D-Day Update: King joins world leaders to mark 80th anniversary of Normandy landings

• The King, Queen and Chancellor Rishi Sunak will attend Britain’s national commemorations at the British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer.

• Prince Charles is due to attend the Canada Remembrance Day ceremony at Juno Beach Centre in Cusco-le-Mer.
• Prince Charles will attend an official international ceremony at Omaha Beach in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, along with more than 25 heads of state and military veterans from around the world.
• The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh will attend the British Legion Remembrance Service at the National Memorial Arboretum.

• A convoy of 80 ships paraded in Falmouth. In 1944, about 27,000 American soldiers departed from the Falmouth area for Normandy as part of the Normandy landings.

• The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester will attend “D-Day 80: Commemorating the Normandy Landings” at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

A military piper played a dirge at sea at the exact moment of the 1944 beach invasion, kicking off ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.

Royal family members and world leaders are due to gather with military veterans in the northern French region on Thursday to mark the anniversary.

On Gold Beach in Arromanches, Major Trevor Macy-Lilley performed the Highland Laddie as he came ashore, paying tribute to fallen veterans who led the largest seaborne invasion in military history.

The piece is also a tribute to the lone piper who played at the Normandy landings and was never hit by a shot.

Maj. Macy Lilly began her tour of duty aboard a multipurpose landing craft before being transported to shore in a DUKW amphibious vehicle.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was seen arriving at Gold Beach ahead of the memorial service.

Also on Thursday, the royal couple will attend the UK’s national service of remembrance at the Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer, where they will pay tribute to fallen soldiers alongside Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.

On 6 June 1944, over 300 British, Belgian and American paratroopers landed on a field near Saint-Émileville, designated Landing Point K.

Among the 250 British soldiers was Corporal Addie Carter, the first woman to pass the course with P Company of the Parachute Regiment.

Also jumping was Lieutenant Max Phillips, whose great-uncle, Major William Tye Woods, landed at Sword Beach on D-Day.

One poet said it was “deeply moving” to perform his poem in front of Normandy landings veterans at the commemoration ceremony.

Thirty-year-old spoken word poet Tomos Roberts read a specially written piece. The people who gave us this day on stage at an event in Portsmouth in front of hundreds of spectators, including the King, Queen, Prince Charles and Rishi Sunak.

But Roberts, who has more than 130,000 followers on Instagram and 50,000 subscribers on YouTube, said the people he was most hoping to please were the dozens of Normandy invasion veterans who were there.

He said: “The people who were really thrilled to be performing for me were actually the veterans who were in attendance today.

“I feel like this may be the last Normandy Landings Anniversary to be attended by those who were there at the time. That really resonated with me as I was writing this poem.”