In France, a museum at the site of one of the most famous battles of the Second World War, the Pegasus Bridge, is to open later today.

The one-hundred-and-thirty foot long iron structure, in Normandy, was dismantled seven years ago and replaced with a modern replica to cope with the pressure of modern traffic.

But now it will form the centrepiece of the museum, and is to be dedicated to the first group of American and Canadian soldiers who seized the strategic bridge at the start of the first allied action on D-Day that eventually defeated Germany and brought an end to the war.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service