Voices of Liberation (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - D-Day - full transcript

[somber music playing]

♪ The bright horses have broken free
From the fields ♪

♪ They are horses of love
Their manes full of fire ♪

♪ They are parting the cities
Those bright burning horses ♪

♪ And everyone is hiding
And no one makes a sound ♪

♪ And I'm by your side
And I'm holding your hand ♪

[airoplane engines roaring]

[male reader 1] A letter
from Lieutenant Cross to his family.

"The landing was ghastly.

Mine was the first glider down, though.

We were not quite in the right place
and the damn thing bucketed along



a very upsy-downsy field for a bit
and then broke across the middle.

We just chopped through
those anti-landing poles as we went along.

However, the two halves of the glider
fetched up very close together

and we quickly got ourselves
and our equipment out

and lay down under the thing,

because other gliders
were coming in all around

and Jerries were shooting things
at them and at us

so it wasn't very healthy to wander about.

Our immediate opposition,
a machine gun in a little trench

was very effectively silenced
by another glider,

which fetched up plumb in the trench
and a couple of Huns,

quite terrified,
came out with their hands up."

I can't imagine what it would
have been like standing here.

This is the exact spot



where my great-grandfather landed
almost 78 years ago.

My name is James Brittain-McVey

and I'm a musician and guitarist
with the band, The Vamps.

My connection to the war
is my great-grandfather, Harold Clark,

who was a sapper with the Royal Engineers.

He stood just next to the cameraman
who filmed Montgomery

before Montgomery came into Normandy.

The war took my great-grandfather
from France, through Belgium,

through the Netherlands and Germany.

Sadly, he died when I was really young,

so I never learnt of his stories
until after his death.

But me being here today on Juno Beach
for the first time in my life

means a great deal.

[piano music plays]

The liberation of Western Europe started
right around this bridge, Pegasus Bridge.

Just after midnight, 18 000 paratroopers
were dropped by planes

and gliders into Normandy.

Within the opening minutes
of the Allied invasion,

Major Howard and men landed right here.

Their mission was to take the Ranville
and Bénouville Bridges.

The object of this action was to prevent
the Germans from crossing the bridges,

flanking eastwards and bolstering
the defenses at Sword Beach.

The bridges were captured
after a ten-minute firefight.

So, 90 minutes after taking off,
Major Howard was able to send

the code words "Ham and Jam" to indicate
that both bridges were in Allied hands.

The first Allied soldier who was wounded
in action was Lieutenant Den Brotheridge.

He led the first charge across
the Pegasus Bridge

and was hit in the neck.

Some say that he
was the first Allied soldier to die.

Others think it was Major Lennox-Boyd
who jumped by parachutes

at 23 minutes after midnight
and was never seen again.

Other sources
speak about Private Eric Jack Everett

of the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry.

He landed in glider 94 and was shot dead
within a few minutes after midnight.

One thing is for sure, Den Brotheridge
was the first soldier to be shot.

He was hit right here.

[omnious music plays]

[James] The first liberated house
in Western Europe was a bar: Café Gondrée.

The story goes that the owners,
Monsieur Georges and Thérèse Gondrée,

opened their doors
for the Allied soldiers.

Thérèse, being a nurse,
assisted the wounded.

Monsieur Georges, however, went into
the back garden and began digging.

A short while later, he returned
with his very best bottles of wine.

He'd been hiding them from the Germans.

I guess he wanted to serve
a good glass of wine to his liberators.

[male reader 2] Diary, Major John Howard.

"We opened up the café Gondrée
alongside the bridge.

It was a first-aid post

and the first thing George Gondrée did,
bless him,

he went down into his garden
and dug up nearly 100 bottles of champagne

that were buried away in his garden.

The sick and the wounded
were having quite a good time.

There's a lot of cork-popping going on
and the men in reserve

on the other side of the canal
all wanted to report sick."

[James] As said in the first episode,
these poles, called Rommels asparagus

didn't work as they were intended.

They weren't fit with mines
or put in concrete.

They did cause severe damage
to the gliders,

but the majority of men and equipment
reached the ground unharmed.

[dramatic music plays]

[James] But Field Marshall Rommel
also flooded a big part of Normandy

and that was extremely effective.

Two parachute divisions
were launched at night

to prevent German counterattack
towards the beaches.

To achieve this, the paratroopers
had to take control

of the four roads at the exits
of Utah Beach,

destroy the bridges over the Douve,

build a bridgehead west of Merderet
and finally settle in Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

The surrounding of Fière Bridge
were completely flooded.

The aim of the 82nd Airborne was to take
the bridge and the surrounding land.

However, with everything underwater,

there was only the road
and the bridge to take.

Fighting there raged on for two days
and both sides sustained heavy losses.

[female reader 1]
Intercepted message Bletchley Park.

"At 23:58 GMT,

Second Sicherungsdivision
to all units saying:

in the next hour, the Allied air armada
flies over the Channel Islands.

German units put on alert.

Parachute landings begin."

[James] This message not only meant
the Germans knew,

but that the Allies
were informed that the Germans were.

