D-Day 80th anniversary: Pop-up museums tell Portsmouth's story

School children have heard the history of D-Day at the pop-up museum

The first in a series of pop-up museums has been set up in Portsmouth, ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The exhibitions in libraries and shopping centres tell the story of the huge military operation to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe in 1944.

The first pop-up museum opened in Cosham Library.

Portsmouth City Council's head of museums, Cathy Hakes, said they would help "keep the stories alive for future generations".

The city played a key role as one of the south-coast departure points, launching what was the largest seaborne invasion in history.

Allied troops began landing in Normandy on 6 June 1944

About 160,000 troops from Britain, the US, Canada, France and other Allied nations landed in Normandy, marking the beginning the liberation of France from the Nazis and paving the way for victory on the Western Front in World War Two.

Twenty-seven thousand of the troops who landed on D-Day itself left from Portsmouth and Gosport.

The pop-up museums will tell the story of Portsmouth's role in the build-up to D-Day when hundreds of thousands of troops were camped out across the south of England, waiting to embark on ships and landing craft.

Phyl Warfield's uncle was killed in the fighting following D-Day

Among those with a connection to the exhibits was 89-year-old Phyl Warfield.

As a child she witnessed the D-Day build-up. Her uncle Keith Stuckey was one of the soldiers who was killed in the battle to liberate France.

The pop-up museum features a photo of Mr Stuckey and his wife, Eve, in a pre-war entertainment group.

She said: "It's lovely to think he's not going to be forgotten, that it's been acknowledged that he was there and doing his bit for Britain."

Portsmouth City Council leader Steve Pitt said generations of people in Portsmouth were "intrinsically tied in to the military history of this country".

"D-Day is obviously a very strong focal point around that and something that we are proud to be a national focus for when those key anniversaries come around," he said.