D-Day 80!

“I have…to announce to the House that during the night and the early hours of this morning the first of the series of landings in force upon the European Continent has taken place. In this case the liberating assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada of upwards of 4,000 ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne landings have been successfully effected behind the enemy lines, and landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time”.

Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, statement to the House of Commons, 6 June 1944

D-Day!

6 June, 1944. 0900 hours Zulu. In the Combined Allied Forces on D-Day there are 61,715 British troops either on, approaching, or off the Normandy beaches, alongside 73,000 Americans and some 21,500 Canadians. Under Supreme Commander US General Dwight D, Eisenhower, Operation Overlord is a truly multinational effort. The Allied Expeditionary Naval Forces is led by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay of the Royal Navy, the Air Group by Royal Air Force Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and 21^st Army Group by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, victor of El Alamein. Of the five landing beaches three are under British command, Gold, Juno and Sword, and two under American command, Omaha and Utah.

The assault troops are supported by 6939 ships and craft of various sorts, together with the forces of many free nations – Australians, Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Greeks, New Zealanders, Norwegians, and Poles.  There were also the 209 men of the Free French forces, including Kieffer’s 177 commandos, on their long, dangerous and distinguished way home. One of the first to be killed was Corporal Emile Bonétard, who was attached to Britain’s 4 SAS who at 0045 hours dropped by parachute into Plumelec, Brittany with the orders to block any German reinforcements heading north to the Normandy beaches.

They are supported by some 1213 warships of which 892 fly the White Ensign of the Royal Navy, with 3261 of the 4126-landing craft ferrying the troops ashore and often under intense fire also British. In total, 7700 ships and craft have been deployed in support of the landings, together with the two giant ingenious floating British Mulberry Harbours without which the landings could not have happened. In the air, 12000 sorties are flown by some 2000 aircraft protecting the troops on the ground some 70% of which are either Royal Air Force or Royal Canadian Air Force.

At 0015 hours 6 platoons of the 2^nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, 6^th Airborne Division, attacked and within 15 minutes took a critical bridge (Pegasus Bridge) over the Caen canal that protects the eastern flank of the five landing beaches. The glider-borne force landed less than 150 yards from their target. Their mission was critically important because the bridge was the only way for the 21st Panzer Division at Falaise to get to the three British and Canadian beaches.

At 0026 hours Major John Howard sent the coded success signal “ham and jam”. They were relieved two hours ago by Lord Lovat’s Special Brigade and 7^th Parachute Division. The liberation had begun.

At 0058 hours the 7^th (light infantry) Parachute Battalion of the British Army began the first of the massed American and British ‘drops’ of some 13000 paratroopers behind enemy defences to help secure the landing beaches.

At 0545 hours a massive naval bombardment began from the fleets covering the beaches that included six British and three American battleships and monitors with their powerful 16-inch, 15 inch, and 14 inch main armament firing enormous car-heavy shells at targets often over 30 miles inland. They were supported by 23 heavy and light cruisers, 19 of which were British, three American and one Free French and Polish each. There were also 139 destroyers and frigates scurrying around often suppressing enemy fire close inshore. Of these 78 were British, 40 American, 10 Free French, 7 Canadian, 3 Norwegian, 2 Polish, and 2 Greek. Of the 508 other vital warships of varying functions (including landing ships, minesweepers, and anti-submarine ships), 352 were British, 154 were American and 2 were Dutch.

At 0725 hours troops of the 50^th Northumbrian Division, 69^th and 231^st Brigade and the 8^th Armoured Brigade were the first of the six American, British and Canadian infantry divisions to set foot ashore, although they had been preceded by the Special Boat Service, Royal Marine Commandos and US Rangers.

D-Day 70

Ten years ago, on D-Day 70, I had the honour to watch Beating the Retreat on Horseguards Parade in Central London as a guest of the First Sea Lord. This is an ancient British military parade that was performed meticulously by the massed bands of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines, joined by the band of the Royal Netherlands Navy and the band of the United States Marine Corps. The precision of the military bandsmen of three great democracies marching and wheeling around Horseguards reminded me of the enduring importance of the military alliance of the Western democracies forged on those magnificent but bloody beaches. As I watched, I also reflected that my life today would not be possible without D-Day – I am a Brit, I am married to a Dutch woman and live in the Netherlands. I am also a passionate believer in the United States and the continuing need for American leadership of NATO, as well as a European.

