PROUDLY wearing his wartime medals and resting his hands on a poppy wreath, Jersey’s last surviving Normandy veteran was among dozens who paid their respects to the fallen during a ceremony at the Cenotaph yesterday to mark 80 years since D-Day.
Ernest Thorne, who turned 100 last year, attended the service just 24 hours after meeting King Charles during a ceremony in Portsmouth – one of the key departure points for the Normandy landings in June 1944 – in which the monarch told veterans that the nation was “eternally in their debt”.
Military veterans, and dignitaries including the Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, Lieutenant-Governor Vice-Admiral Jerry Kyd and Chief Minister Lyndon Farnham, were among those who attended the event in Jersey, held shortly before the international ceremony in northern France.
