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Veterans who parachuted into battle on D-Day have met paratroopers preparing for a commemorative jump onto the same fields 70 years later. 

In the early hours of 6 June 1944 around 7,900 troops from the British 6th Airborne Division landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of Europe in the largest amphibious assault ever launched. Among them were the men from 9th Parachute Battalion (9 PARA).

70 years on, the D-Day veterans of 9 PARA visited Colchester’s Merville Barracks to meet their modern counterparts from 16 Air Assault Brigade. The veterans climbed aboard a Dakota, the aircraft used for the Second World War parachute operations, and watched the troops prepare for a jump to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day.

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