Normandy '44: The Battle Beyond D-Day

'This is the day and this is the hour.

'The sky is lightening,

'lightening over the coast of Europe as we go in.

'The sea is a glittering mass of silver with all these

'craft of every kind moving across it.

'Allied Naval forces supported by strong air forces

'began landing Allied armies this morning

'on the northern coast of France.

'Many hundreds and thousands of fighting men are going in now,

'to do the biggest job they have ever had to do.

'I can't record any more now because the time has come for me

'to get my kit on my back and get ready to step off on that shore

'and it's a great day...'

The D-Day story's one that I've always found irresistible.

Growing up, I was captivated by tales of daring airborne drops

and beach assaults against a mighty foe.

But, as I've learnt more, I've realised that

much of our accepted view of the Normandy campaign needs questioning.

What's more, I think we owe it to those who fought here

to get their story right.

I believe the story is more nuanced...

..that the Americans were not so dominant,

the Germans not so skilful, nor the British so hapless...

..and I think it's worth reconsidering the events

that occurred in Normandy during the summer of '44.

This is the D-Day image that everyone knows.

One of only 11 surviving frames taken by Robert Capa

on Omaha Beach that morning.

It has provided a visual cue...

..a reference point that has informed the story for 70 years.

It's a story that's been told from a predominantly

American perspective, the British effort often relegated

to little more than an amateurish sideshow.

EISENHOWER: 'This landing is but the opening phase of the campaign

'in Western Europe. Great battles lie ahead.

'I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us now.

'Keep your faith staunch. Our arms are resolute.

'Together we shall achieve victory.'

After nearly five years of war, the invasion took place here -

Normandy, on the northern coast of France.

An armada carrying 133,000 men would join 22,000 paratroopers

in a massive assault that caught the Germans completely by surprise.

All too often this is where the story ends, on D-Day itself,

with the Allies taking the beaches.

The events that followed are often overlooked.

Wars are fought on three levels.

The strategic - the overall aims of the war leaders,

the goals and objectives, the big picture.

The tactical - the fighting.

We've best come to understand this through

the testimonies of those who were there.

The third level, operational, is the nuts and bolts,

the logistical link between the big plans at the strategic level

and the fighting at the tactical.

'It's this aspect that's usually ignored

'but which is of critical importance.'

And this map shows it brilliantly.

Here you've got the sea lanes, the highway of supply.

And it's not just D-Day - the Normandy campaign -

it's every single day. It's that resupplying of trucks and tanks

and fuel and rations and medical supplies.

It's that ability to be able to bring that across and reinforce

the battle front that's the key to unlocking the Normandy campaign.

D-Day itself, it's the centre of the campaign,

it's not the start of the campaign.

For Allied airmen and for Allied sailors,

that campaign had been going on for years beforehand,

so, in 1943, breaking the U-boats in order to bring the US army

safely across the Atlantic Ocean as a precondition for D-Day.

HORNS BLARE

Command and control of the enormous shipping effort was under

the direction of the Royal Navy from its headquarters near Portsmouth.

Stephen Prince is the Navy's official historian.

You are importing enormous amounts of power and people from all over

the world and that requires sea control

that stretches across the Earth.

You're bringing in nearly two million people from North America -

one and a half million Americans but, often forgotten,

the half a million Canadians

who were so important to the British war effort.

The Germans were also preparing for invasion.

Since 1942, they had been reinforcing positions

all along the coast of France - the Atlantic Wall.

It was strongest in the north, around the Pas-de-Calais.

In Normandy, it had never been finished,

and the troops defending the coast there varied in quality.

The 15th Army, moved from Russia,

was a mixture of veterans and new recruits.

The 7th Army had been in France since 1940,

seeing little, if any, combat.

'We had no good infantry divisions.

'They had been in France for two to three years,

'and were completely spoiled.

'France is a dangerous country, with its wine, women,

'and its pleasant climate.

'Troops who are there for any length of time become bad soldiers.'

Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein had been transferred

from the Eastern Front only a month before D-Day.

He led the elite Panzer Lehr division.

These men would be in the heart of the fighting.

At dawn on 6th June, Bayerlein's division was at Le Mans,

124 miles from the beaches.

The task for the German commanders in the west was to defend a huge

line that stretched all the way

from southern France to the Low Countries.

Precisely where to put the Panzer divisions to best meet this threat

was the subject of a major disagreement that had still

not been properly resolved.

Mobility and maximum flexibility were crucial

because the High Command did not know where

the Allied hammer would fall.

The German army in the west on 6th June 1944 is 58 divisions.

Six of them are armoured or mechanised,

mechanised infantry are called Panzer Grenadiers.

The rest, the other 52,

are infantry who relied purely on horses for their mobility.

