“For unless we can go and land and fight Hitler and beat his voice on land, we shall never win this war. You must devise and design the appliance as the landingcraft and the technique to enable us to affect a landing against opposition and to maintain ourselves there.”
Winston Churchill
Introduction
They came in their thousands, British and American troops. Troop carriers are creaking with men and arms, navigating across a churlish sea to the beaches of Normandy. Some would never return, killed on the blood-stained sand with their friends, colleagues, and allies maimed and crying in agony around them. This was war in its darkest hour, watched over by a mass of grey and looming clouds. Men, some so young that they had barely experienced life but prepared to serve for King and country to silence a German army who wanted to rule the world.
Codenamed Operation Neptune and more commonly known as D-Day, this seismic military strike on the Germans was aimed at liberating France and causing a domino effect of freeing an occupied Europe. Thrashed out in meetings between the UK and USA, this ariel and naval assault occurred against a midnight sky. Planes littered the skies with bombs and fire that illuminated the beaches. Those who waded through the salty surf were met with machine gun fire and a beach littered with carefully concealed mines. Other obstacles included wooden stakes, metal tripods and barbed wire.
The Surge
Troops led by Eisenhower and Montgomery weaved their way through. Brave and determined souls who knew not what faced them in the dead of night. As they tried to clear the path, they were sprayed with bullets and explosions. Some trod on mines, and others were left bleeding to death. Yet they strove at the five beach-divided sectors of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. They were braving the cliffs and house-to-house combat, taking several fortified towns and turning off two major gun emplacements at Gold with specialised tanks.
This was the coming of the end but not the end. It would take months to rid the French beaches of German troops. Runstedt and Rommel were not prepared to go down without a fight, and they threw all the military firepower they had at the Allies. The 5th Panzer Army and the 7th Army were elite crack forces who would rather die than surrender. As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of this remarkable operation, we should never forget those who lost their lives, an estimated 4,414 and over 10,000 casualties. If it were not for them and others, our country would not be free and democratic. We owe these ultimate heroes everything and always will. Those who have survived will have made their last trip back to Normandy. Soon, they become ghosts of a courageous battle for survival.
