Episode 1 D-Day 70

Hello and welcome to Southwick House in Hampshire.

70 years ago, in June 1944, it was from here

that the Allies planned the invasion of German-occupied France.

It was the most audacious battle of modern history,

that involved more than 150,000 troops on the first day alone.

It saw the beginning of the end of the Second World War.

It was called Operation Overlord but it's better known as D-Day.

For all those who took part in it,

and who gather for its 70th anniversary this Friday,

it was a day they will never forget.

It's a day I remember vividly

for the noise, the spectacle of the whole thing.

I mean, it was a gigantic operation.

The sky was just black with aircraft.

We were being fired at and shelled all the time, grenades thrown at us.

Bodies falling.

The headteacher came round and said to us,

"This will be a day that you'll remember.

"It's D-Day."

Over the next four days,

we will be charting the story of the build-up to D-Day

and hear from those who took part in its planning and preparation.

In today's programme,

Dan Snow tells the story of the brave men

who went into Normandy by air

and meets current paratroopers on a training exercise.

We'll hear from a veteran who crossed the Channel in a glider.

It's just dark. It's pitch black.

You can't really see the faces of the other people in the glider.

If you had a watch, you couldn't tell the time, so you go on.

James Holland assesses the crucial role that deception played

in the success of D-Day.

We were very importantly involved

for the success of the D-Day landings.

So, from this point of view, 70 years on,

I think we did a very good job.

And two women of the Royal Naval Service

remember their time here at Southwick House.

Everything was quiet and everything was gone.

That was when we said, "What's happened?"

and they said, "We've gone into France."

Many of the remaining D-Day veterans

still return to Normandy year after year.

Five years ago, Harold Dudman decided to go back with his family,

but they could not have predicted what happened next.

I just heard this thing about this Heroes Return programme

and they were talking about the 65th anniversary of D-Day.

Now, bearing in mind my dad had never really talked about it,

I didn't think he'd be the least bit interested.

I told him about it and I was quite surprised, he was really quite keen.

As part of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers,

Harold landed on Sword Beach just days after D-Day.

Throughout the rest of the war he travelled through France,

into Belgium, and finally on to Germany.

But it was to the very spot where he landed at Sword Beach

that he wanted to return.

We had been to Normandy once with friends of ours

and walked along near Sword Beach

and he couldn't see anything that he recognised.

He said, "I'd like to find my beach one day but this is not it."

For the 65th anniversary, Harold travelled to Normandy

with his family and his 89-year-old-friend, Harry.

They were like naughty schoolboys.

When we got on the bus, they went straight for the back row.

They were silly and giggly and noisy.

-They had a ball.

-They had a great time.

-Yeah.

-June the 5th, it was a lovely, sunny day, wasn't it?

-Yes.

-We started the day going to Ranville War Cemetery.

-Yes.

There were marching bands, then they re-enacted the parachute drops.

-From the war cemetery, we went to Pegasus Bridge.

-Yeah.

And there were some serving soldiers

who just, you know, from across the way recognised his tie

and came over and shook his hand and were chatting to him,

so he thought that was pretty great.

Later that day, Harold returned to Sword Beach,

searching for the exact spot where he landed.

We went for a walk along the beach.

And, even then, my dad was saying, "Are you sure this is Sword Beach?"

He's looking up and down and he's like, you know, nothing clicked.

Um...

-Actually, I think at that point he was quite disappointed.

-Yes.

They drove away from the beach, but a road closure meant the coach

was forced to make an unscheduled stop.

He turned into a very small car park

and said, "There is a bit more beach

"just down that slope if anyone wants to get off, just for ten minutes."

So I wheeled him down the slope.

And...when we got to the bottom,

he just said, "This is it. It was just there."

He was... He absolutely knew it, 100%,

that was the bit that he'd been looking for.

Yeah, he was, um...

It was almost as though he'd achieved what he wanted to do.

It was... He...

It sort of rounded everything off for him somehow.

He was really thoughtful, sort of staring.

He sat and he looked and, um...

..he did say to me, "I've never been so scared in my life."

-Which was... I'd never heard him...

-No.