It was these static divisions that would confront

the Allies as they came ashore.

These units would have to be swiftly overwhelmed

and a bridgehead secured

before the Panzer divisions could counterattack.

The landings began with the American assaults at 0630.

It was on Omaha that US troops initially struggled,

and it's the fighting here that has so defined D-Day ever since.

From down on the beach, it's easy to think that the defenders hold

all the aces, but from this point of view, I'm not so sure.

Imagine looking out to a scene dark with warships,

all hurtling shells towards you,

and thousands of Americans coming towards you as well.

This is one of the strongest positions of all the Omaha defences

and yet it was manned by just 41 people.

There were 15 of these strong points along the bluffs.

They were strongest where they covered

the four draws running off the beach.

For those in the initial waves,

opposite the two biggest exits, this was a killing zone.

The position of these bunkers

and trenches also seriously hampered the defenders.

As soon as the battle began, they were trapped where they fought.

The German defenders do a really good job for the first few hours

of the invasion.

But they can't reinforce the bunkers on the forward slope, they can't

bring spare ammunition down, they can't take their casualties back,

and they can't take any reinforcements down

to replace the casualties.

So those guys are isolated on the forward slope.

Sooner or later, they're going to run out of ammunition,

and the moment they do, with no ability to bring down more,

then they're finished, they're toast.

And that's exactly what happens that morning on Omaha Beach.

All those bunkers are falling silent at around about midday.

As soon as the soldiers hit the beach, they came in range

of powerful German machine guns,

so identified with the deadly defence of Omaha.

The Americans were quick to examine the most recent model.

'The latest German machine gun and the one which is gradually

'replacing the MG34

'is the dual-purpose calibre 7.92mm MG42...'

The main thing about it is the noise.

It's firing at such a cyclic rate, it's got a distinctive noise.

And everyone talks about Hitler's zip - the noise, the rate of fire.

'To change the barrel,

'a barrel change lever hinged on the right side...'

Therein lies the rub.

In the heat of battle, this was easier said than done.

The very thing that made the MG42

so terrifying was also its greatest weakness.

The incredibly high rate of fire used

so much ammunition, the barrel began to melt unless frequently changed.

OK, gun clear.

Considering the barrel's hot,

I will not manhandle it without a glove on, OK?

However, this isn't sufficiently hot to burn me.

So, if we elevate it slightly,

the barrel...comes out.

-OK.

-This is where you will need a protective item of clothing,

a rag, sandbag, or a glove,

because it will fuse the skin onto the barrel, it is that hot.

Interestingly, the same diaries

by the time we're breaching the Rhine a few months later,

there's just as many guns,

if not more, but there's no comment about it.

People have got accustomed to that noise.

The counterpart to the MG42 was the steady, ever-dependable

British Bren Gun,

originally designed in the mid '30s in Czechoslovakia.

Although firing at a lower rate, the Bren had strengths the MG42 lacked.

The two weapons perfectly demonstrate

a massive doctrinal difference.

So, the manufacture of one of these machine guns, the MG34,

-took 150 man hours to manufacture.

-Really?

-Even at the height of the war.

-Yeah, that's incredible, isn't it?

-It's ridiculous.

-A Bren Gun was 50 hours.

-So you can do three Bren Guns...

-In the time they made one gun.

-And what about the MG42?

That was reduced because it's pressed steel on the outside

-but it only went down to about 75...

-So it still takes...

-..so it still takes longer than the Bren Gun.

-Right.

And, remember, they're expense items. You use a lot of them.

Nearly half a million MG42s were built,

but over-engineering wasn't the problem for these weapons at Omaha.

Lethal in the opening stages, as the defenders used up the ammunition

and barrels began to melt, they became less effective.

This is one reason why subsequent waves had an easier time

crossing the beach.

After the initial slaughter,

the Americans overcame the German strong points.

Before the dawn beach assaults, airborne troops had been landed.

The British, using gliders,

had successfully captured bridges intact,

an operation that would anchor the eastern edge of the invasion area.

The western end was to be secured by American paratroopers.

These were some of the finest fighting men in the US Army.

But, despite numerous practice drops, as seen here,

they were delivered into the battle by mostly inexperienced pilots.

The result was just one in six troopers landing on target.

Nonetheless, paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions

did what they did best

and created havoc behind Utah Beach and across the Cherbourg Peninsula.

During the first 48 hours of the invasion,

Panzer divisions rushed to reinforce the coast.

They were attacked continually from the air.

'It took two days and one night to reach the Caen front,

'and, on 7th June '44, I lost 85 or 86 armoured vehicles, 123 trucks,

'five tanks and 23 half-tracks, all through bombing.

'Bayerlein, Panzer Lehr.'

