Brit soldier, 30, drowns swimming near famous D-Day bridge after travelling to Normandy for official 75th anniversary commemorations
A BRITISH soldier has drowned in Normandy after travelling to France to take part in the official D-Day commemoration events.
The soldier died as he attempted to swim a canal late on Saturday night near the famous Pegasus Bridge - the site of a historic WWII battle.
Sources said the tragic incident happened during some "down time" and revealed he may have been drinking.
He was there to take part in official celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
Local media said the victim was a 30-year-old and was staying at Ranville, near Caen on the Normandy coast.
He has been named by sources as Lance Corporal Darren Jones of the Royal Engineers.
Hundreds of British troops have travelled to France to attend D-Day commemorations.
It is believed he tried to swim across a canal late Saturday night near legendary Pegasus Bridge.
The bridge was the first site freed from the Germans by British troops during the massive Allied invasion in June 1944 and made famous in the 1962 film 'The Longest Day'.
Sources said the soldier’s mates lost track of him and alerted local authorities at around 11pm.
A body was then pulled from the water at 3am and a post-mortem examination is now to be carried out to determine what went wrong.
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An Army spokesperson said: “It is with sadness that we must confirm the death of service person in France. Our thoughts are with their family at this difficult time.”
The anniversary of the Normandy landings is being marked by a series of events this week, with Prince Charles, Donald Trump and Theresa May travelling to France for the occasion.
The invasion marked the beginning of Europe’s liberation and the eventual defeat of the Nazi regime.
What happened at Pegasus Bridge on June 6, 1944 ?
Codenamed Operation Deadstick, six gliders carrying 139 men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry formed the sharp point of a spearhead that was to be hurled on to France's Normandy beaches on D-Day.
The top secret plan was to land a team of British soldiers on a tiny field behind enemy lines deep within German occupied France under cover of darkness.
The men, under the command of Major John Howard, were tasked with taking and holding two bridges, 500 yards apart, over the River Orne and the Caen Canal.
The bridges, which had been wired for demolition by the Germans, were vital to the fate of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers who would be involved in the D-Day landings hours later.
While the first bridge over the River Orne was taken with hardly any resistance, the Caen Canal Bridge – later renamed Pegasus in honour of those who fought there – became the scene of a brief but fierce battle.
Within days the British Army had signposted ‘Pegasus Bridge’, honouring the shoulder badge of the Airborne troops.
It soon became a route taken by hundreds of thousands of British and Canadian troops as they moved east out of the Normandy bridgehead.
The French were to adopt the same name for the bridge when the war ended. Today it remains the key location to remembering the battles of the 6th Airborne Division securing the eastern side of the Normandy battlefield.
