French police use police van to block exit of car park in Arromanches, Normandy, to prevent anyone going home, exit is blocked for nearly 2.5 hours while Brown and Sarkozy make themselves look important making speeches in town
Can’t Gordon Brown do anything right? As a result of the security arrangements for Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy, and the complete incompetence of the French police, hundreds of people, including D-day veterans themselves were trapped in a car park in Arromanches, Normandy, for nearly two-and-a-half hours, without toilets, food, drink, and any idea about when they would be able to get out.
I am currently visiting Normandy for the 65h Anniversary of D-Day. Today — being the 6th of June — marks the exact day that it happened 65 years ago. I decided to spend the day in Arromanches, a town that bears the marks of the invasion to this very day, with the remains of the Mulberry harbours punctuating the horizon across the open sea of the English Channel.
As I drove from the campsite this morning to Arromanches, a distance of around 60 miles, I was struck by the huge number of police everyday, on all of the motorway bridges. After an utterly fantastic day in Arromanches seeing the veterans, and looking at a British Army landing craft on the beach, and a vast number of army vehicles including Jeeps and trucks, the time came to go home.
I returned to my car at 5pm, but just as I went to leave, the entrances to the car park were suddenly closed, without warning, by the French police (Gendarmerie). We were initially told that this would be for around 20 minutes whilst the convoys of Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy went past into the town. Very annoying, but tolerable.
What actually happened was that the road was closed, road blocks were implemented, and hundreds of vehicles (including modern cars, camper vans as well as veteran military vehicles) and hundreds, if not thousands of people were trapped in the car park, a field, a short distance from the beach at Arromanches. For just short of two-and-a-half hours. This was for the time that it took the convoys to get to Arromanches, Brown and Sarkozy to make themselves look important, and to finally leave.
After being trapped for over an hour, a D-Day veteran had to beg the police to be allowed out as he was likely to miss his ferry from Cherbourg. I have no idea whether he managed to catch it in the end
Not only were there those interested in history, like myself, but also D-Day veterans themselves. I was absolutely disgusted when I witnessed an elderly gentlemen, a D-Day veteran, begging the French police to be allowed out because he would miss his ferry from Cherbourg. After about 20 minutes he was allowed out, I have no idea whether he caught his ferry. But it made me extremely sad about the disgusting way that people were treated by the French police.
Whilst Sarkozy and Brown were making themselves look important in the town by giving speeches, an elderly veteran — as well as hundreds of others of all nationalities — were being kept hostage in a car park.
After an hour a police van arrived as reinforcements, and it was positioned by the French police to block the exit. For some bizarre reason, some time later, a tannoy announced that only British cars would be allowed to leave. A handful of British cars left; I couldn’t as I was some way back and blocked in.
People were absolutely mad with the French police and could not understand what was going on. On their way out the convoys of Brown and Sarkozy were heckled: furious people shouted, booed, and blew their horns.
All kinds of vehicles are trapped, from vintage military vehicles to cars and camper van
I am very sad that a wonderful day was ruined by appalling planning and implementation.