Competing German commanders had argued where these Panzer

divisions should be held in preparation for the invasion.

Hitler had brokered a fudge that left many units

with a long trip to the front.

Despite some spectacular personality clashes,

leadership for the Allies was more efficiently structured.

Under the Supreme Command of General Dwight D Eisenhower,

the chiefs of the air and naval forces were both British...

..as was the army chief, General Bernard Montgomery.

Monty arrived in France and set up in the grounds of a chateau,

near Creully.

He had an extraordinary capacity to rub people up the wrong way,

which has often overshadowed his abilities

and skewed assessments of his performance.

Operation Overlord was largely Monty's plan.

In his pre-invasion strategy,

Monty aimed to secure a continual bridgehead as quickly as possible

and then to swiftly to capture Cherbourg

and the high ground to the south and south-east of Caen.

During the build-up, he also repeatedly stressed

the need for the British to anchor the eastern flank

and draw in the bulk of the German Panzers

so allowing the Americans

the freedom to manoeuvre south into Brittany.

It's over Caen that a question mark remains about Monty's plan.

The city was a vital confluence of road, rail and river,

with high ground to the south and south-east.

Having taken the city, Montgomery aimed to be at the banks

of the River Seine and the gates of Paris within 90 days.

His orders called for the British from Sword Beach to capture Caen

on D-Day itself, despite being ten miles inland.

Montgomery, when he takes over,

is shown the original invasion plans, takes them apart and says,

"These are inadequate, too few troops, wrong places."

Draws up a new invasion plan and it's really his plan.

One of the major changes Montgomery made was the swift capture

of the Cotentin Peninsular,

but that left him with just one division

landing here on Sword Beach.

Despite intelligence showing that German forces had increased

during May, the plan for Sword remained in place.

If anyone had been worried

that one division was too much to take Caen on D-Day,

they never spoke up.

Who before D-Day is going to dare to turn around to General Montgomery

and say, "Excuse me, General, I don't think your plan is quite right.

"I think we need more forces in the British sector attacking Caen."

Montgomery is really known for being quite vindictive and finickity

and if anyone dare criticises his plan, then there is a chance

they might not be in on D-Day itself.

The planning process had been based on a certain level of German

resistance and strength in Normandy.

Then the weeks leading up to D-Day, that strength

increases significantly, to dangerous levels,

as far as the planners are concerned.

But it's too late to do anything about it.

One enlarged division of some 25,000 men might have been enough

had a sizeable proportion landed right away.

But because of the availability of landing craft,

just two battalions, or 1,600 men, came ashore in the first wave.

And that was not enough for all that was being asked of them.

Monty may have been wrong about the scale of the attack at Sword,

but he was certainly right about the need to build up

the number of troops and equipment as quickly as possible.

But along the invasion front, there was no sizeable port.

During one of the early planning meetings,

Commodore John Hughes-Hallett said, "If we don't have a port,

"we must take one with us."

One of the principal solutions was

an effort so vast that, 70 years on,

its footprints are still here in the water...

..monuments to industrial warfare.

'Dozens, scores, hundreds of craft lying close inshore.

'Pontoons and jetties being lined up to make a new harbour where,

'six days ago, there was an empty stretch of shore.'

At their height,

the Mulberry harbours landed nearly 7,000 tons of supplies every day,

but on D-Day everything had to come ashore by landing craft.

This meant the troops heading ten miles to take Caen

were only lightly equipped

when they came up against their first obstacle -

a bunker complex, Widerstandsnest 17,

which the Allies had codenamed Hillman.

We're just about to fly over Hillman, which caused

so much problems for...

..for the British as they were advancing on Caen on D-Day.

It was built on a small rise that covered the Caen road

and could not be bypassed.

'Defended by a regiment of the 716th Infantry Division, not elite

'or highly motivated soldiers, by any means, they had sat on this

'hill looking at the coast for two years,

'and were well supplied and dug in.

'They held off the British until the following morning.'

There's no question that Hillman scuppered British chances

of taking Caen on D-Day.

But there's a problem with a bunker complex like this.

It's made of concrete. And concrete roots you to the spot.

While the British from Sword were being held up at Hillman,

the Canadians were off Juno Beach

and the British from Gold were already moving inland.

By evening, they were overlooking Bayeux.

At first light, a young officer led three tanks into town.

'We were the first troops in Bayeux

'and were most relieved to find that,

'except for isolated strong points and the odd sniper,

'no Germans were to be found

'Christopherson, Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.'

Christopherson found the Germans the very next day.

As his unit moved south,

they came up against the lead elements of the Panzer Lehr.

Despite suffering repeated attacks by Allied air forces,

the division was now in position, south-west of Caen with 232 tanks,

including the infamous Tiger.

