Episode 4 D-Day 70

Tomorrow is the 70th anniversary

of the beginning of the biggest and most important operation

of the Second World War, D-Day.

Veterans from all over the world will be gathering in northern France

to mark this historic event.

Welcome to D-Day 70: The Heroes Remember,

where, all week, we've been telling the story

of the countdown to the Normandy landings.

Today, I'm at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

where I'm joined by three Normandy veterans -

Eddie, Johnny and Tom -

who I'll be talking to later about what this 70th anniversary

means to them and to all of those who took part in D-Day.

For me the 70th anniversary is important not as a celebration -

it's a commemoration of an amazing event in the war -

but also remembering those people who lost their lives.

Well, we're getting old now.

We aren't going to see that many more anniversaries.

So, it's rather poignant, in a way,

that we can still remember all these things.

I'm 89.

But I want to get there

for the 70th anniversary,

and I think I will.

Portsmouth has plenty of D-Day associations.

It was from here that many of the troops crossed the Channel

and a few days after D-Day,

both Churchill and King George VI left from Portsmouth

to inspect the troops in Normandy.

A motor gun boat, MGB-81, that took part in the D-Day flotilla,

is still on display here at the Historic Dockyard.

In today's programme,

a veteran who has turned his trips to Normandy into a family affair.

It will be quite emotional.

I've always seen my grandad as a bit of a hero -

100% a hero.

James Holland meets one of the surviving members

of a small, crack team of men with a special D-Day mission.

We hear from two French veterans who fought to liberate their country.

I said, "I'm glad to be in France,"

The French people are glad to see a French officer -

surprised and glad - and we are on the good way,

and soon the war will be over and the Germans will be out.

And Dan Snow looks at how bad weather nearly jeopardised

the entire D-Day operation.

Well, all I can remember is that there was a depression

and it went the wrong way.

This depression here looks rather ugly...

-It was probably that one, yes.

-Yeah.

For the troops, the weather also had unforeseen consequences.

Operation Overlord, the codename for D-Day,

was really scheduled to happen today, on June 5th,

but strong winds and rough seas delayed it.

As a result, many men were marooned in their boats for days.

The waves were about seven foot high, fairly rough going.

Looking at people being seasick!

It was like a roller coaster at times!

70 years ago, Joe Cattini found himself

stranded on the Solent during the preparations for D-Day.

Today, the weather may not be pleasant,

but in 1944, he had to endure much, much worse.

On the 2nd of June,

we were informed that we would be moving out the following day.

And we had to get all of our equipment ready

and our vehicles loaded.

We were driving soft vehicles.

We thought, "Oh, well, another exercise!"

We'd already been on three while we were in the camp,

so this was another exercise as far as we were concerned.

It wasn't until we got to the docks and then we began to think,

"Hello, this might be the real thing!"

The docks - they were absolutely crowded with men and vehicles

and tanks. You couldn't see the harbour for ships.

HE CHUCKLES That's how bad it was.

And we were put on board an LSI, which was a Landing Ship Infantry.

We then proceeded out into the Solent.

There was a storm brewing at the time.

Even in the Solent, the waves were fairly heavy.

They were about four or five feet.

Even on board ship, there were so many of them sick, seasick.

I felt sorry for the people in the assault craft

because they were really bobbing up and down like corks.

We thought it was only going to be for a day.

And then we were told that because of the bad weather,

things had been delayed, and then we said,

"Oh, good! We'll be going back!"

But that was not the case. HE LAUGHS

We were stuck in the Solent for about two and a half days.

So consequently, the feeling on board ship was

"I want to get off here!"

And some blokes were crying,

actually crying,

because they wanted to go home.

After braving the fierce weather for two and a half days,

Joe finally got some news.

First thing we knew about going in to land

was when Eisenhower spoke to us over the Tannoy of the ships.

-EISENHOWER:

-'You are about to embark upon the great crusade

'toward which we have striven these many months.

'The eyes of the world are upon you.'

We were going to land in Normandy, and praising us

for our bravery and all this sort of...

All this sort of bull! HE LAUGHS

The infantrymen were called up on deck.