At midnight, General Feuchtinger,

commander of the 21st Panzer Stationed
Southeast of Caen,

became aware of the Allied invasion.

Having to obey orders,
he couldn't make any decision,

but put his division on alert.

He left Paris and joined his men
in Normandy.

[man, in German] Letter from Franz Mössner
to his parents. June 10th, 1944.

Today I want to write you
a more detailed letter

about the experiences
of the last few days,

since I have time for it.

The invasion announced itself to us
as follows.

We had gone to sleep as usual,

when suddenly, in the middle of the night,
at about 1:30,

the alarm from the operator woke us up.

He had seen parachutists
landing in our park.

Then all weapons were loaded
and we got ready to head out.

[male reading 3] Private James Baty.

"We had a dog and a dog handler,
Jack Corteil,

and he was to go number one
and I was to go number two.

The dog was trained,

he had his own parachute

and he had little red light on the back
as a guiding light for the dog handler.

And he was trained to stand still
as soon as he hit the ground.

Of course, he loved jumping.

But when we came over Normandy
with all the flak coming up, no door on,

you could see it all coming up.

He wouldn't jump.

Of course, it took Jack Corteil
and myself all our time to throw him out."

Private Corteil and his dog Glenn
were among many of paratroopers

who missed their nighttime landing zone.

They ended up dropping into an area where
British pilots had orders to fire on.

Corteil and Glenn were killed
by friendly fire.

He was just 19 years old.

They're buried together here
in the Ranville War Cemetery.

Weather and navigation
were the main reasons

why the airbornes were dropped
in such a chaotic way.

Lieutenant Colonel Otway's
Parachute Battalion dropped

on the wrong place,
so he was only able to gather up 150 men

from the 550 who parachuted before
he could attack the Merville Battery.

The battery was successfully taken

but was retaken again by the Germans
the very same day.

The Merville Battery was only given up
by the Germans on 17th August.

[male reader 4] Sergeant Eugene Lawton
to his parents.

"One's thoughts go deep into the past
when moving across

water on a troopship

and can say the move to France left me
with the feeling of seeing the past

and trying to look through
the fog into the future."

[man, in German] War report
from Field Marshal Von Rundstedt:

The air operations began
on June 6th, 1944, around 1:00 am,

west of the Seine Bay
and over the Cotentin,

under cloudy skies
and bad weather with lots of wind,

rain showers
and rough seas with four meter high waves.

The enemy carried out massive bombardments
in different places at the same time.

The enemy's aim was to alert us
and force us to take cover

so they could start dropping
the parachutists without being observed.

In several locations,
the parachutists turned out to be puppets

with boxes containing explosives.

[James] Ten minutes after midnight GMT,
Bletchley Park intercepted a message

from Konteradmiral Walter Hennecke
to Admiral Kanalküste Friedrich Riev,

saying some of the parachuters reported
were straw dummies.

What General Von Rundstedt
and the intercepted message

was describing is Operation Titanic.

It consisted of parachuting these
funny little fellows behind enemy lines

in the hope to draw German reserves away
from Caen.

Meanwhile General Speidel,
Rommel's Chief of Staff,

read the first reports informing him
of what was going on.

And at 01:30 a.m., The 7th German Army
was placed on alert.

General Richter, who commanded
the 716th Infantry Division,

joined his underground headquarters
in North Caen

and organized the first meetings
to prepare the great counterattack.

The plan was to throw the Allies
back into the sea.

He ordered the 21st Panzer to attack
the parachuting zones

of the 6th British Airborne Division.

The order remained unanswered.

[male reader 5] Letter from
Lieutenant H.T. Bone to his mother.

"Dearest Mother,
apart from our ordinary equipment,

we were loaded down with heavy packs,

a pick or a shovel each,
24 hours' rations, ammunition, and maps.

Under our armpits were the large bulges
of inflated Mae-Wests, life jackets.

In the Mess decks, we blacked our faces
with black palm olive cream

and listened to the naval orders
over the loud hailer.

Most of us had taken communion
on the Sunday,

but this ship's Padre still had
a few words to say to us."

[female reader 2] " Douglas Havocs,
Focke-Wulfs 190,

Messerschmitts 109 and 110, Junkers 88,

Dorniers 217, Douglas A20 Havocs,

Armstrong Withworth AW.41 Albemarles,
Arvo Lancaster Mark 1,

Hawker Hurricane Mark 2b
and Vickers Supermarine Spitfire Mark 9."

[somber music plays]

[James] Sadly, none of the original
Horsa gliders survived completely intact.

Today we only have pieces of them

and that's why this segment
is protected behind glass.

[instrumental music plays]

[male reader 6]
Letter from Charles Skidmore,

glider pilot, to his parents.

"Dear folks,

I hope you didn't worry too much when you
heard about gliders being in the invasion.

Was there much said about gliders
being on the show?

I told you they shot my right-wing
almost off when I was 50ft off the ground

and we landed in 4ft of water
between two hills,

and we were in a crossfire with Americans
on one side and Germans on the other.

A shell landed so near to us,
it picked Rankin clear out of the water

and sat him down unhurt.