Of all the German machinery that the Allies had to contend with,

the most feared was the Tiger tank.

You can't fully appreciate the size of the threat

until you're up close to it.

I've got to say, the Tiger tank is absolutely awesome. It's enormous.

You can see why, if you were coming up against it, it would put

the fear of God into you.

But while tactically it may be fantastic,

operationally, it's got all sorts of problems.

Just take the transmission, for example.

It had a hydraulically controlled,

semi-automatic, pre-selector gearbox.

It was invented by Ferdinand Porsche,

and while it might have been great for the Nurburgring,

this was only going to create a whole host of problems

when it came to the battlefront.

When we come to armour,

we tend to think, if we're thinking of German tanks,

of the Tiger tank, and it certainly made its presence felt in Normandy.

Most Allied soldiers talked in terms of seeing Tiger tanks and,

with the greatest respect to all the veterans I've ever met,

they cannot all have seen a Tiger tank. The Germans only made

1,500 of them, nearly all of them went to the Eastern Front.

But the important thing about a Tiger tank is it looks powerful,

it's frightening, it's got very thick armour,

so if you're firing shells at it - bang! -

they're all going to bounce off. It seems invulnerable.

It's almost like a mobile pillbox.

It may have been no consolation to anyone that came

directly in its path, or found it in their living room,

but the Tiger tank did have some significant disadvantages.

To travel one kilometre,

an Allied Sherman tank uses two litres of fuel.

To travel the same kilometre, a Tiger tank uses five litres.

And as the Germans are the ones short of fuel, the Allies aren't,

then that limits your scope of manoeuvre for a Tiger tank.

One of the problems is the Germans are producing some of these

in fairly small numbers. They're perhaps not

so easy to maintain or fuel as some of the Allied tanks.

So the Tiger tank is a very dominant weapon in one sense, tactically.

But the problem is once you break out, the main loss

of Tiger tanks is simply they run out of fuel.

They can't keep up with the Allied pace of warfare.

It may have been rare, complex, and thirsty,

but the Tiger did have a really big gun - the 88mm,

probably the best-known artillery piece of the war.

Key to its success was the fearsome velocity

with which it fired its shells.

'What's often forgotten is that there was another gun -

'the 17-pounder - which packed an even greater punch.

'And it was British.'

I'm going to have to have a go at this.

-So you just hop on to the seat here. Both feet down?

-Yep.

-They were smaller than me.

-They were.

I tell you what, it's easy to move from left to right, isn't it?

This is not difficult at all.

I can see that very easily.

Everything on here, it's engineered.

It's tough, it's designed to last, and to do the job.

And that's what they do.

And the fact that these guns were still being used

in Korea ten years later...

When you're shooting at tanks with armour piercing rounds,

you want a round that is going as fast as possible

when it hits the target.

And this is putting a round out at about 1,965mph. That's very fast.

That is really, really quick.

And ready to fire.

Fire. Fire.

Health and safety, and common good manners,

meant we were unable to fire live rounds onto a small

Buckinghamshire town, so these are just blanks.

When doing it for real, the anti-tank gun

is dragged into position to engage a moving target

and fired at a flat trajectory.

The 17-pounder could also be mounted onto a Sherman Firefly,

making this usually under-gunned tank a serious threat to the Tiger.

But if a Tiger broke through, the damage could be considerable.

Seven days after D-Day, elements of the 22nd Armoured Brigade

reached the town of Villers-Bocage, where they were ambushed.

A 30-year-old tank commander, named Michael Wittmann,

set about an impulsive attack, unsupported by infantry,

and in just 15 minutes destroyed 14 British tanks,

15 personnel carriers and two anti-tank guns.

Wittmann, a Waffen-SS officer,

was one of the highest scoring Panzer aces of the war.

He'd been awarded the Knights' Cross with Oak Leaves

for his actions at the Battle of Kursk on the Eastern Front.

You get people like Wittmann on the German side.

Wittmann talked about knocking out 135 Allied tanks.

We didn't do that.

I was always lead tank and so I would get my whole troop to fire,

so, consequently, if we knocked out a tank, it wasn't...

Lieutenant Render's tank or Sergeant Jackson's tank, or any of that.

It was Five Troop.

We never claimed, er, sort of individual tanks being killed.

The losses that the Germans suffer battling in Villers-Bocage

is often overlooked.

A number of the Tiger tanks are actually wasted in urban fighting

in the town of Villers-Bocage in the afternoon

of 13th June, because essentially they're without infantry support.

A clever commander does not send an open country tank,

like the Tiger, into the centre of town without proper infantry support.

Wittmann's actions at Villers-Bocage were of little strategic consequence

but became a propaganda coup, and he was promoted to Hauptsturmfuhrer,

an SS Captain.

