Learning Zone D-Day: The Last Heroes

On the 6th June 1944,

British and Allied forces put a top secret plan into action...

..code-named Operation Overlord.

D-Day.

There was smoke, there was fire, there were explosions.

I thought nobody could survive in that, nobody.

Looked like dead bodies all over the place to me.

In a single day, 14,000 men would be captured,

wounded or lose their lives.

You can't give more than your life, can you?

Their sacrifice gave the Allies the best chance

of defeating Nazi Germany.

It was another untold story that begins years before D-Day.

It's a story of how the invasion was minutely planned

in the most incredible detail.

D-Day was a victory not just of bombs, bullets and bayonets,

but of intelligence and aerial reconnaissance

that unlocked the secrets of the Nazi war machine...

..and helped put the Allies on a path to victory.

December 1941.

The Americans had joined the war, bringing money and man power.

Churchill and Roosevelt were agreed.

The time had come to reverse the humiliating retreat from Dunkirk.

A full-scale invasion would be launched

to free occupied Europe and defeat Adolf Hitler.

..dass diese Zukunft restlos uns gehoert!

The area where the invasion would eventually take place

was never seriously in doubt.

It would be the coastline of north-west Europe,

but it was heavily defended. The Nazis dominated the area

and they were turning Europe into a fortress.

Fearing an Allied assault, the Germans had built a defensive

network of bunkers, minefields and heavy guns.

Stretching along the coastline from Norway to Spain,

it was known as the Atlantic Wall.

The Allies knew from experience that punching a hole through it

would be a high-risk strategy.

'In August 1942,

'a raid had been mounted on the French town of Dieppe.'

It was here that the Allies made their first major attempt

at a landing on French soil, and the result was a disaster.

The aim was to test the German defences and seize the port,

but patchy intelligence and poor planning

led to a deadly miscalculation of the enemy's strength.

And lapses in security meant the Germans were expecting the attack.

As they landed on the beach, the Allied troops were mown down

by machine guns hidden in the cliffs.

In less than eight hours, over half of the 6,000-strong invasion force

were killed, wounded or captured.

Dieppe was a defining moment in the Second World War.

It taught the Allies a bitter but a timely lesson, and that was

if they wanted to invade Nazi-occupied Western Europe,

if they wanted to punch through these massive fortifications,

they would have to get the preparation right,

the intelligence right and execute it far better,

and if they didn't do those things, then as that corpse-covered beach

down there showed, the consequences would be unthinkable.

For D-Day to succeed, the Allies needed precise intelligence

on the German defences. They needed eyes on the enemy.

They turned to a trusted friend, the Spitfire.

But this was a Spitfire with a difference.

Instead of guns, it was armed with high-tech cameras...

..to photograph every inch of the European coastline

from heights of up to 30,000 feet.

The aerial photos were bought here to RAF Medmenham,

just west of London. This was home to the photo interpreters, PIs.

Here, the highly trained analysts worked night and day

to unlock the secrets of each photograph.

Using 3D glasses known as stereoscopes,

they analysed thousands of images each week,

scrutinising the defences in astonishing detail and probing

the Atlantic Wall for weakness, which the Allies could exploit.

We covered the whole of the channel coast...

..with as much information as possible about all the defences.

The most obvious invasion route would be straight to Calais,

barely 20 miles, but aerial photos revealed this would be suicidal.

The Germans had anticipated an Allied attack,

and the coastline was heavily defended with vast guns.

So the photo interpreters focused the search

on less well-defended beaches further west.

There's only a very few beaches that could be used for a landing,

and that was the key to the whole thing,

to pick out a spot where we were going to land.

No-one, including me, knew where this was, but we had the pictures.

Eventually, the Allies found what they thought might be

a chink in the Nazi armour, a 60-mile stretch of the Normandy

coastline where they hoped to take the enemy by surprise.

The advantage of that stretch of coast

was that there were less of these, German defences,

and there were no major ports, so no huge concentrations

of German military power as there had been at Dieppe.

After months of careful reconnaissance, a plan

for the D-Day invasion could finally begin to take shape.