And the machine gun missed me inches
and believe me,

I was glad to crawl
into the American lines.

We saw where an American paratrooper
was swinging by his chute in a tree

and a German had bayonetted his throat.

And so his buddies took six Germans

and lining them up
under their dead buddies,

they slit their throats
and the Germans started it with this,

and also with another thing we saw

where they wrapped
six American paratroopers in their chutes

and burned them alive.

And there were very few prisoners
taken the first couple of days."

[James] Colonel Vandervoort's Regiment
was dropped in Neuville-au-Plain,

north of Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

Despite breaking his leg on landing,

Vandervoort resisted counterattacks
from the 91st German division.

Only a few men were dropped
onto the town of Sainte-Mère-Eglise,

which was heavily defended by the Germans.

Among them, Private John Steele,

wounded when he, unfortunately,
landed on the Church steeple,

played dead for 2 hours
before finally being unhooked

by a German soldier who took him prisoner.

[dramatic music plays]

The first Allied general to die
during D-Day was General Pratt,

second in command of the 101st Airborne.

He was killed during
the catastrophic landing of his glider.

Sat behind the wheel of his Jeep,
he died from a broken neck.

This chateau was the headquarters
of Lieutenant General Wilhelm Falley.

In the night of June 5th to June 6th,
he was in Rennes, at War Game,

that was a simulation of an attack
by the Allies on the coast.

When he was alerted by headquarters
about a real attack,

he decided to head back.

[somber music plays]

Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne

were situated in this ditch
just down here,

when Lieutenant General Wilhelm Falley
arrived at full speed.

Now, as his car came into sight,
the Americans opened fire

and consequently the General's vehicle
veered off the road

and crashed into the corner
of this mill here.

The general jumped out,
but when he went to reach for his gun,

was shot down by the Americans.

Lieutenant General Wilhelm Falley
was the first

German general to die at D-Day.

And his death was absolutely catastrophic

for the German defense against
the Allied invasion,

mainly because two briefcases
full of official documents

were found in his vehicle.

His killer, Lieutenant Malcolm Brannen,

was interviewed by the press
on June 19th, 1944.

[male reader 7]
Malcolm D. Brannen explaining his actions

about shooting Wilhelm Falley
in the morning news from Wilmington,

June 19th, 1944.

"The Nazi officer in the back seat,

whom we later found out
to be a major general, crumpled over.

The car veered and smashed into a house.

The officer in the back seat
was thrown into a road unhurt.

The driver jumped out,

uninjured and crawled
into the cellar window of a farmhouse.

Brannen walked into the road
where the German officer was lying.

The latter looked up and shouted:

"Don't kill, don't kill, don't kill",
in English.

At the same time, his hand began
stealing towards his Luger

which lay in the dust about two feet away.

The German reaches for gun.

Brannen called out "Stop, stop!"

But the German didn't stop.

When the German's hand touched the Luger,
Brannen fired his 45.

The German quivered and lay still.

Brannen said:

"I shot because I figured
that if he got that Luger,

there would be one or more
of us killed before we killed him.

It was the first time I'd shot my .45."

[male reader 8] Diary of Robert Capa,
ready for the landing.

"At 04:00 a.m.,
we were assembled on the open deck.

The invasion barges were swinging
on the cranes, ready to be lowered.

Waiting for the first ray of light,
the 2000 men stood in perfect silence.

Whatever they were thinking,
it was some kind of prayer.

I too stood very quietly.

I was thinking a little bit of everything:

of green fields, pink clouds,
grazing sheep,

all the good times, and very much
of getting the best picture of the day."

[James] At that exact same moment,

von Rundstedt considered moving
armored divisions towards Normandy,

The Panzer Lehr
and the 12th SS Hitlerjugend.

To do so, he asked for the agreement
of the Supreme Command in Berlin.

However, Hitler's reply
would not come until ten hours later.

[waves crashing ashore]

The Allied Armada needed a disguise,

something that would keep them invisible
as they approached the coastline.

This is where
the Lorraine Bombing Group comes in.

They flew low and drew a curtain
of smoke along the landing beaches.

Lorraine's Bombing Group flew over
the coast meters above the sea

to create the smokescreen
that was requested.

In Bletchley Park, they could follow
the German messages.

[female reader 3] Intercepted message
by Bletchley Park at 04:36 GMT.

"MOST IMMEDIATE.

KARL reports: Off Saint VAAST,

five battlecruisers or battleships,
seven destroyers.

Smaller vessels have withdrawn.

The enemy is using aircraft to put up
a smokescreen."

[male reader 9] Diary
by Edward Francis Whightman,

Seaman, Gunner.

"Around 06:30 a.m., two enemy destroyers
attacked with torpedoes.

Five were fired
and three came perilously close.

No more than yards away, the nearest.

A pack of E-boats was observed
and the 4th and 6th armament

were blazing away and were very effective,
causing the enemy to retire.

They attacked again later on
and were again driven off.

By this time we had ranged
the enemy battery

and put four of the six guns out
of action.

The remaining two were quite a nuisance

and some of the shells landed
no more than 20 yards away.

