French outflank celebrating D-Day veterans: Hotels cancel bookings to take in VIPs

D-DAY veterans planning to attend this year's 50th anniversary celebrations have gone on the offensive after they were told that the French authorities had requisitioned their hotel rooms for civilian top brass.

The head of a Normandy hotel chain informed the tour company organising the visit that the French government had 'decided to take over' two hotels in the Deauville area to accommodate visiting heads of state and VIPs. Veterans were told arrangements were being made to billet them with local residents.

There were reports circulating in Paris last night that many of the veterans were being evicted to make way for personnel from American television networks who had themselves been displaced by French officials.

The veterans booked the hotels through a tour company in January 1993. Angus Cross, a former corporal with the 13th Parachute Battalion, said: 'The French hotels were being bloody-minded and asking for a hefty deposit, so we paid them. Now some bloody jumped-up French official is saying they need the space. I'm extremely annoyed.'

Mr Cross, 69, of Folkestone, Kent, was to have stayed at the Hotel du Golf.

Also affected are 120 veterans of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, which formed part of the 6th British Airborne Division.

Mr Cross said: 'These chaps are coming over from Canada. They've been saving up for years and they wanted to get together. How the devil can we go to all the ceremonies together when we are all over the town?'

Ralph Bennett, of Tours International, the company organising the visit, said he was upset by the turn of events. He was trying to arrange alternative accommodation on cruise ships visiting local ports.

Arlette Pritchett, whose family cafe near Pegasus Bridge was the first building liberated in France when paratroopers landed there on 6 June, and who married one of the D-Day paratroopers after the war, said the veterans were right to be aggrieved. 'I can understand that the veterans are disgusted,' she said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said it would be inappropriate to make a formal protest, but the problem would be taken up informally.

Dr David Clark, Labour's defence spokesman, said last night: 'I am now calling on Mr Rifkind to take this up with the French government at the very highest possible level.

The office of Edouard Balladur, the French prime minister, said yesterday that the Government was considering the possibility of the veterans boarding in the homes of local people.