He received the Swords to his Knight's Cross from Hitler

on 1st August.

Only a week later, Wittmann's luck finally ran out.

He was killed by a 17-pounder fired from a Sherman Firefly.

Wittmann is buried with the crew of Tiger 007

at La Cambe Cemetery, outside Bayeux.

The real significance of Villers-Bocage is it signalled

the stiffening of German resistance to the British advance.

What followed was a long attritional battle around Caen.

Things were not going much better for the Americans, as they moved

into terrain very different from the open land of the British sector.

It's amazing just how much the countryside has changed.

Gone are the big, wide-open fields and suddenly,

lots of little, tight squares lined with thick hedgerows.

And up ahead you can see the big ridges around Saint-Lo,

and this is where the Americans are heading.

The further US forces pushed south from their beaches,

the deeper they were drawn into the Norman hedgerows.

Through every hedge was a new field, a new battle ground,

and inevitably a new ambush.

They were becoming bogged down in the bocage.

Infantry and tanks needed to operate together.

The trouble was these hedgerows were so thick,

not even a Sherman could get through them,

and the infantry were getting decimated.

An urgent solution was needed,

and this came at the hands of classic American ingenuity.

The commander of the US V Corps

demanded his men solve the hedgerow problem.

In one of his units was Curtis Culin,

a National Guardsman who, in civilian life,

had worked in a garage.

He came up with a novel solution.

-Morning!

-Morning.

-How are you?

-How's yourself?

-How are you doing?

We're going to try and make a hedge cutter, and what's this bit here?

-We're cutting out the leading edge.

-OK.

So if we look at this,

the point would go down into the bottom of the hedge

and then as it came in contact with the roots,

-it would shear the roots off and push through the hedge.

-Got you.

As opposed to riding up and exposing the soft underbelly of the tank.

And how easy a job is this?

Obviously you've got all the kit here today,

but is it quite straightforward?

We've seen pictures and photographs of what was made back in the war,

-and it's basically a copy of that.

-Right.

Culin's idea was as economical as it was effective.

He sourced the raw material for the cutters

from the German obstacles covering the invasion beaches.

Within two days he had his first prototype.

How many hours do you think it's going to take, all in all,

the whole thing, from thinking about it

to getting it on the front of a Sherman?

Probably the first one would take a little bit longer

cos you've got to think of the design,

but once they'd made one or two of them,

I'd have thought half a day's or a day's work to do it -

obviously if they've got plenty of men

-cutting different pieces out...

-Sure.

'Culin's design had to be simple enough

'that welders without great skill could mass-produce the cutters

'in the field, where they were needed.'

Perfect.

Yeah, not the smoothest cut, but...

Hmm... THEY LAUGH

It took all of us three days to build a cutter

and attach it to the Sherman.

It took Sergeant Curtis G Culin Junior

a week before his prototype was ready to be demonstrated

in front of General Omar Bradley,

Commander of the whole US First Army.

We're using the same technique as Culin -

attach a cutter to the front of a tank, drive it at a hedge

and see if it works.

And it was seeing a demonstration like that

that convinced Bradley this was the way forward.

Within two weeks, 60% of all US Shermans in Normandy

had been adapted with Culin's hedge cutter.

Culin was awarded the Legion of Merit for his invention.

He survived Normandy, only to lose a leg

in the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest that winter.

Sitting here now, it may seem trivial

to be celebrating the hedge cutter.

After all, at the tactical level, all Culin had done

was find a pragmatic solution to an immediate problem.

But scale it up to the operational level,

and it's impossible to calculate the number of lives and resources

saved by this simple cutting tool.

The combination of ingenuity on the ground

and fast-moving flexibility within the American command structure

ensured its troops could move forward

at a far lower human cost.

BELL CHIMES

Caen, the capital of Normandy and birthplace of William the Conqueror.

It was around this medieval city

that the crux of the battle was played out.

Montgomery's plan to take the city on D-Day may have failed,

but as the British advanced, the area became a magnet for tanks.

On no other front had so much German armour

been concentrated into such a small area as it was around Caen.

Fighting less than ten miles from the beaches

and their main point of supply

gave the British a massive operational advantage

over the Germans that would prove decisive.

'The higher commanders were happy

'that the German divisions had held up for so long,

'not realising that what was happening

'was good strategy for the Allies.'

Unfortunately, in terms of the movement, in terms of the map,

it doesn't look as though much is being achieved.

And for many of the troops,

who are still stuck in positions after a number of weeks in Normandy

and around Caen, it's not looking too good.

The reality is, of course, it's working really well

and the Germans are suffering really badly.

And the German strategy consigns them to a long-term defeat,

which they cannot recover from.