I've never known my dad to be scared of anything. So, um...

that was that.

That evening came a surprise announcement.

The following day, the veterans and their families were invited

to have lunch with Prince Charles.

Yeah, everyone was quite excited.

They were all going back to give their medals

one last polish for that.

So we got back to the hotel and my dad, he said,

"Oh, I need to get ready for tomorrow."

He said, "I'm going to have a shave tonight and get everything ready.

"But I'd like a cup of tea."

So I left him, you know, doing whatever.

Went down, brought them up a tray of tea, took it in,

said good night, and went off.

-It was awful.

-It was awful.

-It was absolutely awful.

But, you know, when we look back, we think, "Well...

"he had such a fantastic day."

Oh, no, he did, he had a wonderful day.

I think we realised that it had meant much more to him

than any of us had any idea of.

Finding his beach somehow closed a circle.

And he went to bed really happy that night

and looking forward to the next day.

And I suppose you can't...you can't want for much more than that,

than to go to bed happy, satisfied and just not wake up.

Well, I'm joined by George Batts,

who is the Secretary of the Normandy Veterans Association

and also a D-Day veteran.

It took you a very long time to go back to Normandy, didn't it?

Yes, it did, firstly, 50 years.

I didn't want to go back.

And it was only, being quite honest, my wife died rather suddenly

and I was left with nothing to do.

And then a friend of mine, who joined up on the same day as me,

and he landed in Normandy with me, he was...

and we used to see each other a lot during that time.

And he was dying of cancer and I went to see him

and he asked me if I was a member of the association, I said no.

And I won't tell you what he said,

but you can imagine because he told me I was a silly billy boy. You know?

In rather stronger language.

And with it...

..I really joined, I suppose, as a tribute to him

because we were very, very close.

And why did it take you so long to go back to Normandy?

I just didn't want to, the feeling was still there.

Like so many of we vets...

..for quite a few years, we had nightmares in the mind all the time.

And I suppose, subconsciously, I felt once I'd got over that

I didn't want to come back in case the feeling came back.

You know, it might be that or...

I think it was that.

And, since then, I've been back virtually every year.

And, you know...

..we always go on a pilgrimage for that,

to remember the friends we left behind.

And there was a lot of them.

Of course, to be a Normandy veteran,

you had to land between the 5th of June and the 21st of August.

And so, in that time, over 19,000 killed,

which is a heck of a lot.

What was it like then, 51 years after D-Day,

when you decided to return?

Um...

I'll tell you the complete story.

It was my daughter and son-in-law...

that said, "We're going on holiday," and I had two young grandsons then.

And we went down on the beach

and, of course, with the grandsons and their chatter, I didn't notice.

And, all of a sudden, we were on Gold Beach and I did recognise it.

And I walked in the middle of it

and cried my eyes out.

And that feeling still comes, you know,

I could cry now with the memory of it.

It must have been quite a moment

when suddenly you're there with your grandchildren

and, all of a sudden, you look up and you realise where you are.

Yeah, it is. It's a heck of a shock.

And silly little things happened,

the two boys were very young then

and they started to run after me

and my daughter and son-in-law grabbed them and said, "Leave him!"

So I cried.

And they've got photographs of me, so I always cry, say I cried

because they didn't let me play with my grandsons.

George, we'll talk more about D-Day itself in a moment.

But, first, the Normandy invasion had been years in the planning.

James Holland takes a peek inside Southwick House here

to find out how meticulous preparation

and an elaborate deception campaign

were vital for the success of the D-Day landings.

As I look around Southwick House,

it's amazing to think that, within these walls,

decisions were made that would shape the course of world history.

In the days leading up to the invasion,

this place was teeming with staff, including all the key players -

Admiral Ramsay, General Montgomery,

Air Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory

and, of course, the Supreme Allied Commander himself,

General Eisenhower.

He was actually staying in a camp of caravans in the woods,

just a stone's throw away.

They now had one big decision to make -

precisely when to launch D-Day.

Their plan included launching 12,000 planes and 7,000 vessels,

land 24,000 paratroopers into enemy territory

and get over 150,000 British, American and Canadian troops

across the English Channel and onto 50 miles of Normandy beaches.