Their craft were swung out over the side

and they had to clamber down nets to get into them.

Some of them were really scared

because they thought they'd fall into the sea.

HEAVY GUNFIRE

The barrage of the guns from the ships.

The noise was terrific.

Every ship was firing its guns.

Then we started to take things seriously,

and we knew this was the real thing.

When the time came for landing,

we were...we were praying that we would

land on dry land and not in the water.

We did see some vehicles disappear in the water

because they'd gone over shell holes.

There was no chance of them ever surviving -

they just sank to the bottom.

When we landed on the beach itself,

the beach marshals directed us up lanes

that were marked by a white tape.

Because that was the only area that had been cleared of mines.

I can remember one vehicle, he wandered off the line,

and he hadn't gone a couple of yards off the line when he hit a mine.

EXPLOSION

And he blew up.

And we thought, "Good God! Is that going to happen to us as well?"

Joe landed on Gold Beach

after the initial Allied forces had secured it.

His truck made it safely off the beach,

but his experiences of that day have left a lasting impression on him.

Being in D-Day,

I suppose, yes, did change you.

You were no longer a teenager or anything like that.

You had become a man.

You realised that life was not the sort of thing that you could

just fritter away - it was something that you've got to hold on to,

and it was precious.

Well, I'm joined by three D-Day veterans, Eddie, Johnny and Tom.

Hello to all of you. Eddie, you're actually from Portsmouth.

What were you doing on D-Day?

Well, I was on board a landing ship tank.

Whilst we were on board,

we were told that we were going to land in Normandy.

But up till that time, we had no idea where we were going to land

other than France because at our previous establishment

because we were issued with French money or at least occupation money.

-Johnny, for you, it was very different.

-Oh, yeah.

You went to Normandy, but you went in a different way.

On the morning of the 6th of June,

they got us up at daybreak that morning

and took us out to the aerodrome by platoons and companies,

and put us in gliders.

And we took off about nine o'clock in the morning.

Can you remember what it was like crossing the Channel?

Just having a joke amongst yourselves, you know,

because it was 30 men in a glider.

Just one of those normal days, you know?

Is that how you remember it? Joking?

You would think that you would be just filled with fear.

We couldn't get tied up in it, really.

You were just getting on with it. Doing your job.

Just got on with it.

And Tom, you landed on the Normandy beaches. You went in by sea.

What do you remember in the hours running up to that?

Trying to quell the seasickness.

If you've never been really seasick this was horrific.

In fact, we...

The fact that we had already been issued with

what are known as self-heating tins of cocoa -

it's the worst thing you could ever have!

And we had so many jobs to do.

There was no real time to think about anything

other than quelling the seasickness

and trying to do what little we could to prepare ourselves.

Well, the sea was certainly rough that night.

In fact, the weather was a crucial factor in the mission's success.

Dan Snow meets two Wrens who worked on the weather forecasts for D-Day.

On the 4th of June 1944,

Allied forces gathered across the south coast of England.

This was the final step in the long-planned-for invasion

of occupied France.

Operation Overlord was scheduled to commence

the next day, the 5th of June.

But then, at the 11th hour,

the entire operation was plunged into doubt.

The usually placid summer weather looked set to be

interrupted by a low-pressure system roaring in off the Atlantic.

The weather for the 5th of June was looking really bad.

There were only two very small windows when conditions

for the invasion would be right -

a three-day window - opening on the 5th of June -

and another, two days, from the 19th.

Bad weather could scupper the Allies.

D-Day had been years in the planning and the Supreme Commander,

General Eisenhower, was determined to go as quickly as possible

to hold on to the initiative

and not give the Germans too much time to prepare their defences.

As a result, Eisenhower brought pressure to bear

on the chief meteorologist,

Group Captain James Stagg, asking him to go

and find a decent forecast for the 5th of June.

Dorothy Rickard and Jean Atkins both

worked as Wrens for the Met Office in the run up to D-Day.

Do you remember June 1944?

Do you remember just before D-Day, plotting the weather coordinates?

Well, I remember very well because I was at Dover then.

Our job was to forecast the weather of the Channel.

