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Doro@tjondroadhi·Jun 06

It’s impossible not to be swept away by the warmth and energy in the stone-clad villages up and down the Normandy coastline this 80th anniversary of D-Day.

British, US and Canadian flags flutter from garden gates and lampposts as far as the eye can see. Music from the 1940s drifts through village squares, while country lanes roar with column-upon-column of World War Two-era military jeeps.

Driving them are laughing, waving men and women from all over Europe. Germans, Dutch, Belgians and Brits from all walks of life, who this week have chosen to don Second World War Allied military uniforms, to honour the 150,000 soldiers who landed here in Nazi-occupied France on 6 June 1944 - changing the course of 20th-Century Europe as they did so.

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    Doro@tjondroadhi·Jun 06

    How different things look now. After decades of Europeans pledging “never again”, war is back on this continent on a scale not seen since World War Two, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

    Eighty years ago, Germany was the enemy. Russia, a key ally. Its pyrrhic victory on the eastern front was fundamental, like the western front Allied assault that followed D-Day, in bringing Nazi Germany to its knees.

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