RIP - HILL 80

[Gil Boyd]

Jim,
They know where many are, and have for many years stopped the main motorway continuing by the French Government until they are all exhumed. The Belgium Government have always been sympathetic to these planning consents especially where they know many men are still buried. Some were quick and mass graves because the line was won back and fought for so many times and there was nothing that could be done in the barages that fell to move the dead to the rear and identified. Sadly, it was that very same barage that buried them all from view and that includes the Germans.

I know only too well what fractions of that very same French Government did without consultation with Pegasus Bridge..............another day, another war, but nevertheless, THEY sometimes forget the cost to the Commonwealth in so many young lives in both wars in the main on their behalf in recovering their continent. Pegasus Bridge would have been on the scrap heap had our eagle eyed Paratroopers not spotted what they were doing in 1993.
In the end the French backed down and did not cut it up for scrap and sold the bridge to the British Government for 1 Franc and it now sits in its entirety in the Pegasus museum grounds on the opposie bank of the new bridge which was replaced in 1994.