Which, of course, was very, very important.

Particularly building up to D-Day.

We've got a bit of a treat for you here. I think under here

we've got the original weather maps

from June 1944. Do you recognise these?

-Yes.

-All I can remember is that there was a depression

-and it went the wrong way.

-This depression here looks rather ugly.

It was probably that one, yes.

It probably should have gone further east. And it didn't.

Ah, what's this?

This is an enlargement of each of these stations.

It came through, as...in code.

Cloud, wind, visibility, pressure,

temperature and the others.

Was there a lot of extra pressure in June? Was it a very exciting time?

Oh, it was. There was definitely an atmosphere.

We could guess whenabouts it was going to be

just because of everything that was happening.

Then I was very aware of consternation in the Met Office.

And that consternation came from the fact that James Stagg

had three meteorological teams working under him

who couldn't agree on the forecast for the 5th.

The Americans were saying "yes",

but the British Navy were saying "no".

The decision came down to the civilian Met Office.

The Americans were keen to go and they brought pressure to bear.

But the Met Office held firm.

They insisted that the weather in the Channel

on the 5th would be too severe.

Stagg was forced to go to Eisenhower and say it was a no-go.

And the Met Office were completely right.

A storm swept through the English Channel on the 5th of June

which would have devastated the Allied fleet.

A disaster had been averted, but if this run of bad weather continued

D-Day would have to be delayed until the 19th of June at the earliest.

But then the forecasters spotted

what they thought might just be a break in the weather.

For one 24-hour period on the 6th of June it looked like

conditions would be benign enough for the invasion to take place.

Jean and Dorothy explain how the weather changed.

It looks to me as if the isobars are a bit wider than they were

on the previous one so, therefore, the sea wasn't quite so rough.

-No rain, hopefully, no low cloud?

-There's no fronts.

Would you, working with your teams,

have said this looks pretty good for an invasion, really?

Well, it wasn't up to us! But, presumably, they thought so.

And you look now at women doing nearly

all the jobs across the military and you really sort of blazed

a trail for that, made it possible, I suppose?

Oh, if you put it that way!

Very modest, you two! THEY LAUGH

Conditions still looked far from ideal

but Stagg informed Command of the possible window.

Unwilling to let the initiative slip, Eisenhower took the gamble

and gave the green light for the invasion to go ahead.

Everybody held their breath in the hope that the forecasters

had indeed got it right,

that the Allies would not be flirting with disaster once again.

The weather would be a hugely important factor for D-Day,

really determining its success or failure.

And today, it's still vital in military operations.

Aircraft like this helicopter are massively restricted by bad weather.

Met Office forecaster Simon King knows how important

predicting the weather is to the modern military,

having served as a reservist in Afghanistan.

The very first thing that gets briefed on is the weather,

so we go up there and we tell them what's going to happen for the day.

And often, plans for the day can be changed

based on the forecast that we give.

Do you ever have to sort of overrule commanding officers and say, "We have to cancel this operation"?

I would never be foolish enough to overrule a commanding officer,

but we give them the information and what they do with it is down to them. They know their limits.

You must have seen some pretty extreme weather out in Afghanistan?

While I was there we had some pretty big thunderstorms

with a massive amount of rain.

And we actually had quite a bit of snow at Camp Bastion,

People think, "What's going on there?

"We're in the middle of a desert, it's supposed to be hot,

"we're making snowmen!"

This is a modern military Met Office - what tools have you got

today to help you tell what the weather's going to be?

You can see here we've got lots of computers.

We have a lot more information now coming in to us from the Met Office.

This is today's chart

and this is exactly the same as they had in D-Day.

The fundamentals of weather forecasting

haven't really changed since 1944.

Did the Germans get the weather forecast wrong?

Because they weren't entirely ready for D-Day, were they?

Interestingly, new research shows that they were quite good

at weather forecasting and they did see this weather window.

But the Germans were caught out, not because they weren't any good

at forecasting, but because they thought that we wouldn't

possibly try to launch an invasion based on that forecast.

So, we made the right decision.