To plan and plot the progress of the invasion,

this large plywood map of the English Channel

had been commissioned from the firm Chad Valley Toys.

This is an incredibly detailed map, which allowed anyone looking at it

to see at a glance precisely what was going on.

You can see here, this is Piccadilly Circus,

the main assembly point for the invasion force,

and you could then plot the progress of the assault forces

as they crossed the Channel.

The secrecy around this map was absolutely immense.

And the planners were so concerned about a breach in security

that the workmen that assembled it

were actually detained here until after the invasion.

Early on the morning of the 5th of June, 1944,

General Eisenhower and the Allied Commanders

gathered here, in this room, to make the final decision

whether to launch the invasion the following day.

The weather had been terrible

and already the invasion had been postponed by 24 hours.

And, to be honest, it didn't look great going forward either.

For Eisenhower, this was an absolutely massive call

and for a moment he just sat here, his head in his hands, in silence,

while everyone waited for him to make up his mind.

Then eventually he looked up and said, "All right, let's go."

The vast and complex task of planning D-Day had taken two years.

But it was as early as 1941

that north-west Europe was identified for an invasion.

But where, exactly?

To pinpoint the location,

RAF pilots took millions of top-secret aerial photographs

to scrutinise every inch of the heavily-fortified coast.

It was using optical instruments such as this stereoscope

that expert photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham

were able to pinpoint the thousands of bunkers, gun positions

and other coastal defences that made up the Atlantic Wall.

But, for the Germans, it was almost impossible to defend

every inch of the 3,000-mile coastline.

And the Allies believed they had found a potential weak spot.

The 50-mile stretch of Normandy beaches

offered the best chance of success for an invasion.

It had fewer defences than other areas and, crucially,

an invasion there would take the enemy completely by surprise.

Of course, the Germans knew there was going to be an invasion,

just not where or when.

And so the Allies put in place a set of highly sophisticated

and multilayered deception plans, designed to convince the enemy

the invasion could be anywhere but Normandy.

Operation Fortitude saw the Allies create a phantom army

in the south-east of England

using dummy tanks, landing craft and aeroplanes,

all designed to convince the German High Command

that the real invasion would be further east, in the Pas-de-Calais.

To keep up the pretence, key figures such as General George Patton

were sent to inspect the entirely fictitious US First Army Group.

There was also a network of double agents working for the Allies,

feeding the Germans a web of lies and misinformation

to divert attention away from the real invasion plans.

But that was not all.

70 years ago, Wing Commander John Bell was a bomb aimer

with the famed 617 Dambusters Squadron.

A month before D-Day,

he and his crew were assembled for a top-secret deception mission.

They began training straight away.

But it wasn't bombs they would be dropping.

This was a strange flying exercise,

we didn't really know what it was about.

Later in the month, of course, they introduced the...

We were going to be dropping not bombs,

we were going to be dropping this Window,

Window, it's called, this metallic foil, aluminium foil.

So here we were, flying along, dropping this Window

is what we were told.

So you were being instructed what to do, but not why you were doing it.

Not why and even where.

And it was not until June the 5th

that we were all assembled for briefing

and told exactly what we were doing.

The mission required precise, close formation flying.

At carefully timed intervals, the crew would drop Window

over the Channel, creating a cloud of aluminium foil.

Along with a flotilla of boats, this would fool German radar

into thinking a large invasion fleet was moving towards the French coast

but, crucially, east of the actual invasion beaches.

-So, effectively, you were simulating a dummy invasion.

-That's right.

All very carefully devised by the scientists.

So we thought, "We hope this works."

It must have required a heck of a lot of skill!

It was absolutely incredible that they could fly so accurately.

I was a bomb aimer, so I was at the back,

stuffing Windows through the flare chute.

And after two hours they were relieved by another flight

of eight Lancasters, and it was very carefully done and expertly flown.

Meanwhile, the real invasion fleet

was heading towards the Normandy coast.

When I think about it, I think, yes, we were very importantly involved

for the success of the D-Day landings.

So, from this point of view, 70 years on,

I think we did a very good job.