'Allied war leaders in London and Washington

'were following lines on a map that appeared to be barely moving.

'To them, this didn't look much like success.'

It's amazing when you're in the plane like this,

and you can look out, and there's the sea,

there's Sword Beach down there and Caen just over here.

It's so close, and you can imagine how the Allied planners,

when you are looking on the map

and when you're flying over it for those reconnaissance photographs,

it must have felt like such a short distance, it must have seemed

such an achievable goal, I suppose, to get there in one day.

But the British HADN'T got there in a day, so a new plan was needed.

The Panzers had been drawn in around Caen,

and that determined where the Allies would fight them.

All that NOW mattered was annihilating

the cream of the German Army in the west.

It's often been portrayed that the Allies were beating their heads

against a brick wall of German Panzer divisions,

when actually it was the other way around.

By 1944, the Allies had worked out how to defeat

the enemy forces in the field.

For all the Germans' much-vaunted tactical flair,

they could always be relied upon to counterattack -

and in so doing, exposed themselves

to the overwhelming Allied firepower.

What the Allies had to do was probe forward,

defeating as much of the enemy as possible,

then sit back and wait for the inevitable response.

Typical of the fighting that followed was that near Tilly,

to the west of Caen.

The road into Tilly is a road of devastation.

It's lined at intervals with soldiers' graves.

Each grave with a rough wooden cross at its head -

sometimes a cross just hastily made from two sticks cut from a hedge

and nailed together.

The farmhouses, the cottages, almost every building along the road,

they're either gutted out or smashed up by shell fire.

Every yard of this road was shouting at you

that it had been fought for, bitterly.

The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry again found themselves

fighting the Panzer Lehr.

'The CO's tank had received a direct hit from a heavy shell,

'which had instantly killed Major Laycock,

'who had been Acting Colonel since Anderson had been wounded on D-Day.'

The colonel had just been killed.

Don't forget, we lost three colonels in five days

in the Sherwood Rangers.

So the next one down was Stanley Christopherson.

And then my father assumed command

of the regiment,

and this was probably after four days of really very stiff fighting.

Three senior officers killed,

and one officer and one sergeant wounded by the same shell.

This was indeed a shattering blow.

'Christopherson's son has returned to the small Norman hilltop

'his father held with the Sherwood Rangers for most of that June.'

I can really imagine what it must have been like, James,

um, and in a funny way it brings a slight lump to my throat.

You can just imagine how exposed you are

when you're sitting on a hill in your tank at Point 103.

I think it was possibly one of the most unpleasant experiences -

and certainly from Dad's recollection of it -

that they went through in almost all the war, really.

'We felt rather naked

'and lonely on this high ground without infantry protection.

'Being the senior squadron leader, I took control of the regiment,

'feeling utterly dejected and shocked.

'Christopherson, Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.'

I came to Normandy with Dad.

I have vivid recollections of, you know, our time here.

And I also then do remember going to visit the cemetery.

You know, my father, who was always rather good fun,

suddenly became rather sort of reserved and very silent.

My father really didn't, like so many, talk about his experiences,

I think, which was very typical of that generation,

and it was only in really later life where, having read his diaries,

did I really understand what had gone on.

'John Hanson-Lawson, B Squadron Commander,

'tried to stalk a German tank, which appeared to be dead.

'However a Mark IV shooting from the flank brewed him up.

'John and Sergeant Crookes were both wounded.'

'Sergeant Crookes was in a bad condition,

'but when I spoke to him

'he smiled and told me that he suffered no pain.

'He died very shortly afterwards.

'Christopherson, Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry.'

This is where they all were?

-70 years ago, almost to the day.

-Almost?

I mean, it is almost to the day, isn't it?

There's a lot of talk about heroes today

and I've no doubt, I suppose,

in some people's eyes they ARE heroes,

but, I mean, we didn't have ANY heroes in the Sherwood Rangers.

I might tell you that if you said to Stanley Christopherson

or any of those people, "Do you know what?

"I think I did rather well today.

"I mean, er, we got a tank and, er, we took 30 prisoners.

"I mean, that was jolly good, wasn't it?" you know.

You wouldn't half come in for a ticking-off.

The Sherwood Rangers could have never maintained action

at this furious pace without the Allies' massive operational support.

Each day, they were replacing killed and wounded men,

as well as damaged tanks,

in a manner that was impossible for the Germans.

There were three regiments in the brigade

and each regiment had 50 tanks, so there were 150 tanks.

Well, to keep 150 tanks going

they had to supply us with 1,073 new ones.

1,073 to keep 150 going.

I mean, I came out of three, I didn't lose the last one,

but I came out of three tanks.

And that was nothing.

Don't forget, Stanley Christopherson in the desert

came out of five tanks in one day!