And if they'd delayed D-Day, and if they'd said,

"No, it's not good enough at all," then the next time that they had

the criteria of the low tide and the moon was actually the 19th of June.

And if they'd waited until then it would have been disastrous,

because they had an almighty storm raging through the Channel

and there was no way they'd have been able to go.

So, they made the right call.

-What call would you have made?

-It's a very difficult call.

But based on the information that they had,

-I probably would have made the same call.

-That's the right answer.

Well, tomorrow the 70th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated

with a series of events in Normandy.

The day will start with services at the Cathedral and War Cemetery

at Bayeux, attended by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.

BUGLER PLAYS "LAST POST"

It will be followed by an international event to which

heads of state and royalty from around the world have been invited.

The British march past at Arromanches, near Gold Beach -

the traditional focus for British veterans - will close the day.

So, Eddie, Johnny, Tom, are you going to go to Normandy?

-Will you be there?

-I shall be going back.

I start laying the wreaths on the 6th of June.

The first one I shall lay

is the first man killed on D-Day -

Lieutenant Brotheridge,

who was killed on Pegasus Bridge the night before.

After that, we go and have a little drink

at the place there by the cemetery.

And over there, it's quite a big do.

And, usually, there are at least five or six hundred people.

I shan't be going this year.

I haven't been now since 2009 -

that was the last time I went -

but prior to that, I went every year.

But this year, I shall be laying a wreath

at the D-Day memorial stone on Southsea seafront.

I'm Chairman of the Portsmouth branch of the Normandy Veterans Association,

and on their behalf, I will be laying a wreath.

And Tom, what about you? You're going back, aren't you?

I shall be going back.

Apart from one year when I had a heart attack

and they wouldn't let me go,

ever since then, I have gone back purely to pay respects

to those who did not come back.

This June is going to be the last time

that the Normandy Veterans will appear as a national branch,

but I'm sure a heck of a lot of us will try to go over every year,

bearing in mind, of course, that the majority of us are well over 90.

It is an honour and a privilege to pay our last years' respects.

Well, like Eddie, Johnny and Tom, many of the veterans

have been back to Normandy with a friend or relative.

For Donald Jones from Pontypool,

the annual pilgrimage to the D-Day memorial events

has turned into a trip for the whole family.

My family consists,

at the moment, of myself,

my son and daughter-in-law,

two daughters and six grandchildren.

Of course, now, young Thomas Lloyd, he's my great-grandson.

Donald, along with various family members,

has made many trips back to Normandy.

Well, we went for the 45th,

I went for the 50th, with my wife,

we went on the 60th.

From the 65th, we've been over every year.

This is the 70th.

Could possibly be the last, but you can never tell...

Richard has accompanied his father on many of these trips.

The family really enjoys going there and has for a number of years.

It's a really enjoyable trip.

It's so rewarding when we do go over there because we do get

a better understanding of what they went through

and you get to see the respect that other people have for him,

and not just for him but for the other soldiers

that still go over there.

They would come up to Dad and they would want to know what happened

and they were just totally amazed at what they had done and the fact

that they were like 18 or 20 years of age

at the time, when this happened.

A lot of the young Paras were coming up to Dad,

and they were extremely interested

even though they know all about the modern-day army.

Very nice meeting you. Look after yourself, won't you?

He'd never told us anything about what happened in the war.

But we'd learned a lot from the fact

that he was telling complete strangers what he'd done

and we just happened to be listening in.

ENGINES DRONE

On the 6th of June 1944 Donald was

a Corporal in the Parachute Regiment flying into occupied France.

Over in the distance, there was all of this flak going up.

But it wasn't a case of just going up in the air -

some of it seemed to dance its way up.

To be quite honest with you,

it was better than seeing a good firework display in Blackpool!

But you realise how dangerous it was.

His platoon of Machine Gunners were being transported

in two Halifax aircraft.

We all got out of our plane safely.

But the other plane,

it got out from number 1 to 13.

But from 14 to 20,

no-one ever found out what happened to them.

Donald jumped from his plane but landed far off target,

in a field deep inside enemy territory.

I was completely on my own at three o'clock in the morning.