Five beaches would be attacked by 156,000 men.

British and Canadian forces would seize three beaches

in the east, codenamed Sword, Juno and Gold.

The Americans would take two western beaches, Omaha and Utah.

The photo interpreters at RAF Medmenham had provided

the Allied leadership with a crucial piece in a vast jigsaw,

but even with precise intelligence,

such a grand plan carried high risks.

To avoid another blood bath like Dieppe, Allied troops must be

trained to execute the plan with expert precision.

The British commandoes and the American rangers

underwent some of the toughest training.

Specialising in amphibious assaults and stealth raids, these elite

new units would spearhead some of D-Day's most dangerous missions.

By the time we got into England, we finally developed a feeling

that our mission would be landing on a hostile shore.

Everybody knew that.

First, though, we were taught to transition from boats

to the attacking of fortresses, or beach defences.

We exercised day and night until we got it absolutely right

and the rangers were very good troops, trained by our commandos,

and first-class soldiers, and they got it right.

The British commandos, in my opinion,

were the best troops in the world.

In those days, we were ready for anything, really.

Whatever they slung at us we'd do and that was it.

That's right, that's right.

June 1944. With the intelligence gathered and training complete,

the Allies were ready to launch the greatest invasion in history,

but the D-Day plan could not be leaked, or the Allies risked

bloodshed on a scale far greater than Dieppe.

Troops were locked down in secure camps

as details of the invasion were unveiled.

Aerial photos, models and maps revealed in minute detail

the German defences that the men would face,

from the position of minefields to the location of each gun.

They began to show us maps and photographs

of what was going to take place,

and that's when we seen those cliffs with those machine guns...

..and where we were landing it was going to be two machine guns.

And, you know, it scared everybody pretty good.

After months of physical training,

the men prepared themselves mentally for what lay ahead.

I couldn't sleep on the last night in the camp.

No, no.

We were all sitting talking about it and smoking, and...

All anxious, yeah.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Even the Germans get like that, don't worry, yeah.

There was a lot of punching and pushing about,

throwing knifes at pictures of Hitler.

It's the sort of thing soldiers get up to, and I think it's

a bravado because we knew that we were going on something quite big.

On the evening of June 5th, 1944, 6,000 vessels left harbours

and ports along the British coastline.

The next 48 hours would be decisive.

It would be the last time many of the soldiers

would see British shores.

What a sight, what a sight.

It was, erm, it was like playing for England,

and all the crowd cheering like mad.

We stood up there and watched all this

and tears were running down our faces.

We recognised that we would probably have about 50% casualties,

and that of those, one in five would be killed.

And, ever the optimist, the American soldier goes into battle

no matter what, expecting that he will be the one to survive.

June 6th, 1944.

D-Day.

As dawn broke, the largest armada in history

stood waiting off the Normandy coast.

It was an impressive sight.

As far as the eye could see, nothing but ships.

Allied ships and aircraft pounded the Nazi defences,

in preparation for the greatest invasion of all time.

All that fire, and all the ships around us firing,

planes going overhead, I began to get nervous.

It was spectacular.

Maybe we forgot what we were doing otherwise, because we were

in awe with the sight that we were seeing.

If German positions could be destroyed before the assault began,

the troops might stand a fighting chance as they landed on the beach.

It was a mass of flame and smoke,

and I thought nobody could survive in that, nobody.

The stakes were high.

The next 24 hours would determine the outcome of the war.

If the invasion was a success,

the Allies could surge inland and liberate Nazi-dominated Europe,

but if it failed, thousands of men would lose their lives

and any hope of victory would be crushed for years to come.

The plan was audacious.

145,000 men would assault the Normandy coast.

In the east, British troops would attack three beaches,

codenamed Sword, Juno and Gold.

In the west, the Americans would take Omaha and Utah.

Of the five beaches, one promised a particularly bloody fight.

Omaha, where the Germans enjoyed lots of natural advantages.

Just look at these aerial photographs.

They show the line of bluffs - steep cliffs, almost -

which made it very difficult to get off the beach.

