All ready for the ceremony in Normandy

Preparations for the ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings in Normandy in World War II were completed today in France. This year, June 6 marks exactly 70 years since the operation known as "D-Day", which began one of the key battles for the victory over Nazi Germany.

1.800 war veterans are expected at the ceremony. An international ceremony will be held in Uistream (Ouistreham) in Normandy on Friday, where 9.000 guests are expected, including 19 heads of state and government. Among them are the presidents of the USA and Russia, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the British Queen Elizabeth the Second.

There will be 12.000 policemen, soldiers and firefighters who will be in charge of the security of the dignitaries, not counting foreign soldiers. There will also be 900 firefighters and 400 paramedics in case of need for medical assistance. The celebrations begin tomorrow when 300 British paratroopers jump into Ranville, the first liberated village in France.

British Prince Charles will attend that celebration. Fireworks in 24 municipalities along the coast will be organized at the same time tomorrow evening. French President Francois Hollande will pay his respects to the fallen Frenchmen at the Cannes Memorial Center on Friday morning. In the 100 days of the Battle of Normandy, 20.000 French civilians died. Hollande will then join Obama at the American Cemetery off the coast of Oama, one of the beaches where Allied soldiers landed.

10.000 people are expected at that cemetery. Dignitaries and veterans will have lunch at the Benouville Castle, where a part of the Pegasus Bridge that was captured by British commandos on June 6, 1944 is located. The international ceremony officially begins at 14.30pm in Uistream, on Sword Beach, where the British and French soldiers landed.

On that occasion, military bands will perform. Seven binational ceremonies are planned for France with the USA, Great Britain, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Poland. The invasion of Normandy, codenamed "Operation Overlord", is the largest naval invasion in the history of warfare. The Allied landing force consisted of 73.000 American, more than 60.000 British and over 20.000 Canadian soldiers, supported by French commandos.

The landing along 80 kilometers of the coast began with a night parachute landing of 23.000 men, a large artillery attack from the air and sea, which was followed on June 6, 1944 by a successful amphibious landing on the strategically important Pegasus Bridge, near Cannes. Estimates of the number of Allied casualties on the first day of the landings vary: from 2.500 to 5.000.

During the entire three-month operation, about 215.000 Allied soldiers and an estimated 22.000 German soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in Normandy. Not far from the coast is a cemetery where 9.300 German soldiers are buried. Most of the dead Americans were buried in their homeland, and about XNUMX were buried in Normandy.