In the meantime,
one of the tinfish fired at us

and hit the destroyer Svenner,
a Norwegian escort of ours.

She sank almost immediately

and I don't think any survivors
were picked up.

Bodies and wreckage, rafts, timber, etc.,
floated past

and we observed the bow and stern
of the wreck showing above water.

Must be pretty shallow here."

[piano music plays]

[male reader 10]
Diary of Lieutenant Eric Ashcroft.

"The chaps that were sick,
their vomit bags were pushed over the side

and one chap was signaling frantically,
you know,

"Don't throw the bag over."

Apparently his false teeth
were in the bag.

And that seemed to break
the tension of things."

[ghostly soldiers yelling]

[male reader 11] Letter
from Lieutenant H.T. Bone to his mother.

"It was a very dull morning and the land
was obscured by mist and smoke,

so that except for the flotilla leader
and the CO,

no one actually saw the land
till the metal doors opened

in front and the ramp was down.

But very soon after H-hour,

Crystal clear over my sets,

came messages
from the assaulting companies:

"heavy opposition, pushing on",

and "heavy casualties pushing on",

from each of the two assaulting companies.

By now we could hear
the tach-a-tach-a-tach

of enemy machine guns
and the strident explosions

of enemy mortars on the beach
and its approaches.

Now was the moment.

We clutched our weapons and wireless sets,

all carefully waterproofed.

Suddenly there was a jarring bump
on the left

and looking up from our boards
we saw some of the beach obstacles

about two feet above our left gunwale
with a large mine on top of it,

just as the photographs had shown us.

The mine just as the same as those
we had practiced disarming.

Again, a bump on the right,
but still we had not grounded.

The Colonel and the flotilla leader
were piloting us in,

and for a few brief moments,

nothing happens except the music
of the guns and the whang

of occasional bullets overhead,

with the sporadic explosions
of mortar bombs

and the background
of our own heavy gunfire."

[somber music plays]

In a secret briefing before the landings,

the commanding officers
were warned to expect

to leave 75% of their boys behind
on the Normandy beaches,

either killed or wounded.

They decided to not tell
their men about this.

[soldiers yelling]

[violin music plays]

Nearly 7000 vessels,

including battleships, destroyers,
minesweepers and assault craft

crossed the English Channel
to deliver 156,000 troops

to five Normandy beaches:

Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The liberation strip was 50km long.

Eighteen thousand paratroopers
were dropped behind enemy lines

to help facilitate
this landing force invasion,

and in addition,
11590 aircraft flew in support too.

This force completely overwhelmed
the Luftwaffe.

The Allied myth says
that Hitler went to bed very late

without having been informed
of the situation on the Normandy front.

Nobody dared to wake him
until two o'clock in the afternoon.

However, Albert Speer wrote that Hitler
was actually up at ten o'clock.

Hitler was informed of the situation
during the daily midday meeting,

but he still thought it was a trap
and that the main attack

would be off the coast of Calais.

More than seven hours after the invasion,
Hitler gave the go to organize

a counterattack and sent the 12th SS
and Panzer Lehr towards Normandy.

[piano music plays]

Here on Omaha Beach, the gunners were
in their bunkers, waiting.

Franz Gockel, eighteen and Hans Severloch,
aged 21,

were in their position
at Widerstandsnest 62.

At around 05:00 a.m., they noticed
five or six ships on the horizon.

However,
as the artificial mist began clearing,

the entire Allied armada was revealed.

It was heading right for them.

-[airoplane engine roaring]
-[explosions]

[ghostly soldiers yelling]

[explosions continue]

[guns fire]

[man, in German] Letter from Franz Gockel
to his parents, brothers and sister.

Now the Americans started to notice us.

Despite the fact that the twin and
quadruple guns from the boats fired on us,

we fired as hard
as the barrels could hold.

Soon the whole beach was
full of Americans

who had been stranded in our fire.

Only a few reached the gravel wall.

Many uninjured also stayed on the sand.

But when the water came,
they too had to move again.

Then we fired on them again.

And behind that gravel wall waited
a barrage from our grenade launchers.

They also took care of
a lot of the Americans.

Despite the heavy losses,
they kept advancing, which amazed us.

Forward observation officer,
Richard Gosling,

who landed on Gold Beach, on June 6th.

"I was a very simple boy, you know.

I hadn't been out of England
in my life before then.

And there I was, wading ashore
in France to fight the Germans.

Extraordinary.

We weren't trained
for that at Eton or Cambridge.

But anyway, we were full of enthusiasm.

We started to wade ashore
and the water got gradually shallower,

there was a lot of forward shelling,
our guns firing over our head,

a lifting barrage.

As we got nearer and nearer,
we could see one or two flashes

from German guns on the other side.

And then we heard something.

And because I had been born
in the country,

I thought it was a swarm of bees.

It wasn't. It was German machine guns
firing on our lines.

We got through
the deepwater over our balls

and then we could see the machine guns
furrowing the sand.

There was wet sand in front.

We were supporting the Hampshires,
the assault infantry.

