IN the drawing room of a country home close to Portsmouth a petite French girl is dwarfed by a 14ft-excessive map.

Madame Arlette Gondree, 84, is learning a prime-secret chart that was used throughout World War Two to plan Britain’s D-Day landings on France’s Normandy seashores.

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She factors to a spot close to the Normandy city of Ouistreham.

The tiny village of Benouville is so small it’s not even named on the map at Southwick House — nerve centre of the invasion to drive the Nazis out of France 80 years in the past.

But it’s the place Arlette’s household ran a cafe and helped the French Resistance and British spies, like one thing from BBC sitcom ’Allo ’Allo however with out all the laughs.

The cafe, nonetheless in the household immediately, was additionally the first place liberated by British troops despatched to defend a close-by canal crossing, to be endlessly often called Pegasus Bridge.

Mum-of-three Arlette married a Brit and splits her time between the UK and operating the household’s Cafe Gondree in France with son Giles, 60, and granddaughter Alisse, 24.

And in early June, she might be there to welcome a celebration of British veterans, throughout 100 years previous, to thank them on this eightieth anniversary for having saved her country.

Best champagne

In specific, she hopes commemorations this summer season to mark the anniversary will lastly persuade the French that Britain, and not just America, liberated their country.

She says: “For some motive, French individuals nonetheless suppose the Americans received the warfare. Maybe it’s the manner they train youngsters in school.

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“But more than 22,000 young British men lost their lives and many more were wounded in 1944 freeing my country from the Nazis. We must never forget them.”

She is delighted King Charles will lead commemorations on June 6 at the new British Normandy Memorial overlooking Gold seashore.

On the map at Southwick House, the well-known Gold, Sword and Juno seashores, the place British troops got here ashore at 7.24am on June 6, 1944, are all plainly marked.

These seashores the place hundreds of British troops had been killed as they clambered ashore had been every given fish-impressed code names by the Allied excessive command.

Juno was initially Jellyfish however British Prime Minister Winston Churchill modified the identify “because no man should die on a beach named Jelly”.

D-Day is at all times commemorated on June 6 however for Madame Gondree the invasion started at 11.16pm the night time earlier than.

That was the second her mother and father’ cafe was liberated by British paratroopers.

Within an hour of the first British troops arriving in gliders that landed in fields round Benouville, Arlette’s beaming cafe-owner dad Georges was serving them champagne.

When the Nazis invaded France 4 years earlier in 1940 he had hidden his finest bottles underneath his vegetable patch.

While firefights had been happening round the cafe throughout the first skirmishes of D-Day, Georges dug up his bottles of bubbly and popped the corks in honour of the hero Brits.

The occupation was very tough. We had been in need of meals, we had been in need of garments and so they had hardly any provides which they may promote however we had been tied collectively as a household

Arlette Gondree

Arlette is delighted that, in the end, there may be now a devoted British Normandy Memorial, overlooking Gold Beach just exterior the village of Ver-sur-Mer.

Some veterans say the memorial, solely accomplished throughout the latest Covid disaster, is “too little, too late”.

But Arlette says: “It is never too late”. Time has takent its toll, although, and it’s believed that solely round 40 British World War Two veterans might be match and effectively sufficient to journey to Normandy this summer season.

Although she was just 4 years previous on D-Day, Arlette can bear in mind each element of the day she, her sister Georgette, ten, her father and her mom, Therese, had been saved.

It was thanks for the household’s work for the Allies throughout the warfare, when very important data from Café Gondree discovered its manner to Southwick House the place it was utilized by British admiral Bertram Ramsey to plan the world’s largest ever invasion from the sea.

Arlette says: “For my mother and father, the occupation was very tough. We had been in need of meals, we had been in need of garments and so they had hardly any provides which they may promote however we had been tied collectively as a household.

The harmful reality is that my mother and father had been passing on data via my father who spoke English effectively — however the Germans by no means knew.

“My mom, who was from Alsace and spoke Alsatian, was serving in the cafe most of the time.

“She may hear what the Germans had been saying as a result of we couldn’t cease them coming to drink.

“Little did they know that Mummy knew what they had been doing in the village, what they had been doing on the bridges and what they had been probably to do.

“Daddy would additionally welcome a few British spies in the home, whereas the cafe entrance door was open to each the native inhabitants and the occupants.

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“But he was also meeting with Monsieur Melan who was the chief engineer responsible for all the bridges along the canal, and Madame Viand who was in charge of the maternity hospital — they were the Resistance people.”

On the eve of D-Day, Georges was tipped off by British spies not to transfer out of the cafe.

So he and Therese took their two daughters down to the cellar under the bar the place the youngsters bedded down in two empty cider barrels crammed with straw.

Arlette remembers: “It wasn’t lengthy after that once we had been shaken by an incredible crashing noise, which was horrific.

“Then we heard noises round the cafe so Daddy left us for a short while and went upstairs to see what he may see.

“The shutters of our eating room had been being pressured open and the window panes had been being damaged above our heads. We thought the Germans had been coming in to get us.

“Daddy introduced down two figures we had not seen earlier than, coated in black with nets.

“One of them grabbed me, took me in his arms, and I used to be very frightened.

“But Mummy began kissing them and so they gave me one thing I hadn’t had for a very long time — chocolate and biscuits.

“Because we had been underneath German time, it was the final hour of the fifth of June.

I’ll go on serving champagne to the males who saved our country, till the final one is left

Arlette Gondree

“That’s why we have fun with my beloved veterans, whether or not they be older or kids of immediately, at that very particular time of 23.16, with some champagne.

“Within the hour, my father had unearthed bottles from the backyard and introduced them out to the British troopers, who had been digging their trenches, to say thanks to them.

“By then there have been casualties, so Daddy opened the entrance door and the cafe was remodeled right into a First Aid publish. The wounded had been mendacity in every single place.

“The eating room grew to become the working theatre and Mummy, who was a educated nurse, helped the physician in cost.

“It was an horrific sight, very frightening, because I wanted to be with Mummy in the dining room. The noise, the cries and the smell . . . ”

“The veterans have at all times regarded Cafe Gondree as a shrine and a house to them.

“I will go on serving champagne to the men who saved our country, until the last one is left.”