They shall never be forgotten

STEEL MEMORIAL TO HONOUR TANK CREW AND SOLDIERS WHO PERISHED ON A COUNTRY LANE IN NORMANDY

- By LOUIS CORBETT

THE Great War poet Rupert Brooke famously wrote: “If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field, That is for ever England. There shall be, In that rich earth a richer dust concealed.”

His 1915 poem, The Soldier, reflects a historic discovery made by James Holland in northern France last year.

The historian unearthed the remains of a Second World War British Sherman tank in a Normandy hedgerow where five crewmen, along with four other soldiers from C Squadron of the Nottingham-based Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, lost their lives in summer 1944.

The indented hedgerow marks the spot where a landmark memorial is being unveiled today, following Mr Holland's successful £22,000 online fundraising campaign.

Fragments of shells and shrapnel, and the cap badge from the beret of one of the men killed, were found nearby on the roadside.