Later, as I looked down from the Duke of Wellington’s famous office with a very nice glass of Royal Naval Chablis in my hand I was also struck by the enduring need for democratic values and liberties to be underpinned by hard military power in an unforgiving world. Indeed, if there is one testament to the men who put their lives on the line on Normandy’s beaches it is that the West is no longer a place but an idea – a global idea that must be defended globally. Now, as then, sound defence means hard-nosed political realism and on occasions the same sad sacrifice by the same sort of young citizen-soldiers the bodies of whom could be seen strewn across the D-Day beaches by the end of that fateful day.

D-Day 80!

NATO was born on the beaches of Normandy. What are the critical lessons of D-Day for NATO today? First, the vital need for the firm political leadership of Churchill and Roosevelt who knew the risks but understood the need to take them. With another autocratic leader again threatening to trample upon Europe’s hard won freedoms today’s European leaders must look hard at themselves in the mirror of D-Day.

Second, the vital importance of effective combined and joint planning.  COSSAC, the Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Allied Command was built on an unparalleled level of trust between senior American and British commanders.  It provided the template for NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).

Third, give the commanders the forces and resources necessary to do the job.  In 1944 the job was to storm Festung Europa and liberate Western Europe.  Today, it is to deter Putin from threatening or even attacking NATO.

Above all, the D-Day way of war was and is the Western way of war, the very essence of military innovation, particularly British innovation, a balance between appropriate mass of forces and the requisite manoeuvre of forces. The Allies put steel before flesh and equipment before people, but it also recognised that equipment without people, however advanced it may be, is a sure-fire way to lose. Britain was at the height of its fighting power on June 6, 1944, with a fully equipped, fighting fit force.  It is a far cry from today when under-funded, under-equipped and under-sized British forces can only play at ‘fighting fit’.

The Finest Day!

Britain’s Finest Hour was in 1940, but Britain’s Finest Day was on June 6, 1944.  A few years ago, I stood on the cliffs above Arromanches looking down on Gold Beach where the famed British XXX Corps came ashore. To my right lay Juno and Sword beaches and to my left the American beaches, Omaha and Utah. The sheer length of the 60-mile-long landing front was stunning.

To honour those brave, ordinary men who stormed the beaches we must complete the journey towards a Europe whole and free that began on that momentous day. We must reinvest in the defence of liberty and democracy for which my grandfather and my great-uncle (killed) fought. In November 1942, speaking of the British Commonwealth’s victory at El Alamein in Egypt Winston Churchill said, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, however, the end of the beginning”. D-Day was the beginning of the end of World War Two in the European theatre of operations. The slog through Normandy, the Falaise Gap and the breakout east and north, and the liberation of Belgium, France and the Netherlands claimed hundreds of thousands of lives still. It was also the beginning of freedom, a journey without end.

At the Going Down of the Sun

By D-Day’s end of the 156,000 Allied soldiers ashore and the 195,700 sailors and airmen offshore and above, 4414 had been killed of which 2500 were American, 2500 British, and 370 Canadian.  There were also some 6000 wounded. Of the 50,000 Germans facing the Allies, between 4000 and 9000 had been killed with many taken prisoner. It should never be forgotten that some 20,000 French civilians died for France’s freedom simply in Normandy alone, without counting the cost of those tortured and killed as members of the French Resistance. From any perspective it was a stunning Allied victory. For me the greatest legacy of all is that I have the honour to count today’s German generals amongst my friends and my fighting forebears would have been proud of that. You see, D-Day was not about killing Germans, it was about destroying Nazism, just as today’s support for Ukraine is not about killing Russians, but ending aggression. It was about defending and securing freedom.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them. ALL of them!

Thank you, Gentlemen. I owe you my freedom to write this and I will NEVER forget your sacrifice.

Julian Lindley-French