The only way up to the countryside beyond were these exits here,

which were, of course, carefully defended.

There were also a line of German machine guns on the top of

these bluffs, which were able to cover the entire beach,

with deadly accurate machine gun fire.

For the attackers, there would be nowhere to hide.

We recognised that we would probably have about 50% casualties,

and that of those, one in five would be killed.

Where we were laying, there was two machine guns.

And you know, it scared everybody pretty good.

But the machine guns on the bluffs were just one element

of the elaborate Nazi defences.

Allied reconnaissance planes had identified an even greater threat

on the cliffs to the west of the beach.

A massive gun battery at the Pointe du Hoc.

It was feared that the heavy guns could annihilate American

landing craft en route to the beaches. They had to be destroyed.

It absolutely had to be neutralised, or the whole operation

would be in danger and jeopardy.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, Allied aircraft dropped

380 tonnes of bombs on Pointe du Hoc, and you can see from this

aerial photograph the devastating damage that's been done to the area.

What remains unclear from this

is just what's happened to the guns themselves.

With thousands of lives at stake, no chances could be taken.

An elite unit of American rangers

had been given the unenviable task of silencing the guns.

In the early hours of 6th June, they had to land and scale

the 30-metre cliffs under fire.

It was one of the most dangerous missions of D-Day.

You would get fired on while coming in.

This was not a surprise.

The enemy had had about 30 minutes to get up

out of his underground bunkers.

He was up there, throwing hand grenades down by the bush,

and firing right down on us.

There were Germans on top throwing potato mashers down at them,

there were riflemen shooting at them, but the worst of it was

that there was two machine gun nests

that were shooting right into their backs.

The enemy, damn it, cut some of the ropes. That was not kosher, you know.

The first man to the top of the cliffs was there in 50 seconds

from the time they grounded down.

And I don't know how he did it.

But for the rangers who had fought their way to the top,

there was a nasty surprise.

The big guns had been moved, and they didn't know where.

The threat remained.

Unaware of the drama at the Pointe du Hoc, Coxswain Jimmy Green

was taking the first wave of American infantry into Omaha Beach.

The troops we took in were from Bedford, Virginia,

and they hadn't seen action before.

They were quiet country lads, and I was trying to reassure them.

Today so many people think that they can get a sense of what the war

must have been like by playing these realistic computer games...

..but there's nothing realistic about those games.

They can't replicate the gut-wrenching terror,

they can't replicate the overwhelming desire

to be somewhere else, to be anywhere but here...

..and they can't replicate the stench of diesel

and the stink of vomit that swilled around men's boots.

As the boats came into land,

the dramatic events below were recorded by reconnaissance aircraft.

There was oil, there was smoke, there were explosions,

there were troops blown apart.

Anything you wanted, unpleasant was there.

They'd crossed 300 yards of open beach with no cover...

..and they were mowed down.

Every man in my boat was killed.

Awful waste.

It was a very sad occasion.

As the second wave powered into Omaha Beach,

they could see the devastation ahead.

I could see what looked like dead men.

The A Company had landed ten minutes ahead of us.

There was fire and smoke, a real chaos.

I said, "Captain, look like dead bodies all over the place to me."

He said, "Something wrong."

When that ramp went down, the machine guns opened up on us.

And it was like bullets of bees swarming around.

The captain, of course, took off first

and right behind him was my friend Sergeant Wright,

and when I got out on the raft, I fell.

It was right around that time that I got hit.

I thought my arm was going to fall off.

The blood was pouring out of there

that looked like it wouldn't be long I'd have no more blood.

It's amazing, but one of the things I thought of was that, you know,

in the United States now, the people are going to work

and they're getting up and that there, and here we are.

In these shallows, hundreds of Americans were drowned,

hundreds more cut to pieces by sniper gun, machine gun fire,

heavy artillery shrapnel, high explosives.

This water ran red, and the beach in front was covered in corpses.

Dick!

Dick!

I crawled up on the sand, and there was Dick Wright,

my sergeant and my friend.

