Remembering "The Longest Day"
I cannot begin to imagine what it was like for the thousands of men who charged up the D-Day beaches under Nazi fire, jumped out of aircraft in the dark as they parachuted into occupied France, or otherwise put themselves in harm's way seventy years ago today as they launched the campaign to liberate Europe.
I do know that the debt we owe those brave men is incalculable.
Thousands of them lost their lives: the casualty lists (on both sides) from the Normandy campaign were comparable with those at the Somme.
What the world might be like today without their sacrifices is unspeakable.
We have a bad habit in Britain of failing to give our service personnel from the most junior to the most senior the credit they deserve for their sacrifices and achievements. In the case of the D-Day campaign the credit due both to our front-line soldiers, sailors and airmen, and to the often derided staff officers who in this case got almost everything right, is amazing.
The planners knew that they were up against a formidable German army, which if it could have concentrated quickly on the beachheads before they were properly established, would have rendered the invasion impossible.
So they did two things: they constructed the largest deception operation in the history of warfare, including an entire dummy army, to trick the Nazis into thinking that the attack was aimed at Calais rather than Normandy, and it succeeded brilliantly so that the Panzer divisions were in the wrong place. And they used the brave pilots of the RAF and USAF, flying thousands apon thousands of sorties, to take out practically every set of railway points in northern France so that the Germans could not quickly move reinforcements against the landing sites.
They learned the lessons from previous attempted amphibious operations by both sides such as the disastrous Dieppe raid and made sure they had specialist landing craft, mineclearing tanks, and the other support infrastructure required to deal with the fortifications on the beaches.
They built two complete artificial harbours - the so called "Mulberry Harbours" to ensure that the bridgeheads could be properly supplied.
A friend of mine who had been one of the D-Day planners, the late Lt. Colonel Jack Fielder, later became leader of Hertfordshire County Council. He used to joke in later life that these days it takes longer to approve and install a pedestrian crossing than it took Monty & Eisenhower's staffs to organise D-Day. I always think of Jack and his colleagues when we remember D-Day - everyone is quick to criticise the staff and administration in war as in civilian life when they get it wrong, but it was very fortunate for the world, and for the PBI on the beaches who had to put their lives on the line, that this particular bunch of Rear Echelon you-know-whats did their jobs superbly. The cost in blood if they hadn't would have been far higher.
The front-line troops don't always get the credit they deserve either. The Germans had designed and built some of the most superlative armoured fighting machines of the war, but fortunately were not able to build anything like as many of them as Britain, let alone America, managed to produce. So the allies usually had the edge in numbers, but the challenge for our soldiers was dealing with enemy panzers which tank for tank were often superior to ours. And yet they did it.
Almost any boy (or girl) who has studied military history will know about the terrible carnage suffered by 5th London Yeomanry and 1st Battalion the Rifle Brigade near Villers Bocage on 13th June 1944, during the successful ambush of a British armoured and mechanised column by a single Tiger Tank under the command of Michael Wittman. I recall learning the story as a ten-year old in an article about how dangerous an opponent the Tiger tank was. This story is also often told in a way that makes the British troops sound like amateurs outfought by the more professional Wehrmatch and Waffen-SS
Yet the conclusion to the story, which does not fit that picture, is much less often told. The same afternoon the Germans in turn were ambushed by the British, losing six Tiger tanks (out of only 36 in the whole of Normandy) and six Panzer IVs. The British soldiers who organised that ambush needed greater tactical ability and even more courage than Wittman's Nazis. (I'm using that word in a literal sense as we are talking about a Waffen SS unit.) It took far more skill, and was much more dangerous, to destroy a Tiger with Cromwell and Sherman tanks than the other way round. Yet they did it. The amateurs from the "Nation of Shopkeepers" won and the "Master Race" were defeated.
But it is important that we don't confuse those who fought for Hitler in 1944 either with thsoe who opposed him at the time or with the millions of Germans who had not even been born. A prominent German recently observed that operation Overlord liberated Germany, as well as the rest of Europe, from Nazi rule.