The Allied deception plans were so successful,

they not only achieved complete tactical surprise,

but they convinced Hitler that Normandy was just a diversion

away from the main assault further north.

By the time he'd realised his mistake, it was too late.

This Friday, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day,

heads of state from around the world -

the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh,

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall,

and Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge -

will be in Normandy to pay their respects at a series of events.

HE PLAYS "LAST POST"

The day will begin with a service at the Commonwealth Cemetery

at Bayeux, and end with the British Veterans' event

at Arromanches, by the beach that was known as Gold Beach on D-Day.

George, you're going back to Normandy this year.

-Who will you be going with?

-I shall be going with my branch.

Number 23 South East branch,

of which I'm chairman, actually, as well. And...

..we booked our coach about two-a-half years ago and our hotel

because, as you know, there's no spaces left now,

there hasn't been for a while, so we're lucky.

But with it, we've got 52 going in the coach,

and that is, er... 19 full Normandy vets,

some wives, widows, friends.

My grandson is going to look after me. Ha!

Every anniversary is poignant, obviously,

but this one is going to be particularly poignant for you

because the Normandy Veterans Association is disbanding.

Yes, we are, we've had to - because our average age is about 92.

And, er...

..at one time we had about 13,000, 14,000 members,

we're now down to less than 600.

It's a case of, I suppose, not wanting to but having to.

But, although we're disbanding and laying up our standard,

a lot of us are carrying on at our branches

as a little social thing, so that every month, couple of months,

we can get together, have a beer, a cup of coffee, a chat.

And keep the friendship going,

because the friendships that were formed in Normandy...

A heck of a lot of them are still going today.

And they're, you know... They will never be broken

and so we are determined on that.

And a lot of us are talking about going back to Normandy next year.

It won't be official parades and that, we shall just be by ourselves.

But this is the last year of official events.

And how do you think you will react

when the Veterans Association finally disbands?

I'm going to be honest, I shall cry my eyes out.

And I think nearly every other veteran will be.

We'll try not to do it at a big event in Normandy,

we'll do it in the privacy of our own home, if possible.

But it is going to be a loss.

We old codgers, we'll find something to do

and we shall be keeping in touch.

But, um, it will be sad...

..not to be looking forward to going there on our yearly pilgrimage.

-But impossible, isn't it?

-Missed, but definitely not forgotten.

No. No, nobody's going to forget us.

They're not going to get a chance.

We're determined!

Well, it is, of course, the men who fought in Normandy

who will be remembered on Friday.

But, back on the Home Front,

many women contributed to the success of D-Day.

Marsie Taylor and Jean Leppard,

who were both in the Women's Royal Naval Service,

worked here at Southwick House.

Marsie Taylor joined the Wrens in 1942

and was involved in the planning for Operation Overlord.

I was one of three Wrens

and we started working on plans for Overlord.

And we were typing the operation orders

for the Army, Navy and Air Force.

It was right in the hub of everything

and we knew when the invasion was going to be

and where it was going to be.

It wasn't difficult to keep it secret.

It sounds as though it would be difficult,

but we knew so much, it wasn't like having a tiny secret.

All I said when people asked me what I did in the Wrens,

I just said I did intelligence work

and they didn't ask any more questions

and I didn't volunteer any more information,

and that was that.

Jean Leppard joined the Wrens just before her 18th birthday

and left her home city of Leeds to work at Southwick House.

Our duties were basically domestic duties.

One of our jobs was to clean the map room.

I remember cleaning in here,

all round the plotters' desks.

And we used to have to mop the floors

and polish the brass

and there was always one or two

of the little ships from the map

on the floor,

which we'd pick up

and stick on the map

wherever we thought we'd like them to be.

I assume they knew where everything should be.

We didn't ever realise how serious it all was.

For Marsie and Jean, life at Southwick House

couldn't have been more different.

I don't remember any social life,

except there were a few other people

billeted in the same lodge that I was.

One was just busy

and working, you know, long hours.

It was exciting, yes.

If you were lucky to get a whole day off,

the sentry would stop a car

and get them to take you into Portsmouth.

