On Monday 5 October 2015 I met my old school friends Michael and Peter in the central car park of Sainte-Mère-Église, the little town in Basse Normandie immortalised in "The Longest Day", which showed the US airborne landing around - and unfortunately for some of the men directly onto - the town including the hapless John Steele who landed right on the church and was suspended by his parachute. 33 at he time, he miraculously survived the battle, but died of cancer aged 56.

The town obviously receives many tourists, who invariably visit the Airborne Museum just off the central square. This is - as are all the D-Day museums I have seen - a beautifully laid out and informative place to get a real feel for the events of that and subsequent days. It is also of course very moving to see the actual equipment used by - and read information about - those brave men who began the liberation of Europe. Most were very young and very many gave their lives to secure our freedom from Naziism.

From Sainte-Mère-Église we moved on to Carentan, the title of one of the "Band of Brothers" episodes, but we did not have time to see much there and so this will await another visit.

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