Page 12 - QARANC Vol 17 No 2 2019
P. 12
10 The Gazette QARANC Association
The D-Day 75th Anniversary Commemorative Garden
Joint Hospital Group North personnel were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to send a group of personnel to assist the D-Day Revisited charity. This involved building the D-Day 75 Commemorative Garden in memory of the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, situated at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, as part of the 2019 Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show. Providing 24-hour assistance to the veterans over a seven-day period, we enabled them to visit and parade within the commemorative garden alongside veterans from the Royal Hospital Chelsea in memory of their fallen comrades. Finally,
we deconstructed the garden in quick order for it to be shipped to Normandy and reassembled at Arromanches in time for the 75-year D-Day anniversary celebrations.
The first phase involved building the commemorative garden. D-Day Revisited approached John Everiss, a seasoned designer and landscaper, asking him to honour the remaining veterans by creating a commemorative D-Day garden for all to remember the sacrifices given 75 years ago. Set in the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital, John’s garden combined both past and present perspectives of one soldier’s experiences. That soldier is Bill Pendell, who is reflected in an
older lifelike millstone grit sculpture on the right of the garden sitting opposite his younger self, stepping ashore from the waves on D-Day, 75 years ago. The garden was inspired by two key themes, identified when speaking to the veterans. The first is water, as many of the soldiers could not swim, and the idea of drowning terrified them. The waves on the left of the garden are made from metal mesh, filled with layers of blue slate, to mimic water. The second theme is the veterans connecting to their younger selves. This is reflected in plinths to the right-hand side of the garden behind Bill’s sculpture, each one featuring a poignant phrase from a veteran, summing up their memory of the event. The plinths sit amongst 10,000 white and pink Armeria Maritima, commonly known as sea thrift, which would have been familiar to many of the soldiers, as it grows on the south coast of England and Northern France.
The garden also features five metal washer sculptures, created using 3D scans of volunteers, dressed in uniform. The sculptures are in various poses scattered along the water suggesting the various struggles the soldiers faced when approaching the beach, amongst steel spikes that punctuate the waves, to represent what was known as Rommel’s asparagus – the defences
Sergeant Seed, Corporal Gurung, Padre Anne Freestone, Corporal Reynolds and Captain Humphreys, the garden building team
JHG(N) personnel and veterans in the Commemorative Garden Royal Hospital Chelsea