I couldn't see any of my colleagues around anywhere.

I saw someone, possibly 100 or 200 yards away.

So, I called out to him the password, which was "Overlord".

Now, I don't know who fired first.

But I know that I shot a magazine full of shots at him

and he most probably shot the same amount at me.

Neither of us hit one another

and he went his way and I went mine.

He managed to rejoin his platoon

and they moved in on the village of Ranville.

About 10 o'clock in the morning. We were set up in this hedge.

And after a while, I noticed a patrol of Germans coming.

So I opened fire on them.

Whether I hit any or if I hit all of them, I don't know.

But about an hour after that,

all of a sudden we had a loud explosion right next to us.

There was a German self-propelled gun firing at us.

Charlie King, my number two, he said, "Taff, I've been hit!"

So, we made our way down into the village,

to the first-aid post.

They found that Charlie did have a piece of shrapnel

in his shoulder, and they dressed it all.

And then Charlie, he said, "Have a look at the Corporal,"

he said, "I think he's picked one up as well."

Dropped my trousers and I found that a piece of shrapnel

had taken a lump out of this thigh.

And that was the end of my D-Day.

This year, Donald's granddaughter Robyn

will be joining him in Normandy for the first time.

I want to go so then I can match the stories with the locations,

and be able to see it for myself and what my grandad went through.

If, when I have children, I can tell them

the story as well of my grandad.

I don't have many friends at the moment

that have grandparents that lived through the war.

So I think that is pretty special.

It will be quite emotional.

Especially because my grandad's lived through it.

So, it will be emotional stories but also rewarding.

I've always seen my grandad as a bit of a hero. 100% a hero.

Eddie, can you sum up what it means to you, this anniversary?

During the school holidays,

I and some of my veteran comrades

go down to the D-Day Museum

and we speak to schoolchildren who come in with their parents.

And our main emphasis there is to say to them,

"It must not be allowed to happen again."

All those lads who never came back with us from the beaches

in the Battle of Normandy, they are the heroes.

They never came back with us,

and you shall never forget that they died for your freedom,

and for your democratic rights to live in a free country.

Johnny, what does the 70th anniversary mean to you?

Well, it means quite a bit.

I've done the job for 27, 28 years,

of laying wreaths at Ranville and, you know...

And I'm always...

There's only usually two veterans -

me and another one -

out of all those men, that survived.

The wreath people, the British Legion, deliver it

in the last week of January - I've got it indoors now.

And that's happened for the past 20-odd years.

Tom, what is it about this anniversary

that is so important to you?

Purely the fact that there were so many of us

who did not come back.

We were so relieved to have been able

to stand on those beaches, et cetera,

and think that at least we were doing something to honour

the dead, which is very much in my mind.

Tom, Johnny, Eddie, thank you all so much for sharing

your extraordinary memories of 70 years ago.

THEY CHUCKLE

Well, more than 150,000 troops

landed in Normandy on D-Day by sea and air.

James Holland remembers the actions of a small group

of men from an elite unit whose daring missions

were crucial to the success of the invasion.

December the 31st, 1943,

Gold Beach, Normandy.

On a dark, moonless night,

whilst the German forces celebrated the New Year,

two stealthy figures emerged from the bitterly cold surf

on a top-secret mission.

A mission that would hold the key to the future success of D-Day.

This is Hayling Island Sailing Club, a most unassuming place

for one of the most secret operations of D-Day.

In 1943, it became home to COPP -

the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties,

a covert team whose secret missions

and fantastical gadgets were like something out of a James Bond novel.

COPP's main purpose was to secretly reconnoitre beaches

in enemy occupied territory.

And it was from here on New Year's Eve 1943

that two men were sent on a daring incursion into enemy territory

equipped with little more

than a rubber swimsuit, a service revolver,

and, curiously, several packets of condoms.

The two men sent on this mission were Bruce Ogden-Smith

and Logan Scott-Bowden.

20 years ago, Scott-Bowden, accompanied by his son Robbie,

returned to Normandy to recount his story.

-MAN:

-'I'll just get you in focus.'

We're on the invasion beaches

on the right-hand part of the British sector.