If you stayed in Southwick, usually it was The Golden Lion.

I can remember my 19th birthday

was spent in The Golden Lion.

The first time I'd ever had whisky.

SHE CHUCKLES

And I've never drunk whisky since!

This wasn't Jean's only new experience.

The Americans camped nearby

had brought with them culinary delights.

Sometimes if you were walking through the woods

near the cookhouse,

you might get a treat,

like a chocolate fudge cake

or something like that.

It was the first time I'd ever tasted that, and it was wonderful.

But, as D-Day approached, the tension mounted.

We knew exactly when it was going to be,

and so the atmosphere

was very much tightened just beforehand.

The atmosphere was very tense.

Wherever you went, there was...

People appeared to be waiting.

I remember particularly

I saw Eisenhower's car there,

with his driver -

it was a friend of mine, Kay Summersby.

And, although I didn't realise it at the time -

I was just nattering to her outside

while she was sitting waiting for him -

Eisenhower was there

to decide if they went on the early hours

of the morning of the 6th of June.

It turned out to be rather a momentous occasion.

People of Western Europe.

A landing was made this morning on the coast of France

by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

This landing is part of a concerted United Nations plan

for the liberation of Europe.

PLANE ENGINE HUMS

One heard the planes go over,

the terrific noise of them,

and realised, "Ah, OK, it HAS started.

"All we've been working for has actually started."

Yes.

Everything was quiet and everything was gone.

That was when we said, "What's happened?"

And they said, "We've gone into France."

Keep your faith staunch.

Our arms are resolute.

Together, we shall achieve victory.

I liked it, I really enjoyed my time away like that.

I wouldn't have changed the experience for anything.

Never again did I have such an interesting job.

That was the most interesting and exciting part of the war from me.

George, you were just 18 years old

when you went to Normandy. You were with the Royal Engineers.

With the Royal Engineers, yes.

I went over on landing ship infantry

with the assault craft round the sides of the ships.

And we left in Newhaven, in the dark,

and, quite frankly, we didn't know where we were going,

because the only people who had all the maps and the details

were the senior officers,

and we youngsters, we were doing as we were told.

And eventually got off at the coast of Normandy.

And it's a thing I'll never forget.

We saw the gliders and everything going over.

I've never seen so many barrage balloons in all my life,

because every ship had them.

And, er...

You know, we were waiting.

Of course, the first lot went in about half past seven in the morning

and there was like a misty fog

over the whole of the beach

and it was from the cordite and everything

being thrown up and that.

And then I landed about 11 o'clock.

Front ramp of the assault craft went down

and we ran to get off the beach.

And, as we were going in,

you know, the noise, you can't describe it, it was phenomenal.

And, of course, there were landing craft being blown up,

and God-knows-what vehicles on the beach.

And that moment when you come off the landing craft

and you're going up the beach,

I mean, do you remember that incredibly vividly?

I do.

Of course, we had a heck of a lot of kit on

and running on sand is always difficult.

But we've often said since

that we broke the four-minute mile before Roger...

Before anybody.

Because you did, you literally wanted to get off.

And it's amazing how fast you can go

when you're scared stiff,

and I don't care who it was, we were scared.

Because you didn't know whether you were going to live or die.

And, you know, at 18, who wants to die?

But you lost a lot of people that day, didn't you, on those beaches?

There was.

It's reckoned that on D-Day alone

there was around about 4,500 killed...

..which is a lot of people.

Well, George, extraordinary to hear, 70 years later,

such vivid memories told by somebody who was there on D-Day.

Thank you very much for sharing it.

Thank you very much for having me to do it.

Thank you.

Just a few hours before the first troops made it onto those beaches,

more than 23,000 men

had landed in Normandy by air in the dead of night.

Dan snow looks at how this airborne assault

paved the way for the invasion.

On the 5th of June, 1944, on airfields across England,

24,000 airborne troops

prepared themselves for operations behind enemy lines.

They were tasked with securing or destroying vital German positions,

things like bridges, crossroads, or artillery.

The lives of the men that would be assaulting the beaches

would depend on the success or failure of these operations.