Another veteran of the desert was General Bayerlein.

'Half of my division was still at Tilly-sur-Seulles,

'and had had four weeks' severe fighting with the British.

'I explained the condition of my division

'and that, so far as strength was concerned,

'it was not in a position to make a counterattack.

'At Tilly-sur-Seulles, we had been attacked every second day,

'and had been continually subjected to artillery fire.

'Bayerlein, Panzer Lehr.'

Three weeks after D-Day, Montgomery had finally built up enough strength

to launch a major set-piece assault on the German line at Caen.

The result, though hardly conclusive,

had far-reaching consequences.

Operation Epsom might not have achieved a decisive breakthrough,

but when the Germans desperately flung their Panzer divisions

into the battle, so went their last chance of a massed counterattack

against the Allies on their own terms.

'My men went to war weeks ago with fresh blooming faces.

'Today, muddy steel helmets shade emaciated faces

'whose eyes have, all too often, looked into another world.

'They present a picture of deep human misery.

'The division's front is stretched to breaking.

'Reserves are no longer available.

'I cannot stand this any more.

'Dietrich, 1st SS Panzer Corps.'

The British opposite them were also suffering.

Having lived through the slaughter of '14-'18,

Allied leaders were determined

to fight a modern, technologically-driven war,

but exposing the infantry and armour was unavoidable.

And for these mostly conscripted troops, the odds were appalling.

Maintaining morale was essential.

The Allies thought long-term about, "How are we going to win the war?"

rather than, "How are we going to win this particular battle?"

But if you maintain your army

and keep it functioning over the entirety of a campaign,

you're much more effective than if your throw everything

at the first few weeks and just hope something turns up for later on.

On July 12th, the millionth Allied soldier arrived in Normandy.

It was not simply about increasing numerical advantage

of the fighting force.

With each new arrival so grew the demands of supply.

So the British, Americans and Canadians invest heavily

in medical support, for example,

they invest heavily in logistical support, making sure

there's enough supplies, they rotate the units out of the line,

and they maintain links with home, with newspapers and letters -

there was great emphasis on that - and maintaining morale.

Montgomery was acutely aware that his forces were often inexperienced,

they weren't battle-hardened the way that the Germans were.

Battle-hardened or not, this vast mass of men required

three million meals a day,

and that's before the Allies started shipping ammunition, weapons,

tanks, trucks, fuel -

everything that was running so desperately short

for the German army.

The story of the Normandy campaign

is the Allied system builds up

and functions better and better over time,

and sustains ever-growing numbers of people,

whereas the German system starts off relatively strong,

um, and the Germans are very, very good at their tactical fighting

and their tactical firepower,

but increasingly they solve crises in Normandy

by borrowing from support troops, by patching up solutions,

which is very effective for the first stage of the campaign

and holds us close to the beaches for much longer than we expected.

But all the time their system is weakening

while ours is growing stronger,

and then at the end of July our system bursts through theirs

and theirs has no ability to react fast enough

for Allied troops who are well supplied

and are travelling in motor vehicles.

The Germans were struggling to supply their front,

mainly because Allied aircraft ruled the skies,

attacking anything that moved.

And Monty's assaults continued.

Operation Goodwood was launched on 18th July,

with armoured divisions advancing

after a huge air, naval and artillery bombardment.

It was designed as the first part of a two-fisted punch,

to draw in the Germans before the Americans attacked around Saint-Lo.

But after seven miles, the advance ran out of steam.

Montgomery had sold Goodwood as a massive killer blow,

largely as a ploy to get the air forces

to supply the bombers he felt he needed.

When the attack petered out, Eisenhower's aide, Harry C Butcher,

witnessed Ike's frustration.

'Ike said yesterday that 7,000 tons of bombs dropped

'in the most elaborate bombing of enemy front-line positions

'ever accomplished.

'Only seven miles were gained.

'Can we afford a thousand tons of bombs per mile?

'The air people are completely disgusted with the lack of progress.'

"Disgusted" was an understatement.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, who loathed Monty,

tried to get him sacked.

'Last evening about nine, Tedder phoned Ike

'and said that the British Chiefs of Staff would support

'any recommendation that Ike might care to make with respect to Monty

'for not succeeding with his big three-armoured division push.

'Butcher, SHAEF.'

'Monty was very good at talking to his soldiers or the press,

'but terrible at communicating with his peers and superiors,

'especially Eisenhower, whom he often left in the dark.'

One of the enduring legacies of the Normandy campaign is

the underwhelming performance of the British.

To a large extent, Monty himself is to blame for this perception.

If he'd bothered to explain his REAL intentions for Goodwood,

where 400 tanks had been knocked out,

there wouldn't have been such a storm.

