We mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France

Councillors of all parties, led by our Mayor, Mark Haigh, attended a solemn and moving ceremony at Brentwood Borough Council to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France.

Eighty years ago, men of the 2nd Battalion, the Essex Regiment, stormed Gold Beach in Normandy, before proceeding to capture the town of Bayeux, and later, to fight their way through the bloody bocage of the countryside to beseige Falaise, in some of the fiercest fighting of 1944.

The Warley-based unit was no stranger to war, having formed the rear guard at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. Brentwood itself was bombed, and, by 1944, hit by Germany's V-weapons.

Residents from across our Borough served in all three Armed Services, as well as the Civil Service and Merchant Navy.

Mayor Haigh, together with the Deputy Lieutenant for Essex, read a short poem in tribute, as members of the Army Reserve and Cadet Forces raised the D-Day flag.

A two-minute silence was impeccably observed, before a short reception.

"At the going down of the sun,

And in the morning,

We will remember them."