There are a number of memorial in the Benouville/Ranville area, including a bust of one of D-Day’s British heroes - Major John Howard, the man who led the attack on Pegasus Bridge.
The memorial stands proudly in the area where Major Howard and 180 men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry landed in gliders just after midnight on the morning of D-Day June 6 1944.
Their mission was to secure the bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River which they completed and send back the codewords ‘Ham and Jam’ to confirm their success.
Inside the nearby Memorial Pegasus Museum there’s also a tribute to the British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion of the Ox and Bucks. The stones - with the names of all those who landed and the glider pilots who were responsible for the pinpoint landings - stand next to the original Pegasus Bridge.