Thierry Bidault

I was born in 1971 in the east of Paris so I did my studies and my first jobs in the Parisian Region.

My basic training was in Sales technologies and marketing, so I became a Product Manager for binding and laminating systems. The relationships with American and Asian suppliers allowed me to develop my English language abilities.

My interests are divided between three passions:

• Three-time French Champion of track cycling at University in the 90s
• Fifteen years of Theatre
• History and D-Day

It’s my passion for history and for D-DAY instigated by my paternal grandparents which drives me now. At the beginning of WWII, they lived in Cherbourg, the deep-water port of the Cotentin Peninsula. Their house was destroyed by a bombardment from the Allies in 1940. My Grandmother was saved from the building by a German soldier and my Grandfather, who was in the French Navy, was in a submarine based in Cherbourg and was captured by the Germans. He was sent to St Lo and to the Camp « Stalag 13 » in Germany.

He stayed there as a prisoner for two years and managed to escape after 2 years. So, he secretly came back to Normandy to Bayeux to find his family and my grandmother (who had earlier returned to Bayeux to see him pass by on the prisoner train to Germany). Bayeux was the first city liberated by the Allies and after the war, my grandfather created a sister city relationship with Eindhoven, the first city liberated in the Netherlands.

So, I was often at the Normandy beaches and in Bayeux with my parents and grandparents, and my passion for D-DAY has evolved and increased since I was 12 years old. I have had the good luck to meet a lot of the veterans: Americans, British and even some Germans like Franz Gockel. I saw in their eyes the need to share what they had experienced in 1944. There are not a lot of veterans still alive now, and the duty to share their memories is my motivation. It’s a real honour for me to have the possibility to share the veteran’s memories through Overlordtour Company.