One of those targets was a bridge over the Caen Canal,

four miles inland from Sword Beach.

It was codenamed Pegasus.

Spearheading the assault were 180 men of the British 6th Airborne Division.

They were assigned to capture Pegasus Bridge

and defend it against German counterattack.

Theirs would be the opening battle of D-Day.

If they failed, British forces would be dangerously exposed.

The soldiers would be taken to their objective

in six Horsa gliders.

Now, these were very primitive aircraft -

they were made out of wood with no engine,

they were designed to be towed to the French Channel coast

then released and glide down towards their target.

They would crash-land,

then anyone who survived that ordeal would jump out,

take the fight to the Germans and seize Pegasus Bridge.

The mission relied on months of meticulous planning

using 3-D reconnaissance photographs.

A scale model was created of the area

and even a film simulating the gliders' approach to Pegasus Bridge.

Even with all that planning,

there was still huge amount that could go wrong.

After all, they were attacking a well-defended bridge

deep behind enemy lines.

As they boarded their aircraft on the night before D-Day,

many of them wondered whether they'd come back alive.

Operating behind enemy lines in this way

requires an elite fighting unit.

So I've come to this airfield in the Highlands

to see exactly how it's done today.

Now, in just a few minutes

I'm going to witness a major NATO exercise -

there's going to be an air assault right here.

It's a great opportunity to look at the way

that some of the techniques, some of the tactics

that were at the heart of the D-Day invasion

are still being used today.

1,600 troops of the Parachute Regiment,

supported by forces from 16 Air Assault Brigade,

had been tasked with capturing the airfield.

But it won't be easy - the area is well-defended.

Just like 70 years ago,

aerial reconnaissance is vital before any landings can take place.

Jets have been flying over with cameras,

providing as much information as possible

to the planners back at headquarters.

And, of course, before any troops get on the ground,

you've got Apache helicopter gunships coming in,

striking any targets on the ground

that might be useful for the defenders.

To land troops, the modern equivalent of the glider is the helicopter.

These five Merlin helicopters

are carrying the troops of the first wave.

Now, just like the gliders back in 1944,

they're going to get those soldiers as close as possible to their target.

You can see the infantry running out now.

They're straight onto their target,

they've got the element of surprise and speed.

These guys are now tasked with securing this target, this location.

At Pegasus Bridge, they had to move with extreme speed

to try to secure that bridge

before the Germans could blow it up or defend it.

This is the second wave coming in now,

bringing specialist equipment,

heavier weapons,

and that's what was going on throughout D-Day.

More and more airborne troops landing

until you had enough people

to defend themselves against German counterattacks.

To understand how it feels to be involved in an assault like this,

I've met up with Lance Bombardier Richard Jackson.

When you're in those helicopters, approaching,

what do you try and think about?

I try and think about the mission aim and the objective.

Obviously there's always the fear of failure as well.

So make sure everything works

and everything's perfect for the mission to go properly.

So, I mean, it's the same, I suppose,

if you'd been approaching Pegasus Bridge 70 years ago,

you're just thinking, "What's my job?

"As soon as I get on the ground, what do I need to do?"

Oh, yeah, of course.

They knew they were going in blind,

they didn't have any backup, no heavy weapons, stuff like that.

So, yeah, to go in like that is very brave.

So what was your job?

I was prepared to call in NGS, Naval Gunfire Support,

on proposed targets in the surrounding area.

Because that was a job that guys like you were doing on D-Day.

They were calling in naval gunfire from the ships out at sea

to attack targets on the land.

Yeah, they did, yeah.

And obviously technology has pushed on further now,

so it's made it a little bit easier for ourselves to do it these days.

Obviously back then it was a lot harder.

These guys here are in a defensive posture.

They're effectively still in enemy territory,

they're basically surrounded.

But paratroopers are meant to be surrounded,

they can hold out like this for hours, perhaps even for days,

until the heavy support arrives.

After nearly an hour,

the airborne troops have secured their target,

just as they did 70 years ago at Pegasus Bridge.

Then, they charged into battle

after landing just metres from their target.

It took them only ten minutes to overwhelm the German defenders.

