SSAFA Republic of Ireland Branch President Colonel Richard Kinsella-Bevan recently hosted a fundraising lecture for the branch with a very special guest speaker, the much-respected former Army officer and Chief of the General Staff, General Richard Dannatt.
Now The Lord Dannatt, his military career is unsurprisingly extensive, and incudes Northern Ireland – where he was awarded the Military Cross – and later Bosnia and Kosovo. He commanded of the 4th Armoured Brigade in 1994 and commanded the British component of the Implementation Force in Bosnia the following year. He took command of the 3rd Mechanised Division in 1999 and simultaneously commanded British forces in Kosovo, and later the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.
Lord Dannatt’s lecture, held at the Freemasons’ Hall of Ireland in Dublin, on “Churchill’s D-Day” raised close to €3,100 through ticket sales and sales of books (Churchill’s D-Day: The Inside Story written by Lord Dannatt and Allen Packwood), which were kindly donated by Lord Dannatt. Nearly 90 people attended the lecture.
In his lecture, Lord Dannatt detailed Winston Churchill’s role as a wartime leader, focusing not so much on 1940 and “We will never surrender”, but on his approach to Operation Overlord and opening the Second Front in Europe. Doubts lingered in his memory of the failed Gallipoli Campaign of 1915-1916 and the chaotic Norwegian Campaign of early 1940. He was the chief proponent of both operations.
On the eve of D-Day, Churchill expressed his fear to wife Clementine, that, by the time she woke in the morning 20,000 young men could be dead. This was not the case, but by the end of the Normandy Campaign, 22,442 young men and women under British Command did lose their lives.
D-Day, of course, opened the path to peace and now these lives are commemorated at the new British Memorial in Normandy. Lord Dannatt is the current Chairman of the Normandy Memorial Trust, and during his lecture he described how the memorial came about as well as the Winston Churchill Centre for Education and Learning, which was opened by the then Prince of Wales, now His Majesty King Charles III, on June 6, 2021.
At the end of Lord Dannatt’s lecture he showed the audience a very poignant segment from 75th D-Day anniversary in Ver-sur-Mer where BBC Breakfast interviewed the late Harry Billinge, who was a sapper in the Royal Engineers. When the interviewer thanked Harry, he replied: “Don’t thank me, I’m no hero, I was lucky, all the heroes are dead, and I will never forget them as long as I live.”
Lord Dannatt concluded his lecture by impressing upon the audience how imperative it is that these brave men and women are remembered and honoured, and that future generations know the huge sacrifices they gave for our today.
