TODAY is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Anyone who has seen the film The Longest Day will remember the scene at Pegasus Bridge when the real Pipe Major Willie Millin recreated his D-Day bravery of playing the bagpipes while under fire.
He led Lord Lovat’s SAS to the relief of the soldiers who had landed by glider in the dead of night to capture the strategically critical bridge. Pipers leading soldiers into battle had been banned by the British Army. Lovat is reported to have told Millin: “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”
Thousands of Scots took part in D-Day and the battles that followed. My dad was among them. On June 6, 1944, he was on his ship off Normandy. Petty Officer AC Roche, from the Glasgow suburb of Clarkston, saw six years of wartime naval service, finishing up in the British colony of Singapore.
There, he witnessed Lord Mountbatten take the formal surrender of the Japanese, whose lightning 1942 defeat of the British garrison in Singapore dealt a great blow to the British Empire, from which it would never ultimately recover.
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Britain struggled to come to terms with the loss of empire. The USA became the world’s military and economic superpower. Germany and Japan made spectacular industrial recoveries. Britain could no longer afford to be a first-rank military power.
Yet, it still believed it had a right to be at the top table of world affairs. The core problem was that it couldn’t work out what sort of country it wanted to be. Its failure to find a solution to that dilemma led the American statesman Dean Acheson to remark: “Britain has lost an empire, but failed to find a role.”
By the mid-1960s, the UK had begun to recognise that its place was in Europe. That became a reality in 1973, when it joined the European Economic Community, the forerunner of the EU. We enjoyed 40 years as a successful EU member state. Brexit has taught us that the grass is not greener on the other side. Indeed, it is parched, its lushness turned to tumbleweed.
Not since the 1930s has the world faced such an unstable global environment as it does now. War has returned to Europe. Russia grows more belligerent, as does China. The United States is in a state of great political instability. The hard right is on the rise globally. Climate change threatens us all.
And where is Britain? By its own Brexit hand, it stands apart from its friends, allies and markets in Europe, uncertain about its great Atlantic ally, the USA.
My dad fought for a free Europe. A lifelong Conservative voter, he believed Britain did the right thing when it joined the EEC.
We might think hard today about the peace he helped win. We might think hard today about putting rejoining the EU at the heart of the general election campaign. To stay silent is perhaps to do a disservice to the sacrifices made on D-Day.
D-Day brought peace to Europe and eight decades of peace and prosperity.
We can win back our European status. Vote for that on July 4.
Martin Roche is a retired public relations executive and writer
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