80-year-old found rare D-Day paradummy - and mistook it for a scarecrow from maa d Watch Video

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✓ Published: 25-Apr-2024

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An 80-year-old donated a rare original parachute dummy from D-Day to a museum - after mistaking it for a scarecrow.<br/><br/>Robert Bowley was clearing out his late brother's home when he came across the dummy.<br/><br/>His brother Michael Bowley had been fond of French collectors items and got it while on a trip to Normandy in the 1950s or 1960s.<br/><br/>Robert said he had initially mistaken it for a scarecrow before he passed it along to a museum.<br/><br/>That's when he discovered it was in fact a rare surviving D-Day artefact worth thousands.<br/><br/>The 'scarecrow' was one of several hundred from Operation Bodyguard, part of Operation Overlord, on June 6 1944.<br/><br/>Paradummies, made of hessian cloth, straw and sawdust, were dropped to create fake invasions by allied forces to divert enemy attention from the Normandy landing beaches.<br/><br/>Most of the dummies had a self-destroying mechanism to destroy the evidence - making this surviving dummy rare and valuable.<br/><br/>The paradummy is thought to be worth around £10,000 and one of less than 30 still in existence.<br/><br/>It is now on permanent display in the D-Day exhibition at House on the Hill Toy Museum.<br/><br/>Robert, a retired watchmaker and antique collector from Braintree, Essex, said: \