So I was with the Colonel Nelson-Smith,
and he said: "Lie down."

Well, he'd been a soldier all his life.

I'd never been a soldier before,
but I didn't know what the idea was.

It was bloody wet to lie down,

we weren't very keen on that
and we started to run across the wet sand.

We could see the sand dunes just in front
of us, 50 yards in front of us.

And one or two people were shot.

And suddenly there was a great bang
just behind me.

And exactly like playing football at Eton,

when a boy had kicked
your legs away from you,

suddenly I found my legs
kicked away from me

and I was lying on the wet sand.

Poor old Nelson-Smith,
the colonel, was next to me.

His arm was shot through the elbow."

[male reader 12] June 6th, 1944.

Captain Dawson wrote:

"There was nothing I could do on
that beach except die.

I knew no one else was going to do it.

Something you do automatically.

Some people do it by circumstance,
but I knew that you have to do it."

[James] Legend goes,
Heinrich Severlohs' gun

was so hot that the grass in front of it
caught on fire.

To cool it down, he took out his Mauser
and started to aim and shoot.

At one point he shoots down a soldier
whose helmet falls onto the sand.

Years later, he was still having
nightmares about that exact moment.

The man dropping down,
the helmet falling onto the sand.

Severloh decided
that he wanted to meet someone

who was on the other side of his gun.

That moment came when he met
American Military Chaplain David Silva.

Silva was there that day
and was wounded by German fire.

Testimony from Private Robert Sales.

"When the ramp went down,
our officer was hit immediately.

Everyone who jumped
was immediately mowed down.

Our landing craft
lay directly in the crossfire.

We were literally cut to pieces.

If you moved, you were dead.

I survived by pure chance.

Every landing craft
that came in was taken under fire.

I was the only survivor of my boat.

But it was also right here
where history was written.

Robert Capa took his famous photos.

It was also right here where the Americans
suffered their greatest losses.

Within a couple of minutes,
the 116th Regiment lost 1000 men.

But it was also right here
where heroes were born.

Afro-American hospice Waverly Woodson
saved around 200 men

but was only decorated 60 years later.

Franz Gockel fired as much as he could
at the invading forces.

He was shot in the hand and taken
to Germany to recover.

Later, he was sent back to the front line
in Alsace and captured by the Americans.

It was also right here where 27
of the 29 DD amphibious tanks

sank under six feet of waves, after being
launched a couple miles off the coastline.

[somber music plays]

I just walked steps from the low beach
up to the bunkers

where Gockel and Severloh
were firing from.

Over these 400 meters,
thousands of men were killed or wounded.

It was young Germans shooting
at young Americans who in turn

were shooting back at young Germans,

all of them both a victim
and perpetrator at the same time.

They were no more than grown-up boys.

Robert Capa was a "star" war photographer

a Hungarian with Jewish roots
who fled Germany

after the fascists took over in 1933.

He used Paris as a stopover
before ending up in New York.

He was sent by Collier's Weekly
and later by the magazine Life

to do press coverage of the European war.

He always said that he landed on D-Day
during the first wave on Omaha Beach,

but that is pretty doubtful
and probably not true.

Following image analysis and research,

Capa is believed to only have arrived
at Omaha Beach with the 13th wave,

staying there for only
half an hour to take photos

and then taking a boat back to the safety
of the UK

at around 09:00 a.m. in the morning.

He had to deliver in time
for Life magazine

and that's why he rushed off.

The truth may never really be determined,
so the myth can stay on existing.

Either way, the photographs
remain masterpieces

from a historically special moment.

[male reader 13] Cappa wrote, "My camera,
Contax two, jammed.

The roll was finished.

I took another one from my bag.

My wet and shaky hands
spoiled the new film

before I could get it into the camera,

I stopped for a few seconds,
and it was even worse.

The empty camera was shaking in my hands.

A new and different kind of fear
was shaking me from toes to hair

and twisting my face.

I unhooked my shovel
and tried to dig a hole.

The shovel hit a stone under
the sand and I threw it away.

The men around me lay motionless.

Only the dead at the edge of the tide
roll with the waves."

[male reader 14] Newspaper article
about Waverley B. Woodson.

Written by Jack Saunders
in the Pittsburgh Courier

on 9 September 1944.

"For every hero who lives
or dies on the battlefield,

there are back home many who love him
and pray that he returns safely to them:

a mother, a wife, a sweetheart,
a father, brothers and sisters.

But what about Waverley B. Woodson Jr.?

Who did he have praying for him back home,

while he was saving the lives

of scores of American and British soldiers
on the beaches

of far-away Normandy, France?"

[James] At 06:24 a.m., the Kriegsmarine,
the Supreme Commander West,

had drawn the conclusion
that the invasion had started.

At 06:30 a.m., the first attack orders
were executed by the 21st Panzer Division.

[instrumental music plays]

♪ You'll never know
Just how much I miss you ♪

[James] Thirty-four thousand two hundred
and fifty men

and 2870 vehicles landed onto Omaha Beach,
now known as Omaha the Bloody.

The Americans lost 3900 men,
either killed, wounded, or missing.

