Every year since 2006, 250 children attending school in the sector where commemorative ceremonies are held by the D-DAY Commemoration Committee are asked to carry out a project on a particular theme such as Peace or Freedom during class hours.
This remembrance work performed by the younger generation is crucial to our Committee, who cooperates with the service of “Education Nationale” for its implementation.
In addition, a children’s ceremony is organised each year by and for the children at the very venue of the official ceremonies held on June 6th, in the presence of veterans, witnesses of D-DAY landings, an historian and a foreign military band.
Unfortunately, 2020 and 2021 ceremonies had to be cancelled for sanitary reasons.
Work that had already been started in 2019, if not well under way by Omaha Beach children was abruptly interrupted in March 2020 because of the general lockdown applied at the time in France.
This is the reason why the D-DAY Commemoration Committee has decided to resume its collaboration with the same schools for the following school year, in order to allow the project to be completed.
The project was fully delivered despite a very complex situation in schools. The outcome of this tribute is a 28 page booklet, gathering drawings, pictures, poems, land art, historical research together with the background and the aim of each piece of work of the children explained for the reader.
In order to enhance the value of the work performed and to thank them all for their dedication on this remembrance project the D-DAY Commemoration Committee decided to replace the usual ceremony by a visit to each school instead.
The hand out of the booklets took place on June 3rd, outdoors in each school, in the presence of the mayor of the town who had written a preface in the booklet, of Education Nationale representatives, Omaha-Intercom and D-DAY Commemoraton Committee delegates, in full compliance with sanitary standards in force.
All 250 children (and teachers) were wearing the same T-shirt – sponsored by Isigny-Omaha Intercom, our partner on this project, on which was dispayed the emblem of the 29th US Infantry Division that landed on Omaha Beach 77 years earlier.
The 5 schools that took part in this 2019-2021 remembrance project are namely: Trévières, Tour-en-Bessin and Etreham-Maisons state junior schools, Notre-Dame public junior school in Trévières and a secondary school, collège Octave Mirbeau in Trévières.