Normandy marks 81st anniversary of pivotal D-Day landings

Every year on June 6, thousands of people head to Normandy in France to honor those involved in the D-Day landings during World War Two. 

This year is the 81st anniversary with ceremonies and events taking place at all of the landing beaches. This historic battle continues to attract a constant stream of visitors year-round but the actual anniversary day is always a special event.

At dawn on June 6, 1944 around 150,000 American, British and Canadian troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. Both sides took heavy casualties but their successful landing marked the key turning point in defeating Nazi Germany.

Very few of those who took part are alive today but generations of visitors continue to visit the landing sites.

Eddy Hall is on a guided tour of the D-Day sites. We met at Sword Beach, one of the landing sites for British troops back in 1944

"We have to remember the sacrifice, the thousands of people who came up this beach, with very little, very little expectation on their survival" he told CGTN.

Katrina Pakenham was part of another group visiting Sword Beach where her father-in-law came ashore more than eight decades ago.

"It's very sad, actually," she explained. "I felt quite tearful this morning, actually, when we went into one of the cemeteries…..the graves, all the really young soldiers."

There are statues, monuments and tributes to those who came ashore all along the coast. The Americans took the heaviest casualties at Omaha beach and nearby Pointe du Hoc. A memorial garden at the latter is also the site of a massive statue dedicated to world peace by Chinese artist Yao Yuan.

It was gifted by Yao to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day. Made of oxidized steel, it is 10 meters tall and weighs 8 tons. The artist has erected similar world peace statues in South Korea, Russia and Friendship Square in Beijing.

There are dozens of military war grave cemeteries across Normandy which tourists visit, along with relatives of the dead and students of history.

Between June and August 1944, an estimated 50,000 Allied troops were killed in the Battle for Normandy, along with 30,000 Germans and thousands more injured.

There are far fewer memorials, though, for the 20,000 French civilians who died, many in Allied bombing raids.

Reduced to rubble

The nearby city of Caen, which was occupied by the Germans, was a key objective as it controlled the bridges and roads to the rest of France.

The original orders were for the British and Canadian troops to push on and take Caen the same day they landed. But it didn't go to plan.

What followed was weeks of intense fighting against stiff German resistance. But the Allies had air superiority, carpet bombing Caen and the surrounding towns and villages.

By the time the Allied troops entered Caen, the city was reduced to rubble.

Today it is home to the country's main D-Day Museum, Memorial de Caen. 

The Museum's historian Christophe Prime explained: "The level of destruction was enormous, between 75 and 80 per cent of Caen was destroyed in the bombing. After the war everything had to be torn down so we could rebuild the city." 

It took decades for Caen to recover and rebuild. Today it's a bustling modern city but one where memories of the Second World War remain deeply entrenched.