How many soldiers
the Germans lost is unknown.

[eerie wind gusts]

-[ghostly soldiers yell]
-[gun fire]

[somber music plays]

[man, in French] Letter from Sergeant
Ducasse of the Kieffer Company.

The enemy artillery is wreaking havoc
among the fleet headed towards the coast.

Many boats are on fire,
others sink with the people on it.

The cries and calls of the dying
ring in our ears.

The corpses, like wreckage, emerge from
the sea. Their blood colours the water.

The barges and other ships are isolated
by a thick layer of smoke

from the torpedo boats that surround us.

A suffocating smell of gunpowder
hangs in the air.

The beach is swept by countless rounds
of unrelenting machine gun fire,

and they begin to cause significant
casualties on the deck of the barges.

The shells are constantly falling
around us

and thousands of men perish
before disembarking.

But the momentum is there.
We know that, as Frenchmen,

the honor of hitting the ground first
is reserved for us.

-[omnious music plays]
-[explosions]

[soldiers yelling]

Here at Sword Beach, in front
of Hermanville and Colleville-sur-Orne.

The Third British Division
started the attack.

They dispatched their special
and amphibious tanks,

known as the Funnies.

These included the Sherman Crab,

the Churchill Crocodile,
the Ark and the Avre.

They were helped by two brigades
of British commandos,

a necessary force for the planned assault
on the Ouistreham Battery.

The plan was to take Caen by nightfall
and rendezvous with the Canadians,

who had landed at Juno Beach.

[woman, in French] Excerpt from the diary
of Marie-Louise Osmont, June 6th, 1944.

Someone, a Frenchman on the road,

soldiers at the gate,
someone said: " Les Tommy!"

We look and see them hiding
on both sides of the gate,

looking away in panic,

the confusion painted on their faces.

And we suddenly hear these words:
" Les teufs!"

A first burst of red tracer bullets
sweeps the gate

and the men squat down.

Denice and I hide
in a corner of the room.

They strike all around us,
we'll have to go somewhere else.

[James] The British Third Division
landed at 07:30 a.m.

The French Kieffer commandos
got the honor to land

first on the beach
of Colleville-sur-Orne.

For the vast majority of the 177 men
of the Kieffer Commando,

the landing was a real baptism of fire.

The Scottish Lord Lovat, commander
of the First Special Service Brigade,

also landed in front of Colleville,
velvet pants,

turtleneck and rifle in hand.

His personal Piper,
Bill Millin was by his side.

Suddenly, when Millin started playing,

the Germans stopped shooting for a bit

as they couldn't believe their eyes
or their ears.

During the attack on the fortifications
of the Casino of Ouistreham,

Kieffer managed to neutralize
the German defenses

with the support of a British tank
and also with the help of Marcel Lefevre,

a man from the resistance
with a big white mustache.

He showed them where the telephone cables
connected to the large bunker.

They blocked communications
to and from this enormous stronghold.

-[gun fire]
-[explosions]

[James] Kieffer and his men
were shocked to find the locals

at Ouistreham
hadn't been evacuated.

A 12 year old boy, Désiré Dajon Lamare,
followed the soldiers like a shadow.

There was also a young girl,
Blanche Boulet,

who offered an improvised first-aid post
for any wounded soldiers.

The locals were surprised

with how much French the British spoke,

but when they realized they were
being liberated by French soldiers,

they were over the moon.

[man, in French] Excerpt from the diary
of Désiré Dajon Lamare.

At 5:30 am,
arrival of the French and the English.

Mr. Villaudière comes out
with his pillow on his head.

Tanks on both sides of the road.

The afternoon was very eventful.
Many English disembarked.

In the evening, from five onwards,

paratroopers came down constantly,
until seven.

German planes dropped two bombs
on the English infirmary, near the house.

A resistance formed at the crossroads.

I was slightly injured.

[James] Lord Lovat and Commander Kieffer
joined the troops

at the Pegasus Bridge,
who meanwhile were reinforced

by the seventh Parachute Battalion
of Lieutenant Colonel Pine-Coffin by noon.

According to the myth, Lord Lovat
chastised himself to Major Howard

for being
a few minutes later than planned.

At day end,

the Third British Infantry Division
had nearly 630 casualties,

two thousand eight hundred
and forty-five men

and 2603 vehicles belonging
to that same division

had landed in Normandy on June 6th
at midnight.

[somber music plays]

-[explosions]
-[gun fire]

Most people
will have seen the landing footage

of the Canadian Third Infantry Division
here at Juno Beach.

It's the only footage we have
from the north side

of the landing during D-Day,
so that's why it's used every time.

You can see the Canadian soldiers
holding their heads down nervously.

The door opens and you see the beach,

the houses and the Czech hedgehogs
on the sand.

The soldiers step out
and one of the soldiers

pats the men in front of him
on the shoulders.

It feels like he's wishing him good luck.

The soldier in front then turns
and gives a final glance.

The man looking backwards
is Private George Baker.

Baker survived the war.

His backwards looking face is featured
on the new Canadian two dollar coin.

