A bronze monument to British soldiers killed during the liberation of France has been stolen – a week before D-Day anniversary commemorations.
The one-tonne statue of a piper in the 51st Highland Division during the Second World War at Bréville-les-Monts, north of Caen,vanished on Friday.
It was a tribute to Scottish infantrymen who had stormed on to Juno Beach, in Normandy, on June 6th 1944, before dying in a fierce fire fight a few days later.
Visitors from Britain were due to gather around the statue next Saturday, on the 82nd anniversary of D-Day.
Instead, French police are now involved in a criminal investigation, as they try to find the statue, and brings the thieves to justice.
‘The statue was reported missing early on Friday morning – it was forced off its plinth, and clearly loaded on to a vehicle,’ said an investigating source.
‘A huge amount of effort went into the planned theft of a statue, which will be hard to conceal.’
An early theory is that scrap metal dealers intended to smash the statue to pieces, so as to sell off the bronze.
A spokesman for Bréville-les-Monts town council said: ‘It is with great sadness that we discovered the disappearance of the statue of the bagpipe player on the monument to the 51st Highland Infantry Division.
‘This was a shameful act, just one week before the D-Day commemorations.’
The spokesman said Bréville council had filed a report to police at Merville-Franceville, who were leading the investigation.
The statue was erected some 15 years ago in the grounds of the Château St Come, where 51stHighlanders fought alongside elements of the 6th Airborne Division, against German troops.
The vastly outnumbered Highlanders mainly belonging to the 5th Battalion of the Black Watch Regiment, lost 110 men in just two days as they helped secure the bridgehead across the River Orne.
The lane leading up to the château became so dangerous that it was known as ‘Death Ally’.
The site is close to Pegasus Bridge, the memorial to British paras who landed in France in gliders, before later being supported by troops who arrived from the invasion beaches.
Such scenes – including a famous one with a Scottish piper – were depicted in the classic war film, The Longest Day, featuring stars including Richard Todd, Sean Connery and John Wayne.
Scottish units were famous for taking pipers into battle, as they played tunes such as ‘Highland Laddie’, ‘The Road to the Isles’, and ‘All the Blue Bonnets are Over the Border’.
As well as helping to keep units together in the chaos of the battlefield, the sound of the bagpipes also lifted moral.
In turn, enemy veterans later recalled how frightening the sound of the pipes could be.