And so, we were ordered, suddenly,

to do a reconnaissance here one night,

and we were to take samples in that area there.

The operation that my father first got involved in - they wanted

swimmers to go ashore in order to take soil samples on Gold Beach.

-Why was that? What was the problem with it?

-They'd been looking

at Gold Beach in great detail and studying the geology of it.

They needed to have sufficient sand above the clay

in order to allow the tanks to move ashore.

And that's what they needed to find out. So, on New Year's Eve,

a date that was chosen, we're told, by Churchill

because he suspected the Germans

would be having a very good New Year's Eve party.

So, it's as simple as that?!

Absolutely. And they set about it.

We were put in the water about three-quarters of a mile out there.

I think we had about a 300, 400-yard swim.

And then, we made our way along there,

very alert to try and avoid sentries.

We did hear the Germans having a bit of a party,

as it was New Year's Eve.

And the object of the exercise was to do a W-pattern there,

from there to there.

They were going to drill into the sand, and then they had these

ten cylinders where they would put the sand in and held it on the body.

-And the condoms?

-Well, the condoms were there to protect the soil,

and were slipped over the top.

The military always used condoms to keep the moisture out.

Having taken the samples, the real problem they came up against,

which they hadn't anticipated, was actually swimming out.

If the swimmers got caught,

they were going to compromise the Normandy invasion.

It had got a great deal rougher, and, to our astonishment,

in our first attempt to get out, we were thrown back onto the beach!

On our third attempt, we got out.

And then having got out further,

we then had to rendezvous once again with the...with the gun boats!

I mean, you can only imagine how hard that must have been.

I mean, it's dark, it's stormy, middle of the night

and you've got to try and find a very small boat.

And it worked out very well.

This business of a recce - getting people a very good idea of what's on

the ground, what sort of obstacles they were going to come across,

in order that they could start making plans - was really important.

When you think of your father's achievements, you must feel proud?

We're all very proud in the family of what my father did,

and, in many ways, we didn't really know much.

He didn't really speak much about it, to be honest.

But that wasn't the end of COPP's involvement in D-Day.

Their next mission would use some of Britain's most

experimental and secretive technology and in the days leading

up to D-Day, place it within a stone's throw of the German forces.

Here at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum is X24 -

the last surviving X-Craft to have seen service during the Second World War.

At 27 tonnes and only 51 feet in length,

she was much, much smaller than a conventional wartime submarine.

And for her five-man crew,

often trapped inside for days at a time,

she was almost unbearably cramped.

Jim Booth is the only surviving COPPist to have taken

part in the X-Craft D-Day mission.

So Jim, what was your D-Day mission?

You had use of two X-Craft - X20 and X23.

And the mission between the two of them

was to get across the Channel

well before the planned D-Day,

and to fix each of ourselves on two positions.

Submerged a quarter of a mile offshore,

Jim and his team were the first Allied troops

to arrive off the Normandy beaches in the run up to D-Day.

At dawn on the day itself, Jim's mission was to surface

and set up light beacons on his X-Craft

to guide the Allied fleet to the correct beaches.

Without any proper navigational aids,

it was too easy not to hit the right beach in the time.

So, it was important that we made sure

that they did arrive on the right beach.

So, that was our main job.

The next thing of course we had to do was to find out

-whether the invasion was coming on.

-Were you in radio contact?

I mean, if you use a radio, doesn't it give away your position?

No, we only had a receiver aerial.

-RADIO:

-'This is the BBC Home Service.'

We received the BBC Home Service, it was, actually.

After the news, there was an added little bit of funny news -

"All not well in Scarborough" -

I think I've got that right, something like that.

It was a plain-language message

which in our little, coded book said, "It's off."

As you know, Eisenhower postponed it because of the weather,

so we had to wait the whole day

and then repeat the operation the following night.

And like everyone else, Jim's mission was delayed by the weather.

But for Jim, this meant another 24 hours trapped in the cramped

confines of his X-Craft on the bottom of the Channel.

So, D-Day dawns on the 6th of June.

So, do you surface at that point?

Yes, that's right, we did.