[male reader 15] Letter written
by Lance Sergeant Walter Dowden

to his parents on June 3rd, 1944.

" You may wonder if I'm afraid.

I've wondered about that myself

and have decided
that if I do feel any fear,

it must be overrun by other emotions
such as curiosity,

the will to fight and win,

and many other things which I am finding
awfully hard to put into words.

Of this, I am sure
I am not afraid of death.

I believe sincerely in a hereafter

and I have no regrets
on the life I've led on Earth.

I have had more than my share of joy
and happiness.

I have loved and been loved in return.

My friends have been good and many,

and my experiences in life,

although they would not seem important
to others, have to me

been most pleasant and interesting."

[female reader 4] Fragment of a letter
from Doreen Dowden

to her deceased brother Walter Dowden,

June 6, 1944.

"I've been to Dover a few times
since I last wrote and had a swell time

but got a swell sunburn.

Steve had the radio on steady
since 06:00 o'clock this morning.

When the sirens and bells woke us.

This morning at 11:00 o'clock, we observed
two minutes of silence for you boys.

We at home are rather jittery,

but carrying on as usual
with our chins up.

And why shouldn't we?

We know what the outcome will be now
that the Dowden boys are in it."

Fourteen thousand Canadian soldiers
stormed the occupied beach.

They were all volunteers.

Escorting them with tanks
from the Second Armor Brigade,

as well as the British
48th Royal Marine Commando.

During the approach, two of the boats sunk

and only 50% of the British men
arrived unharmed onto the beach.

Thirty-four tanks out of the 40
were lost at sea before they could land.

The Canadians' goal was to establish
the junction with the British,

who had landed on Sword and Gold Beach.

The next objective
was the Carpiquet Airfield west of Caen.

By the evening of June 6th, 21400 soldiers
will have set foot on Juno Beach.

Among them and in the first few waves
was the French-speaking Regiment,

the Chaudière Air Regiment.

Three thousand vehicles
were also brought ashore.

At the same time, a meeting is organized
between General Feuchtinger, 21st Panzer,

and Kurt Meyer, commander of the 25th
Panzer Grenadiers Regiment of the 12th SS.

The objective is to prepare
a major counter-offensive.

The Canadians had succeeded
in advancing further

than other divisions of the Allies,
but due to fighting,

they couldn't
link up with the British from Sword.

The German 12th SS Panzer Division
had driven a wedge between them.

This was once the site
of the Carpiquet airfield.

It was a major objective of the Canadians,
but it couldn't be taken.

They suffered heavy losses here.

Twelve hundred men out of action,
including 320 killed.

[male reader 16]
Private Richard Atkinson.

"Civilians didn't really want you there.

They weren't too happy because you
only brought death and destruction.

It was beautiful, lush farmlands
and there were down, legs up in the air.

They were all dead.

All the livestock had been killed
in the fields and whatnot.

They did moan
because we'd kill all their stuff

and we were pinching their wine.

The Germans hadn't done
any of that to them."

[omnious music plays]

From the evening of the 5th
to the morning of June 6th,

the Longues-sur-mer battery received
more than 60 tons of bombs.

Miraculously for the Germans though,

the four-piece artillery battery
was unharmed

and remained extremely dangerous

for the British forces landing
at Gold Beach.

[heavy gun fire]

But after an artillery duel between
the battery and the battleship Arkansas,

the cruiser Ajax and the French ships
Montcalm and George's Leygues,

the guns of the battery
were finally silenced by direct hits

of the George's Leygues battleship.

When the British soldiers arrived on-site,

only one bunker was still intact,

the others having been damaged
or immobilized.

[dramatic music plays]

[James] The only soldiers
who got the Victoria Cross

from King George VI
on D-Day was Stanley Hollis.

[male reader 17] Audiofile Hollis.

"The Mont-Fleury battery was neutralized
by Allied bombardment

before it could fire a single shot,

and it was the task
of the 7th Green Howards to capture it.

Their first objective was a house
that overlooked the beach,

but when they passed it,

they came under fire
from a burnt machine gun

hidden in a pillbox
against the garden wall.

[gun fire]

Hollis charged some 30 yards
over open ground,

stuck his Sten gun into the pillbox slit
and emptied the magazine.

After that, a grenade dropped inside,

jumped down into the German fortification

and took the surviving Germans
as prisoners.

When Sergeant Hollis saw
that there was a second pillbox,

he had advanced down on it alone

and captured the German fortification
and all those in it.

In total, he captured
30 Germans singlehandedly.

Later that day at Crepon,

Hollis' company met fierce
German resistance.

Hollis managed to free two of his comrades
who was trapped in a burning house."

[male reader 18]
Letter from Stalin to Churchill,

sent 6 June 1944.

Received 6 June 1944.

"I have received your communication
about the successes

of the beginning
of the Overlord operations.

It gives joy to us all
and hope for further successes.

The summer offensive of the Soviet forces,

organized in accordance with the agreement
at the Tehran conference,

will begin towards the middle of June

on one of the most important sectors
at the front."

[James] One of the spectacular assaults
during D-Day

was the attack on Pointe Du Hoc
by 225 American Rangers.

