Remembering D-Day, Sixty Years On
A KBH Focus Article

As a tribute to the veterans of D-Day and in memory of the fallen, the KBH Editor presents the text of chapter 18 from KBH The Second World War by S. L. Case.

On D-Day, June 6th 1944, the invasion of Hitler's Europe from the west began. An armada of nearly 4,000 ships carried in the region of 130,000 troops across the English channel, to land on the coast of Normandy in northern France. Paratroopers, who were landed in the rear to cut off the German lines of communication, helped to ensure the success of the operation. Within days of establishing the first beach-heads on D-Day itself, thousands of British, American and Canadian troops had been landed, and hundreds of tonnes of stores and equipment had been put ashore.

The task of supplying the fighting troops became easier after the capture of the port of Cherbourg on June 26th 1944. The fall of Caen on July 8th, after days of bitter fighting, gave the Allies control of Normandy and from that point onwards the breakout into the rest of France was only a matter of time.

After re-grouping their forces the allies began to push eastwards in two main directions. The Americans moved on Paris which was liberated on August 24th 1944. They then advanced towards the French-German frontier, reinforced by additional troops who had landed in southern France on August 15th. The British, meanwhile, moved forward further north and advanced through Belgium and into Holland. Their target was the Rhine and the important German industrial towns in the Ruhr.

The D-Day landings were the biggest military operation ever attempted, and they required very careful planning and preparation. The Supreme Commander ,the American General Eisenhower, and his staff were busy for months before the invasion took place. They had to arrange for the assembly of all the troops and landing craft and work out all the details of the co-operation they would need from the Navy and the Air Force. In addition, teams of scientists and engineers were set to work to solve the many technical problems which such an invasion involved, and they came up with some brilliant answers.

They designed for example, a floating harbour called Mulberry, which was towed across the Channel in pre-fabricated sections and then anchored off the Normandy beaches. Large ships were able to tie up and unload their stores on to this harbour, even before the capture of Cherbourg gave the allies a deep water port. Another successful scheme was PLUTO, the pipe line under the ocean which carried fuel oil on the bed of the Channel from Britain to France.

Another interesting aspect of the preparations made for the D-Day invasion was the work done by the Allied Intelligence services. They made secret arrangements with the marquis, the French resistance fighters, to blow up vital railway bridges and other targets behind the German lines. They also tricked the Germans into thinking the invasion was not going to be in Normandy at all. As a result, on the day of the landings, the defences on that part of the French coast were not as strong as they might have been.

Text Copyright: S. L. Case 1976

< Return to previous page