He was hollering, "I'm hit, I'm hit!",

and he raised up on his elbows.

That was his mistake...

..because in that machine gun nest was a rifleman,

a sniper with a telescope...

..and he picked him up and he hit him right in the head,

and his face just dropped to the sand.

I often wonder if I could have done something for Dick Wright.

But what do you do when someone's full of bullet holes

and the blood's coming up?

You've got to think of your own life.

The soldiers landing on Omaha stood little chance.

Their tanks had sunk offshore in heavy seas,

and Allied aircraft had missed the German defences.

With the troops caught in a deadly storm of machine gun fire,

the battle had stalled.

We saw fear and panic there.

They never would have gotten off the beach

if it hadn't been for the 5th Rangers.

John Raaen and the troops of the 2nd and 5th Rangers

arrived at Omaha at a critical point.

Diverted from his original mission at the Pointe du Hoc,

Raaen landed on a less heavily defended part of the beach.

Now all that time at the sand tables and the maps paid off.

I knew exactly where I was.

I landed...

..probably right there...

..and went up the bluffs.

Here's the path I went up and there's the little shack.

Those bluffs were covered with smoke when we got there,

The smoke blinded the infantry above us, and they couldn't shoot at us.

By challenging the machine gun nests on the bluffs,

the rangers helped slow down the slaughter on the beach below.

The rangers at the Pointe du Hoc had also seen success.

The heavy guns had been found and silenced,

and the threat to the troops at Omaha had finally lifted.

With thousands of men ashore and many more landing,

the battle for Omaha had been won.

The Allies could push inland

and consolidate their foothold in France.

But success came at great cost.

Over 1,700 men had been killed, and many more wounded.

By the end of the day, all five beaches had been captured

and a little corner of Normandy had been secured.

It's been seen by history as a great victory, the beginning of the end

of the Nazi menace, but for those who had survived the carnage

on Omaha, victory must have seemed like a distant prospect.

For the men who'd watched their friends die,

there was little chance to recover or reflect.

With months of hard fighting ahead of them

before Germany was finally defeated,

the battle for Europe had only just begun.

Seven miles off the coast of Normandy, France,

6,000 ships waited for the signal.

145,000 troops prepare to storm five beaches.

Four years after a humiliating retreat at Dunkirk,

the Allies were poised to unleash a daring bid

to free occupied Western Europe from Hitler's tyranny.

I think there was a general feeling amongst the lads,

"For Christ sake, let's get this over with."

Now we've got them on the run, let's get in, get stuck in and sod 'em.

There aren't many days that can be said

to have changed the course of history.

There aren't many days like the 6th June, 1944.

I think D-Day was the single greatest military operation

the world had ever seen.

And at stake was nothing less

than the freedom of the Western world.

To gain a foothold in France, the Allies would attack five beaches

along a 60-mile stretch of the coast.

The British would land on three beaches in the east.

Sword, Juno and Gold.

The Americans would storm two beaches further west -

Omaha and Utah.

But the beaches were just the beginning.

If D-Day was to succeed, the Allies had to smash through

the coastal defences and advance inland.

If they failed to this, it would make it easier

for the Germans to counterattack and drive them back into the sea.

As a result, the troops landing on the D-Day beaches

had a series of objectives, and one of the most ambitious of those

was for the British landing at Sword Beach.

Lying seven miles inland and protected by a network of bunkers,

their target for D-Day was the city of Caen.

As the landing craft powered into Sword Beach,

troops were heartened by the smoking shoreline ahead.

These battleships, they were firing on the beach 18-inch guns, you know.

As they went over like an express train.

I looked from the front of my landing craft.

It was a mass of flame and smoke,

and I thought nobody could survive in that, nobody.

But as the ramps went down, the German guns opened up.

The Allied bombardment had left the defences damaged but not destroyed.

It would have been a living hell on this beach. Snipers, shells,

mines, obstacles, and yet their only hope was to surge up it,

get through the German defensive line,

and out into the countryside beyond.

I'd run so fast, I would have beat Jesse Owens that day.