They approached the Pointe du Hoc
in landing crafts

and in 20 minutes they climbed the cliffs
using rocket fired ropes

with grappling hooks
and extension ladders.

Once there,
the Rangers found it in utter destruction.

There were craters and debris everywhere

because of the bombing
from the night before.

They were baffled when they found
telephone poles instead of the guns,

but when they moved inland,
they found them.

They were camouflaged in a tree orchard

and pointed in the direction
of Utah Beach.

The guns were destroyed.

The batteries at Maisy was their next
mission objective,

but Colonel James Rudder disobeyed orders.

Instead, he stayed at Pointe du Hoc
for several days until relieved.

This allowed the guns at Maisy
to continue to shell troops

in both the Omaha and Utah Beach sectors
for three days after the landings.

Rudder claimed that his orders
were to hold the highway

against a possible counterattack.

The Maisy Battery completely disappeared
from sites and was only rediscovered

in 2004 by British military historian,
Gary Sterne.

He actually found a hand-drawn map
in a US veterans jacket that he purchased.

And today the Maisy Battery
is one of the best-kept secrets

on the Normandy coastline.

Around 02:30 p.m.,
the Fuhrer gave his agreement

for the 12th SS cantoned around Argentan

and the Panzer lehr
in position near Le Mans

to move up towards the Normandy Coast.

He was completely unaware
that the movement of the Hitler Jugend

had already begun without his agreement.

Hitler also formally forbade any movement

of units of the 15th German Army
stationed in the North of France,

in the firm belief,
to the point of blindness,

that the bridgehead formed in Normandy
is a diversionary maneuver

hiding a real landing imminent
in the coming days.

Rommel had been informed of invasion
at 07:00 a.m. by his Chief of Staff

in Herrlingen, near Ulm.

Six hours later, he decided to travel
to the headquarters in La Roche-Guyon.

The next morning on June 7th,
he wrote a letter to his wife.

[man, in German] Letter from Erwin Rommel
to his wife Lu on June 7th, 1944.

Dear Lu, here is a short message for you,
during a few quiet minutes.

I hope you were able
to enjoy your birthday.

It was very nice that I could be there
shortly, at the beginning.

You can imagine the state
in which I arrived here.

The situation is not exactly encouraging,
but I hope we can turn it around still.

Of course it's only the beginning.

I'm slowly finding my calm again.
The boys are doing their best.

But the superiority in aircraft,
tanks and ships is very large.

Warm greetings and a loving kiss
to you and Manfred.

[explosions]

[James] The Germans were outnumbered

and outgunned on the beaches,
which was strange,

as they expected the invasion
on the coast of Normandy.

At the moment of the landing,
the Germans had 100 men at Utah,

a thousand men at Omaha, 175 men at Gold,

three hundred men at Juno,
and 370 at Sword.

If one counts all German soldiers
fighting on D-Day,

twenty thousand German troops
faced around 150,000 Allied soldiers.

And above all this,
the Allies had 12,000 aerial sorties

against just 300 German aerial sorties.

Here in Caen, there was excessive shelling
before D-Day.

Half of the city
had already been destroyed.

However, at 01:30 p.m.,
the Allies unloaded

a further 200 tons of bombs over the city.

But prior to D-Day, about 22,000 aircraft

had dropped more than 42,000 tons of bombs

on 100 railway targets in the Seine Valley
between Le Havre and Paris.

In total, more than 60,000 civilians
were killed by Allied bombing.

[dramatic music plays]

When the landing was announced,
the head of the Gestapo in Caen

ordered the execution of 87 prisoners,

most of whom were from the resistance.

They were buried in the prison's
courtyards and covered with lime.

At the end of June, 1944,

the Germans returned to the site
to exhume the bodies.

The bodies were taken to a previously
unknown location.

[man, in French] Maurice Arrot, René Bizé,
Victor Bousso, Jean Caby,

Robert Douin, Maurice Hardy, Camille
Lamoureux, Jean Lebaron, Louis Leconte,

Anatole Lelièvre, Georges Madoret,
Colbert Marie, Pierre Ménochet,

Raymond Pauly, Louis Renouf,
Georges Thomine, Pierre Trévin,

Paul Vigouroux, Robert Vigouroux,

Marcel Vincent, Pierre Lepetit,
Serge Dumont, Albéric Levillain.

This is the last letter
that Colbert Marie ever wrote.

He was just a boy,

only 17, when he was executed
by the Gestapo firing squad in Caen.

[man, in French]
Letter written by Colbert Marie,

on a handkerchief, with his own blood.

"Mom, I was arrested as a communist,
by Fortier.

Go to him and explain to him
that I am innocent,

because I'm receiving lashes with a whip.

If it weren't for Gisèle,
I wouldn't be alive.

Tell Roger to say hello to everyone

and tell Kléber to come
with the German from Littry.

Tell Sobry to tell Raymond
to plead my case.

A thousand kisses to little Gigi,
Mom, Dad, Yolande and our friends.

Goodbye. I am innocent."

[piano music plays]