The hugely popular ‘Standing with Giants’ installation will return to the British Normandy Memorial for the third consecutive year. Following the overwhelming response to the ambitious and captivating project by the ‘Standing with Giants’ charity, the silhouettes will return to the meadow fields of the British Normandy Memorial, overlooking Gold Beach, from 25th April to 19th September 2026.
The Giants are back for VE Day
To mark the 80th Anniversary of D-Day in 2024, The British Normandy Memorial welcomed the moving ‘Standing with Giants’ installation during the summer of 2024. The monumental installation was a huge success, and nearly a quarter of a million people visited the Memorial, many of whom experienced the power and poignancy of the 1,475 servicemen placed with heads bowed on the hillside overlooking Gold Beach, each representing a life lost on D-Day, 6 June 1944. The figures serve as a symbol of the bittersweet emotions faced by so many at the end of the Second World War in Europe – joy that the war had ended alongside the reality of absent loved ones who never came home.
New silhouettes
Among the 1,475 figures, this year’s installation will feature approximately 200 new creations including radio operators, medics, and a Scotsman playing the bagpipes. The project will also include bespoke ‘giants’ to represent the only two women on the Memorial, nurses Sisters Evershed and Field, who died while saving 75 men from a sinking hospital ship; and 50 French resistance fighters, to be placed around the French Memorial.
A moving Memorial
The Normandy Memorial Trust was created in 2016 to realise the dream of Normandy Veterans to have a British Normandy Memorial and, following nearly six years of hard work, it opened to the public on Sunday 6 June 2021, during the global health crisis. The British Normandy Memorial stands just outside the village of Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach, one of the two beaches where British forces landed on 6 June 1944 (D-Day). It records the names of all those under British command who lost their lives in Normandy between 6 June and 31 August 1944. On the columns of the memorial are the names of more than 22,000 men and women. The majority of these names are those of the British soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who lost their lives on D-Day and in the weeks that followed.
There are also be the names of men and women from other nations around the world who fought under British command or who were attached to the British armed forces, such as Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the USA. Losses of the British Merchant Navy are also remembered, as are civilian losses, particularly those in France.
The British Normandy Memorial provides a place for remembrance and reflection, where future generations can come to understand the scale of what happened in Normandy in 1944, and the UK’s role in securing Europe’s freedom.