I suppose I was frightened out of my life a little bit.

You just keep going,

you've got to get off that beach else you was brown bread, ain't you?

I'd started to rush up the beach and there was a young, a young soldier.

He was trying to dig a hole, and the waves were crashing down

and filling his thing up with water, and I grabbed him by the scruff

of his neck and I dragged him all the way up.

And I shouldn't have done that.

I should have left him and got off the beach,

because that's what they tell you. You've got to get off that beach

as fast as you can, but I couldn't, I couldn't leave him there.

Taking Sword Beach wasn't easy.

The Germans put up a stiff resistance,

and the British suffered heavy casualties.

But although the fighting was fierce, it was also short.

The Germans were overwhelmed by British naval ships

bombarding the coast and the tanks that pushed up the beach.

By 9am, the troops were a mile inland.

It was a critical moment for the invasion.

Thousands of soldiers were ashore and many more were landing.

The element of surprise was long gone.

With bases near Caen,

deadly German tank divisions could strike back at any time.

It was vital for the troops to move inland

and establish a firm foothold as quickly as possible.

Using the aerial photographs,

the Allied planners had identified key targets.

'One was a German bunker complex codenamed Hillman.'

That's Sword Beach down there, you can see that line of fog.

These aerial photos are absolutely fascinating.

They show that the Germans up here constructed

hugely significant positions.

You can see the trenches here, observation posts, machine gun posts

and so in order for the troops to get off this beach and push inland,

this would have to be neutralised.

So this is the main entrance, all facing north towards the coast.

It was clearly a battlefield command centre. You can see the wiring here,

the communications, the maps on the wall.

This is a place where all the information is gathered

from the battlefields and then action is taken,

artillery is called down, air support is called for.

This is where the German commanders

would win or lose the battle for Normandy.

Taking Hillman fell to the Suffolk regiment,

and they came up against fierce resistance.

They tried to attack, I suppose, but it wasn't successful to begin with.

All sorts of armour was bought up.

Anti-tank guns, a royal artillery came.

But protected by a heavy metal dome, or cupola, the German gunners

were able to fire on the attackers at will.

Everything that came up here and shot at the cupolas bounced off.

It was the heroism of one man, Titch Hunter,

that finally changed the course of the battle.

It was only after Titch Hunter had gone forward with his Bren gun

firing from the hip that they capitulated.

By firing straight into the cupola,

one man succeeded where tanks had failed.

The Germans began to retreat,

the Suffolks had finally won the upper hand.

Out came the Kommandant

and 70 men under guard who had given themselves up.

As the day wore on, progress inland had slowed.

German resistance had been fierce,

and positions like Hillman hard to take.

The city of Caen remained under Nazi control,

but the devastating counter-attack

the Allied planners feared never came.

A foothold in France had been won.

As the sun set over Normandy on 6th June, 1944,

the Allies took stock.

Not all the objectives had been met,

and they knew they faced heavy fighting in the weeks ahead.

As it was, they did not liberate Paris until August of that year.

D-Day wasn't the end of the war,

but it was perhaps the beginning of the end for the Nazis.

They occupied France, they occupied most of Europe.

You couldn't allow those people to go on controlling the world.

More than 4,000 men were killed on D-Day,

and for the survivors, memories are still vivid.

I don't know of the words I'd describe it, but, er...

When you think of all the friends you lost...

Well, you think about some mates, that's all, yeah.

Yeah. Get a bit emotional, like I am at the moment.

-The dead ones, they're the real heroes.

-Real heroes.

You can't give more than your life, can you?

Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.

Well, I'll be fading away soon.

But I'll maybe catch up with some of the boys.

For me, the greatest privilege and the greatest insight of all

is meeting the people that witnessed these events nearly 70 years ago.

Today, they still have the power to recall it

as if it were yesterday.

They have the ability to tell stories that will stay with you

for the rest of your life. They have the ability in one sentence

to make your blood run cold and to make you laugh.

It is an enormous privilege to meet them.

And although they're nearing the end of their lives,

I know that their names and their stories

will be talked about forever.

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