This has always been seen as British ineptitude,

but ignores the fact that three quarters of them

were fixed and back in action within days.

Because Montgomery is a difficult customer,

it's kind of got in the way of any kind of real assessment

of what the British Army achieved in north-west Europe in '44-'45.

Which is not to say that Montgomery's personality does not generate

problems and difficulties and friction - at times it does -

overall there are far more positives than there are negatives.

Monty was focused purely on the battle in Normandy.

He didn't see the mounting problems facing Eisenhower as his concern.

With London under attack by V-1s, there was great pressure on Ike

to capture the rocket launch sites

still out of reach in northern France.

'There was further pressure to match the great strides being made

'by the Red Army in the east.

'There, Hitler could trade space for time.

'In Normandy, of far greater strategic importance,

'he had no such luxury.

'The Germans' determination to keep fighting close to the coast

'has been seen as evidence of their tactical skill.

'But the two don't always go hand-in-hand.'

One of the things that's supposed to be so good about the Germans

is their tactical flexibility,

the sort of Kampfgruppe and all this kind of stuff.

Um, but, you know, the British are doing battle groups

just as easily as the Germans.

I don't know if it's QUITE as easily,

but they certainly are learning during the campaign.

Um, and the example of things like perhaps the Guards Armoured Division,

who are first in action on a large-scale Operation Goodwood.

And they fight for various doctrinal and training reasons

very largely as a tank brigade

and as a mobile infantry brigade, fairly separately.

But after that battle, they are regrouping themselves.

So you put an armoured regiment next to a motorised infantry regiment,

and they work together in intimate support.

On D plus 49, the Americans had launched Operation Cobra -

the second part of the Allies' two-fisted assault.

More than 3,000 aircraft pummelled German positions around Saint-Lo.

Once again the Panzer Lehr were moved to face the attack.

'100% casualties in the front line.

'On 24th-25th July,

'I lost about 2,000 men - either dead or missing from the bombing.

'I collected the few reserves we had north of La Chapelle-en-Juger,

'and tried to re-establish the old line.

'I received more infantry, and put about 800 to 1,000 men in the line.

'The next day, they too were destroyed.

'I don't believe hell could be as bad as what we experienced.'

Already overstretched defending their position south of Caen,

the Germans were simply unable to hold off

the massive American attack as well.

By the end of July, German resistance was finally crumbling.

'I observed the whole bombardment. Artillery positions were blasted.

'The front line was wiped out.

'All communications were completely destroyed

'and there was no possibility of moving along the roads.

'I have been at all the hotly contested points on various fronts,

'but these three days at Saint-Lo

'were the worst I have ever experienced.

'Bayerlein, Panzer Lehr.'

By now, the German line was collapsing everywhere.

TRANSLATION:

Johannes Borner, a new paratrooper recruit

with the 3rd Fallschirmjager Division,

had arrived at Saint-Lo just after D-Day.

On D plus 62,

along with all the remaining German reserves in Normandy,

he was thrown into yet another disastrous counterattack,

the survivors of which

were forced back onto ground near the town of Falaise.

The end was inevitable.

TRANSLATION:

Johannes Borner was captured amidst the wreckage of the Falaise pocket.

As a POW, he worked on a farm near Bayeux.

He married a French woman and, for most of the 70 years since D-Day,

Borner has lived quietly in a little town just behind Sword Beach.

The Normandy campaign was over.

Two German armies had haemorrhaged men and machinery

until they could simply resist no longer.

Traditionally, this has been a tale of heroic Allied struggle

against seemingly impossible odds in the early hours of the invasion.

But Normandy had, in fact, been won by tactical ingenuity,

and a vast operational machine supplying an army

now able to adapt its strategic aims to a rapidly changing battlefield.

There are 77 days in the Normandy campaign.

And the British Army and the American Army that land on D-Day on 6th June

are very different to those who leave on the 20th-21st August.

In the First World War the armies have to adapt,

and it takes them four and a half years, from 1914 to 1918.

In Normandy, they're going through the same transition,

but that's squashed into two and a half months.

Montgomery reckoned the campaign would last for 90 days.

They'd beaten his target by nearly two weeks,

and then advanced with spectacular speed.

It's true the fighting at the tactical level had played out

very differently from what had been expected.

But in terms of the broader strategy

the campaign had more than fulfilled its aims.

By D plus 90, Paris had been liberated

and Allied forces were as far as Brussels.

The price had been terrible.

On every day of the Normandy campaign,

casualties averaged 6,500 men.

Men whose stories are not told by Hollywood or in history books.

Faces staring at us from faded photographs.

Names on long-forgotten lists.

As the generation who fought here slips quietly away,

it's left to us to try and tell a more complete story,

so we might understand what THEY went through in Normandy,

during the summer of '44.