We surfaced and start setting up all the equipment.

And, suddenly, there it was - the incredible fleet arriving.

-RADIO:

-'..D-Day has come.'

It must have been amazing as you look out

and the whole sea is dark with ships, wasn't it?

Yes, it was, it was unbelievable, wasn't it?

And there it was, D-Day, and then, they arrived.

How important do you think your mission was,

and the work of COPP, to the success of the invasion?

It was, it was the turning point of the war in retrospect, wasn't it?

Because if we'd failed, one daren't think what would have happened.

Most of the troops that took part in D-Day

were British, American and Canadian.

But there were also men from around the world who volunteered to join.

Among them were two Frenchmen,

who fought as part of the Allied forces,

to help liberate their country.

In May 1940, German forces swept into France.

EXPLOSIONS

On June the 22nd,

the French government surrendered and the Nazi occupation began.

Leon Gautier was amongst the last of the French forces

trying to repel the German advance.

Remi Dreyfus was an officer in the French cavalry.

I joined the army in April '40 -

just in time to live the terrible disorder

and the terrible defeat of 1940.

Life under German rule was hard for the French

and many, like Remi's wife, were part of the French Resistance.

My wife was in Resistance

from the very first day.

And she was trialled by a Vichy government,

and sentenced by a Vichy court

to 20,000 imprisonment,

and later, handed over to the Germans.

With his wife imprisoned,

Remi was determined to escape to England

in order to join the fight against the Nazis.

I escaped from France through Spain, like many people.

Finally, I reached Gibraltar.

From Gibraltar, I was sent to England by ship

and joined the Free French.

The Free French forces were a group of exiled French military

brought together by General Charles De Gaulle in London,

with the aim of one day liberating France.

In between training,

both Leon and Remi were able experience life in wartime England.

I was on leave when the first V1

fell upon the city.

And when I walked down from my studio in the morning,

I saw the landlady brushing off the pavement to clear whatever gravel

had been sent from that bombing.

And all I heard was this -

"Rather noisy wasn't it, sir, last night?"

HE LAUGHS

And amidst the air raids,

Leon met a very special lady called Dorothy.

I had no boyfriend or anything.

-She had no boyfriend. I was the first one.

-Yes!

THEY LAUGH

But whilst romance bloomed, the war raged on.

The Free French were desperate to liberate their compatriots

living under the iron fist of German rule.

When the plans for D-Day were announced,

it was the answer to Leon and Remi's prayers.

The first thing I asked to the Colonel who greeted me,

he said, "We are going to land."

So, I asked him, "When?"

And of course it was a shock when he said, "Tomorrow!"

HE CHUCKLES

On D-Day, Leon was amongst the first wave of commandos

to storm Sword Beach,

whilst Remi landed in a glider near Pegasus Bridge.

For both men, their first encounter

with their fellow countrymen remains vivid.

I said, "I'm glad to be in France."

The French people are glad to see a French officer.

And surprised and glad.

We are on the good way and soon,

the war will be over and the Germans will be out.

But the war wasn't over yet.

Thousands of people, including Remi's wife,

were still suffering at the hands of the Nazi regime.

She was handed over to the Germans

and she escaped and was sent to a concentration camp,

but a few days before the liberation of the concentration camp

by the American armies,

they were, like is the case in many camps,

taken to "chambre a gaz" -

taken to a gas chamber -

because the Germans wanted to liquidate the maximum

of their political prisoners.

And, fortunately, the gas chamber didn't work.

After being involved in fierce battles

with the German forces in France, Leon was granted leave.

He returned to England on a special mission.

When he came back, it was in September.

I was going to the cinema

and Mummy and Daddy stopped and told him where I was.

And we came back, and he said to me,

"Well, I'm all in one piece, we're going to get married," he said.

I knew I was going to marry him,

even before he went to France.

If Leon didn't come back,

I don't know what I'd have done.

That's it from us and our countdown to D-Day.

But join us tomorrow on the other side of the Channel

in Normandy for live coverage throughout the day

of the events to mark the 70th anniversary

of the Normandy landings. Until then, goodbye.