D-Day Plus 70 Years

OVERNIGHT, everyone was gone. That is one of the memories of D-Day in the communities around a church only a few miles from the sea at Portsmouth - one of the ports of departure for military personnel taking part in the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 and the beginning of the push towards Nazi Germany. Seventy years later, the memories of people in the area have been collected by schoolchildren as part of a project run by the church, which has a particular link with D-Day.

Christ Church, Portsdown, is marking its connection with D-Day through the school project and other events. ‘Some of the planning for D-Day was done at Southwick House, which is about five miles from here,’ the Rev Andy Wilson, Vicar of Christ Church, Portsdown, tells 'The War Cry'.

By the time of D-Day, the Allied commanders - including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander - were at Southwick House. The British Second Army headquarters was also in the area. Andy explains: ‘On 4 June 1944, General Sir Miles Dempsey, who was the Commander of the British Second Army, came, along with his headquarters staff, to Christ Church and held a vigil. Effectively, it was a service to pray for the D-Day operation. The parishioners were not allowed anywhere near it, because everything was top secret. But the church was full of military personnel.’

Andy has seen a copy of the order of service for the vigil. It included a request for God’s help in the efforts to end oppression and bring freedom to Europe and peace to the world.

In the years since, the church has developed a tradition of holding a memorial service on the Sunday nearest the anniversary of D-Day. This year, to mark the 70th anniversary, the church is holding extra events and has run the school project.

‘We brought together some of the people in the area who remember D-Day, and the youngsters from our local secondary school interviewed them about their memories. The idea was to create a resource that could be used by the school and the church, but we also wanted to bring together different generations in our community. There are a lot of memories. People who were children around D-Day remember the streets being lined with armoured vehicles and packed with military. They woke up one morning and they had all gone.’

More than 4,000 Allied troops were killed on D-Day itself. Andy says that the annual church service is an act of thanksgiving for those who gave their lives in the war. ‘It’s not a celebration of war but it is an act of remembrance.’

He says that 70 years after people held a vigil in the church for the end of oppression, Christ Church is holding another prayer vigil which ‘will include prayers for peace in areas of conflict in today’s world’.

‘We want to remember that God answered prayer 70 years ago. But we also want to bring to mind that God still answers prayer. Our D-Day commemorations are about not only the past but also the present. At the heart of everything we are doing is this: God is still relevant today.’

UK & Ireland War Cry 7 June 2014