| About 150 people, backed by D-day veterans, have demonstrated against plans to build a garbage dump near a site of the 1944 allied landings. During the war, parachutists and British commandos landed at Maizeret. The demonstrators, who include local politicians and former soldiers, have waved banners demanding that the site be preserved as a "place of memory". The association of veterans of the 46th Royal Marine Commando have also expressed their concern in a letter to the regional governor. They say that as the recent 60th anniversary of D-day commemorations showed, thousands of Normandy veterans are still alive and would be distraught at seeing a dump at a place where French and allied lives had been lost fighting Nazism. Maizeret lies just outside Sannerville, which was evacuated of its civilian population and then totally destroyed in a massive bombing raid in July 1944 designed to assist a breakout from the landing beaches. |