Showbiz | Celebrity News I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice . The King and Queen have hosted four D-Day veterans at Buckingham Palace , hearing moving personal stories and seeing their poignant keepsakes, to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
Football boots carried on the straps of a military backpack, dog tags still bearing blood, and photos of a much cherished wife were among the mementoes shared with Charles and Camilla . Charles, in turn, read aloud from his grandfather’s handwritten diary, recounting George VI’s D-Day entry about the breaking news of the “successful landings” in June 1944. The special meeting was filmed and will be broadcast as part of BBC One’s D-Day 80: Tribute to The Fallen on June 5.
The King and Queen listened intently as Arthur Oborne, 100, of the 49th Division of the 6th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, told how he was shot in the lung, three days after arriving on Gold Beach. His life was saved by his friend Walter, who was killed the next day alongside the rest of his entire unit. Mr Oborne, from Portishead, near Bristol, said: “These are the dog tags which were recovered after I got a bullet through the lung, and there is blood still on some of them.
.. He rescued me, and as a family we will never forget it.
We found that he was killed the day after...
We visited his grave a number of times.” Camilla said: “It must be very difficult .
