World leaders will gather in France soon to honour the bravery and sacrifices of thousands of Second World War troops on D-Day 70 years ago.
The culmination of a series of events marking the largest airborne and amphibious assault in military history will be held in Normandy on June 6.
Heads of state from 17 nations, including the Queen, will gather for an international ceremony at Sword Beach, one of the five Allied landing beaches across a 50-mile stretch of Normandy coastline.
For many veterans, now in their late 80s and 90s, who have made the annual pilgrimage to honour the 156,000 Allied troops, this year's events will be their last to the scene of their exploits.
The Normandy Veterans' Association, whose numbers have fallen to around 600 from some 15,000, will disband in November and their standard will be laid up at a service in London.
More than 650 UK veterans will journey to France for the commemorations, with 90 more expected in Portsmouth, Hampshire -the embarkation point for much of the invasion force.
Major General Tim Radford, general officer commanding, force troops command, said: "Every serving regular and reserve member of today's armed forces recognises the bravery, commitment and sacrifice of all Allied personnel who took part in the decisive actions of D-Day and the Normandy campaign."
William Moody is one of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's (CWGC) team who has been preparing the cemeteries and memorials ahead of the anniversary.
Mr Moody has more than 46 years' experience maintaining the graves of the fallen across the world.
He said: "I feel as though I am passing the legacy of remembrance on to future generations, ensuring that we can always come to these remarkable places to reflect on the courage, sacrifice and the real cost in human terms that these men and women made to preserve our freedom."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article