At the cemetery on the scenic and stunning island of Yeu Mark Hirst and his father joined film maker Christophe Francois and local French Resistance veteran Charles Merlot for a short ceremony at the graves of 7 victims of the Lancastria. Their bodies were washed up at Ile D'Yeu in the weeks following the disaster and M. Merlot helped recover the bodies and ensured they received a proper burial. He also removed for safe keeping documents and other belongings which he returned to the British authorities at the end of the war to help with the formal identification process.
John Hirst played the Last Post and said a few words of remembrance.
Ironically the cemetery also contains the grave of Marshall Petain, the celebrated World War One hero of France but who later capitulated to the Germans on the 17th of June, the day Lancastria was sunk. Many French people regard Petain as a collaborator and traitor to France.
