This year’s trip to Normandy began with a small ceremony at a single grave. Private William Joseph Cliffe, a batman, was only twenty when he was shot whilst delivering a message for Captain ‘Chum’ Budds. Chum visited the grave every year until 2004, having lived with the sense of guilt that it was due to his request that Cliffe was killed. His nephew, Shaun Caveney, continued the tradition and handed it to Paul Foster.

It is intensely poignant visiting a single grave and hearing the story of one person from the Normandy Campaign. Sometimes the scale of the tragedy of war becomes clouded in the face of statistics: hearing a single person’s story restores the focus on the human cost.