Hello and welcome to Battleground with me Patrick Bishop and Saul David. We are both in Normandy at the moment in different parts of it for

different reasons, but everywhere you look, there are reminders of the not so distant past

when Britain and America were indivisible allies, united by the threat from a shared mortal

enemy, but also bound together by a set of values that they

were prepared to die for, like freedom and democracy. So, plenty of food for thought there

when we consider how much things have changed since the advent of the Trump era. I'm over on the

west side of the Sherbourg Peninsula, the Kotolten Peninsula,

not far actually from General Patton's temporary headquarters,

which are just up the road, and it's now a modest monument with a Sherman tank parked outside.

Tell us what you've been up to, Saul.

You're about 40, 50 miles away for me,

aren't you, more in the kind of eastern part of, I suppose, what was the D-Day Battlezone?

Yeah, exactly right. I'm due south of where the UK 50th division landed on Gold Beach,

Aramange, and I'm here. Now, we started at at Aramange and we've now come in about 30 or 40 miles

inland and we're going another 20 today and it's all in aid of a sponsored walk to raise money for a

memorial for the Sherwood Rangers yeomanry. Now that may not mean much to most listeners but in actual

fact it's the subject of a best-selling book by my fellow

historian James Holland called Brothers in Arms. So naturally he's here and he brought along the son

of the then regiment CEO, who was a wonderful character called Stanley Christopherson and his son David

is here. But as you say, Patrick, the gratitude of the French for what the

Allies did in 1994 is still obvious today, with American and British flags everywhere you go,

and streets named after particular divisions and formations, but also political leaders.

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