Tony Berridge faces French court battle over father's Pegasus Bridge medals

It took a four-year fight before Tony Berridge won back his father’s war medals. The 69-year-old Horspath pensioner had handed six of Sgt Wilfred Berridge’s medals to a Frenchwoman, Françoise Gondree-Anquetil. He believed her to be linked to a museum next to Pegasus Bridge in Normandy, opened to commemorate the daring glider assault on the bridge on D-Day.

But when he discovered the medals were not on display in the museum, he feared things were not what they had seemed.

So began Mr Berridge’s long struggle to secure the return of the medals of his father, who was part of a second wave of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry glider troops who famously landed near the bridge on June 6, 1944.

Mr Berridge wrote letters, repeatedly travelled to France and appealed to police and the French authorities.

Ultimately, he went on to enlist the support of the then French President himself, Nicolas Sarkozy.

After receiving a reply from the President’s chief of staff, who promised to raise the issue with the minister for defence, Mr Berridge was handed back the medals in 2011.

His delight was complete when he was able to present the medals to the museum that commemorates the battle in which his father had fought.

But the pensioner’s hopes of a happy ending have been dashed by a letter sent to his home in Centre Rise, Horspath, ordering him to appear before a French judge.

The retired RAC patrolman, is instructed to travel to Paris next month to be placed under ‘formal investigation’ for allegedly making false allegations against Ms Gondree-Anquetil, and accusing her of “having defrauded him and robbed medals which he had previously remitted to her”.

Mr Berridge is currently recovering from heart surgery and the prospect of having to appear before French Judge Marion Potier has come as a terrible shock.

“It came completely out of the blue. I was flabbergasted. I really thought that this was over, with everything done and dusted.”

He said travelling to Paris and a court appearance was an arduous prospect but he did not want to risk having to be extradited to Paris.

Throughout his quest to secure his father’s medals he had been assisted by Lieutenant Colonel Alan Edwards, chairman of the Airborne Assault Normandy Trust, which keeps alive the memory of British paratroopers and glider troops on D- Day.

Lt Col Edwards had even collected the medals from a solicitor’s office in France four years ago.

Now Mr Berridge is pleased to hear that Mr Edwards has arranged for the Anglo French Association for the Merville Battery, of which he is vice-president, to cover his legal costs.

Mr Edwards said: “It is all quite worrying for Tony, which is why we support him. He is really the victim of this affair.”

Mr Berridge’s father died in 1969, aged 59.

“I always wanted his medals to go where they would be safe and where they would be respected,” Mr Berridge had told The Oxford Times.

When he came across Ms Gondree-Anquetil’s website, he believed he had found the perfect place to display them.

She, after all, was the youngest sister of Arlette Gondree, who ran the famous cafe beside Pegasus Bridge, who had been a custodian of the cafe’s collection of military memorabilia. Now, he was given to believe, she had helped found the Pegasus Bridge Museum, which opened in 2000.

So keen was he to see his father’s medals in the museum that he travelled to France to hand them over personally.

He first learnt of his “terrible mistake” when he went back to France in 2007 to scatter the ashes of his brother David in the grounds of the museum and discovered the medals had never reached the museum.

Repeated approaches to Ms Gondree-Anquetil failed to secure the return of the medals.

In desperation he wrote to the French President, explaining how he had handed over the medals in the hope they would be displayed in the new museum close to where his father had taken part in the famous Second World War action at Pegasus Bridge, one of the most revered military sites in Normandy.

Now Mr Berridge, who lives with his partner June, has learnt that the battle he thought the President had helped him to win is, in fact, far from over.

In her letter Judge Potier informs him she is “considering” putting him under formal investigation following a complaint accompanied by the lodging of an application for “criminal indemnification”.

He is entitled to legal representation, he is informed, but will be expected to appear in person at the Tribunal De Grande Instance of Paris.

Pegasus Bridge, built in 1934 to cross the Caen Canal, became a major objective of the British airborne troops in the opening minutes of the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944, with units of glider infantry of the British 6th Airborne Division commanded by Major John Howard ordered to take the bridge intact.

Five of the Ox and Bucks gliders landed as close as 47 yards from their objectives, completely surprising the German defenders, and took the bridge within 10 minutes. The successful mission played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the following days.

The cafe near the bridge ran by Françoise Gondree’s parents, Georges and Thérèse, was said to be the first French house to be liberated during D-Day.

The Gondrees’ cafe became a beacon for British troops and popular with tourists, but led to a falling out between two of the three daughters.

Arlette Gondree, on the parents’ deaths, won the auction for the renamed Pegasus Cafe and the family fell out over the ownership of memorabilia and military artefacts in the museum.

Last year in an interview with The Observer newspaper, Ms Gondree-Anquetil, said: “When I come here today, what do I feel? Before it was a place to honour heroes, today it’s nothing but a Hollywood fête.

“Don’t forget I grew up with these men, these heroes and their pilgrimage back here. When I was little, my mother would make bouquets of flowers for the families to place on the graves of those who died.

“My father would invite the men into the cafe for drinks and food. They were part of our family. Of course the events at Pegasus Bridge marked me.”

A new museum opened in June 2000 to replace the old one alongside the cafe, with the original bridge on display in the park of the museum.

Ms Gondree-Anquetil in a statement to The Oxford Times said: “Mr Berridge proceeded with incorrect information, this is why an explanation has been asked for.”

Meanwhile, those with a knowledge of the French justice system have assured Mr Berridge that an investigative judge is obliged to open a formal inquiry, when a complaint of this kind is made, and that the case may be dropped once the judge hears all evidence on both sides.

He and the veterans’ organisations that support him will certainly be hoping that will be the outcome.

But many will share too Mr Berridge’s burning anger that such effort to honour an heroic father at the bridge where he had fought for France’s freedom, could go so very far wrong.