Macron presents Légion d’honneur to 104-year-old Wren officer who plotted D-Day landings

It was the moment the entente cordiale was revived in the most touching manner.

Presenting 104-year-old British D-Day veteran with the Légion d’honneur, President Emmanuel Macron bent over and gave her a gentle peck on each cheek in thanks and gratitude for her service.

The French president has a great deal to thank her for.

Christian Lamb was a third officer in the Women’s Royal Naval Service and worked in Whitehall plotting the maps of the Normandy landings that went on to liberate his country from the grip of Nazi occupation.

As a young woman she operated behind the scenes, assimilating intelligence received from French resistance fighters and British agents in the field to create the charts and maps required by the Allied troops tasked with storming German defences and making their way inland into occupied territory.

President Macron presented Mrs Lamb with the medal, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte, during the Ministry of Defence and Royal British Legion’s commemorative ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings at the Second World War British Normandy Memorial near the village of Ver-sur-Mer which overlooks Gold Beach and Juno Beach.

Also taking part in the commemorative ceremony were the King and Queen, who later spoke to the assembled veterans.

Mrs Lamb is one of the last surviving Wren officers to have served throughout the Second World War.

She had been in France when the war broke out and, not having paid attention to the newspapers, it took a telegram from her father, Admiral Ronald Wolseley Oldham, OBE, to persuade her to come home.

Back in London she was among the first to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service, known affectionately as the Wrens.

After a number of postings around the country she was transferred in early 1944 to Combined Operations HQ at Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, to work on a top secret operation under the Command of Rear Admiral HE Horan.

Her task was to assist the preparations for the operation for the Allied invasion of Europe that came to be known as D-Day.

“I was to be working on the actual maps of the planned landings,” she said years later. “My small office below stairs was for me alone; there were many of us working on individual pieces of the enormous jigsaw, none of us knew or ever discussed what the others were doing.”

‘Big scale Ordnance Survey maps’

Recounting her part in history on Forces TV she said: “The real chosen landing places for the invasion on which my task was based were pinpointed for me on the large scale maps of France in my office. My particular brief was to delineate everything that could be seen on every compass bearing from each landing position visible from the bridge of an approaching landing craft.

“The big scale Ordnance Survey maps were spread out on the wall and showed railways, roads, churches, castles, and every possible feature to an incoming invader and from every angle. It was intense and exciting work and obviously important to be detailed and accurate.”

“D-Day happened on June 6 1944 and when at 6am I heard the announcement on the radio I was thrilled to know that at last we had managed to carry out the plans, which had been envisaged for so long by so many brilliant brains. We were there! It was the beginning of our campaign to help get back France for the French.”

After the victory of the Allies, Mrs Lamb went on to develop a fascination with plants, particularly camellias, and became an expert on the life of Sir Joseph Banks, the English botanist, lecturing and writing on the subject.

She also wrote an account of her years in military service, Beyond the Sea – A Wren at War, published in 2021.