Angela Merkel attended today's commemoration ceremonies. One of the most important legacies of the D-Day campaign is that today's Germans are no longer our enemies.
I do know that the debt we owe those brave men is incalculable.
Thousands of them lost their lives: the casualty lists (on both sides) from the Normandy campaign were comparable with those at the Somme.
What the world might be like today without their sacrifices is unspeakable.
We have a bad habit in Britain of failing to give our service personnel from the most junior to the most senior the credit they deserve for their sacrifices and achievements. In the case of the D-Day campaign the credit due both to our front-line soldiers, sailors and airmen, and to the often derided staff officers who in this case got almost everything right, is amazing.
The planners knew that they were up against a formidable German army, which if it could have concentrated quickly on the beachheads before they were properly established, would have rendered the invasion impossible.
So they did two things: they constructed the largest deception operation in the history of warfare, including an entire dummy army, to trick the Nazis into thinking that the attack was aimed at Calais rather than Normandy, and it succeeded brilliantly so that the Panzer divisions were in the wrong place. And they used the brave pilots of the RAF and USAF, flying thousands apon thousands of sorties, to take out practically every set of railway points in northern France so that the Germans could not quickly move reinforcements against the landing sites.
They learned the lessons from previous attempted amphibious operations by both sides such as the disastrous Dieppe raid and made sure they had specialist landing craft, mineclearing tanks, and the other support infrastructure required to deal with the fortifications on the beaches.
They built two complete artificial harbours - the so called "Mulberry Harbours" to ensure that the bridgeheads could be properly supplied.
A friend of mine who had been one of the D-Day planners, the late Lt. Colonel Jack Fielder, later became leader of Hertfordshire County Council. He used to joke in later life that these days it takes longer to approve and install a pedestrian crossing than it took Monty & Eisenhower's staffs to organise D-Day. I always think of Jack and his colleagues when we remember D-Day - everyone is quick to criticise the staff and administration in war as in civilian life when they get it wrong, but it was very fortunate for the world, and for the PBI on the beaches who had to put their lives on the line, that this particular bunch of Rear Echelon you-know-whats did their jobs superbly. The cost in blood if they hadn't would have been far higher.
The front-line troops don't always get the credit they deserve either. The Germans had designed and built some of the most superlative armoured fighting machines of the war, but fortunately were not able to build anything like as many of them as Britain, let alone America, managed to produce. So the allies usually had the edge in numbers, but the challenge for our soldiers was dealing with enemy panzers which tank for tank were often superior to ours. And yet they did it.
Almost any boy (or girl) who has studied military history will know about the terrible carnage suffered by 5th London Yeomanry and 1st Battalion the Rifle Brigade near Villers Bocage on 13th June 1944, during the successful ambush of a British armoured and mechanised column by a single Tiger Tank under the command of Michael Wittman. I recall learning the story as a ten-year old in an article about how dangerous an opponent the Tiger tank was. This story is also often told in a way that makes the British troops sound like amateurs outfought by the more professional Wehrmatch and Waffen-SS
Yet the conclusion to the story, which does not fit that picture, is much less often told. The same afternoon the Germans in turn were ambushed by the British, losing six Tiger tanks (out of only 36 in the whole of Normandy) and six Panzer IVs. The British soldiers who organised that ambush needed greater tactical ability and even more courage than Wittman's Nazis. (I'm using that word in a literal sense as we are talking about a Waffen SS unit.) It took far more skill, and was much more dangerous, to destroy a Tiger with Cromwell and Sherman tanks than the other way round. Yet they did it. The amateurs from the "Nation of Shopkeepers" won and the "Master Race" were defeated.
But it is important that we don't confuse those who fought for Hitler in 1944 either with thsoe who opposed him at the time or with the millions of Germans who had not even been born. A prominent German recently observed that operation Overlord liberated Germany, as well as the rest of Europe, from Nazi rule.
Angela Merkel attended today's commemoration ceremonies. One of the most important legacies of the D-Day campaign is that today's Germans are no longer our enemies.
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