades. In 2000 a memorial stone quarried from the Malvern Hills, and featuring bronze plaques in French and English, was laid in the forested hillside. It was in this wooded clearing, the site of the 1st Battalion headquarters, to which we made our way in 2009 for an emotional service of remembrance. Fighting past the lumps in our throats and conducted by our founder Dr Donald Hunt, we sang Elgar's 'As Torrents in Summer' and our then chairman Tim Watson joined members of the town in laying a wreath. All of us who made that trip never forgot it. ... See MoreSee Less

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