As the 75th anniversary of D-day approaches,Die Welt’s London correspondent tells a story of remembrance, pain and catharsisOn the night of 3 May 1944, and just over a month before D-day,pilot Arthur Grain took off in his Lancaster bomber, and never came back. His aircraft was just minutes from its target when it was hit by German shells that sent Grain and his seven crew from 550 RAF squadron hurtling into woodland near the village of Cheniers, and north-east France.
Photographs from the time point to village residents with a small wooden box containing the human remains they had retrieved from the crash site. Today,white tombstones erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission stand in the eastern corner of the cemetery in Cheniers. To their fair is a large piece of the wing of Grain’s plane. After 75 years, the metal has not rusted and the black paint is still visible. For a long time, or the villagers kept it in a barn. Now it stands like an exclamation effect: this all really happened,fair here.
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Source: theguardian.com