Walcheren

Montlaur pushed on in the Normandy campaign for more than two months and saw his last combat in November 1944, during an amphibious invasion of the heavily-guarded Dutch island of Walcheren.

Good news for those renting out holiday homes, such as ones directly on the beach for instance, on Noord-Beveland or Walcheren, and for campsite owners.

Royal Marine Arthur Thompson, from Herne Bay in Kent, came across the camera on 1 November 1944 during the Allied operation to liberate the Dutch, after it had been left by some hastily departing Germans in a large concrete bunker on the island of Walcheren.

Set on the Walcheren peninsula of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt river delta in Zeeland, the town’s coast of powdery beach is backed by a tall barrier of grassy dunes and what is known as the Manteling, a thick grove of odd, misshapen trees, which twist and turn into tunnels.

When the canopy of clouds finally lifted, I understood what had drawn him back to Walcheren.