In the early hours of D-Day,

the commander of the troops at Pegasus Bridge

was able to go on the radio and issue the code words "Ham and Jam".

They meant Pegasus Bridge had been captured.

70 years ago, Para Geoff Pattinson

was also preparing to cross the Channel in a glider.

His target was a German gun battery

just a few miles from Pegasus Bridge.

But things didn't quite go to plan.

In 1943, Geoff Pattinson joined the newly-formed

9th Parachute Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division

We were told what was expected of us

in terms of physical drive

and endurance.

And we did loads of route marches,

jumping out of a Whitley aircraft.

It was very physically demanding.

We thought we were a little bit special.

We thought we were the best.

The 9th Battalion were tasked with destroying

the heavily-fortified Merville Gun Battery,

whose large guns could threaten the British landings

at Sword Beach on D-Day.

We did the training on the dummy battery

and we did it day in and day out, night-time,

to replicate what we might expect

on the actual landing itself.

After that training,

it was decided that the method of attack

would also entail three gliders.

The plan was to land three Horsa gliders

inside the gun battery's perimeter

to coincide with the main assault.

Volunteers were called for.

Nobody stood back.

We all went forward,

but the thought in my mind, really, was,

"Well, everybody's going forward, we'll go forward together."

That's what you do.

And so I was one of the 60 picked.

In the early hours of D-Day, the paratroopers took off for Normandy.

A glider compartment for passengers is just dark,

it's pitch black.

You can't really see the faces of the other people in the glider,

if you had a watch you couldn't tell the time,

and so you go on.

So you don't really know how long you've been in the air.

It was all quiet,

as each had his own thoughts.

The other lads were thinking probably the same as me -

"What's going to happen? Are you going to let your mates down?

"Will you be all right when you get there?

"Are we going to survive?"

When we were going down,

and we were getting ready for the landing,

everybody was tensed up and ready to go.

We were getting ready to get out the door

and meet whatever was your fate.

But they hadn't landed in Normandy as expected,

they were in Hampshire.

We'd come down

because the tow rope had broken, we'd discovered,

and that we were not in France.

A real anticlimax,

all your pent-up emotions have drained out of you.

You just... Well, you didn't know what to think.

But D-Day wasn't over for Geoff.

That evening, he boarded another glider landing at Ranville.

After fighting off German counterattacks,

Geoff was sent to defend the area around the Chateau Saint Come.

The sergeant had got Corporal Jack Watkins

and he told him to take me

and to go round the back of the stables of the chateau,

to seek out any movement at all

and to report back to the sergeant in the chateau.

Corporal Watkins, who was in front of me,

and we were keeping along,

keeping close to the stables,

and all of a sudden he said, "Stop.

"Stop."

And he said, "When I say, 'Run,'

"run back to the stables."

And all of a sudden he said, "Run."

When he ran, I just spotted several of them there

and, as we started off, they started firing.

I thought to myself, "Keep going,"

and that's when it felt that everything was red-hot

at the back of my legs

and it knocked me to the stable floor.

There was blood coming out all over the place.

And I realised then that I'd been shot.

Geoff had been shot in both legs

but it could have been much worse.

Jack was very sharp there. He...

He probably saved our lives.

His injuries meant he was evacuated back to England,

but his war wasn't over.

The next year, he parachuted into Germany.

I wasn't all that keen on being in action again.

But that, I'm afraid, is a soldier's role. Any soldier.

He's wounded, he's mended,

and he goes back to war.

That's what we do.

That's it from us for today.

Tomorrow, we'll be looking at the atmosphere here on the south coast

in the run-up to D-Day.

The whole area

was overrun with American soldiers.

It was... You know, they were everywhere.

James Holland goes underground

to explore the secret tunnels

that housed the operation's nerve centre.

Dan Snow looks at the role of the Navy

during the Normandy invasion.

And we meet a Normandy veteran

who honours the sacrifice of servicemen past and present.

I've been to them all, except one.

They should, er...

be remembered,

there's no doubt about that.

Join me again tomorrow morning

when I'll be at Fort Southwick in Portsmouth,

D-Day's underground command headquarters.

Goodbye.