It looks like any average bridge over any ordinary canal, but 40 years ago, this was the most important bridge in the world to the Allied cause. If this and the bridge just beyond it over the River Orne had remained in German hands, then the whole story of D-Day might have been radically different. The task of taking the bridge was given to Major John Howard and D Company of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Major Howard regularly returns to this out of Normandy as a lecturer on military affairs.

The funny thing is, you know who, is that the only time I was never sick in a glider, and I must have done 12 or 13 flights altogether with training, was on the night of D-Day.

A A little more than an hour after taking off, the gliders were crossing the Coast of France. The toe from the bombers had been slipped, and they were within minutes of becoming the first troops to land in Normandy, not knowing what to expect.

As I say, you're sitting facing one another, you You link arms, you do a butcher's grip like that, you lift your legs, and you just pray to God. And before we almost had time to do that, there was the first thump of a landing, and it was a hell of a crash. And before we knew where we were, we were airborne again. We'd obviously bounced. And on that first bounce, the wheels had come off. Well, we expected that because it was a very bumpy old field. It wasn't like an airfield, and we were going to land on skids. Then there was another thundering crash, and this time I saw sparks, what looked like Tracer going past the door of the window. And I thought, My God, they're ready for it. They know we've arrived. I was waiting for the crack of the bullets, but then we were airborne again and then crashed, but this time we stopped. It occurred to me that there was no firing, and I couldn't see anything. The first fear was that I'd been blinded in the crash. I felt my body, that felt all right. Then I realized that all had happened was my battle bowler had come down over my eyes.

I'd hit the top of the glider. So I ease that up and saw that the door had disappeared. It had completely telescope. And as I started moving, and it could only be in a couple of seconds, of course, everybody else started moving. But the thing that I remember more than anything else was when I stepped out of that glider, I looked up, and 50 yards away from me was the tower of that bridge. And not only that, but the nose of the glider was right through the wire defenses around the enemy around the enemy post, where I'd ask the glider, not thinking of a glider pilot, not thinking for one moment they'll be able to do it, number one glider must go through that wire.

In all the training, in all the plans that had been made, no one expected the glider pilots would fly them to the target with such stunning accuracy. With the first glider down, the Germans guarding the bridge still did not realize the invasion had begun. Surprised surprise, that most important element of all had been complete. Forty years on, Colonel von Look, who ended the war in a Russian prison camp, makes his assessment of the taking of Bonneville Bridge. I think it was a fantastic operation, and I think, personally, that was the beginning of the end. While all that was going on, George Gondré and his wife were sheltering with their children in the cellars beneath the café. Soon afterwards, George was in the garden digging up 98 bottles of champagne, which had remained buried throughout the war, waiting for this day. They were the first people in France to be liberated.

Dear Madame, of went around kissing all my men and all the Paris, and all our black camouflage paint was transferred to her face. And you know that, dear old so, she wandered around that café with that black paint on for three days. She wouldn't wash it off.

Two miles from the canal in the graveyard of the Paris Church at Ronville, the men who lost their lives in fighting for the bridge lie buried. Among them, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, the first man to be killed on D-day. This afternoon, 40 years after her liberation, 40 years after she toasted the freedom of France in Champagne, Madame Gondré returned with John Howard to lay a wreath on the grave she's tended since June 1944.