Platform: The day that secured our liberty as Hitler was caught napping

Published on Friday 5 June 2009 22:25

OVERHEAD, hundreds of Allied bombers aircraft droned towards France. Below, 500 ships and landing craft carrying 150,000 men steamed towards Normandy, 207 warships unleashed salvo after salvo.

It was H-Hour of D-Day – 6 June 1944 – and Operation Overlord had begun.The assault area was a 60-mile stretch of the Normandy coast. The Americans would attack Omaha and Utah beaches in the west, while Anglo-Canadian troops would land on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches further east.

On the German side, meanwhile, nothing was suspected. Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel, responsible for the defence of the French coast, was in Germany. As luck would have it, 6 June was his wife's birthday, and he was with her. Many senior officers were absent. The foul weather not only provided the Allies with cover but convinced the Germans that an invasion was a practical impossibility.

At 12.16am, Overlord had begun when British gliders loomed out of the night, west of the Caen canal. Sentries were taken completely by surprise and bridge demolition charges removed. Elsewhere, things ran less smoothly. Many American paras jumped to horrific deaths as inexperienced pilots, buffeted by high winds and anti-aircraft fire, dropped them up to 34 miles off their targets.

Nonetheless, in the east, British troops took Ranville – the first village of occupied France to be liberated – and in the west, US paras took Ste-Mere-Eglise at 4.30am. In Paris, Feldmarschall von Rundstedt took until 6am to order all units be put on full alert. By then, the Allied invasion fleet was off Normandy. At Utah beach the German defences crumpled and the Americans quickly pushed inland, but at Omaha there was tough resistance. Huge guns were trained on the beaches and – unknown to the Allies – the 352nd Infantry Division, Eastern Front veterans, had moved into the area

Omaha was in trouble right from the start as landing craft and tanks, assembled 11 miles offshore, plunged to the bottom. The attack fell into deadly stalemate, but by 9am troops had reached the top of the bluffs and began to push inland. Within hours 18,000 troops were ashore.

In the Anglo-Canadian sector, meanwhile, the run-in was slightly smoother, but there were no high cliffs and flail tanks (which the Americans had scorned) blazed trails through minefields and blasted holes in sea walls.

Around 9.30am, Rommel was informed. He realised immediately what was happening and returned to France. His High Command, however, persisted in believing the main attack would come at the Pas-de-Calais and refused to release panzer reserves held near Paris. No-one dared to tell Hitler until he awoke at noon.

By then, panzers had made contact with the British at Caen. Rommel warned: "If you don't push the British back, we've lost the war." But after two encounters, the panzers had to withdraw.

By nightfall, the Allies had secured all five landing beaches. They had achieved the impossible: moved 175,000 men across the Channel in a single day in the face of a dangerous and entrenched enemy .

Representing 40 per cent of the assault forces, it was the last time that Britain's contribution matched that of the US. Had D-Day failed, perhaps the Nazi state would have prevailed or the Soviets would have crushed it alone, and then ruled all mainland Europe. Either way, post-War history would have been utterly different.

&#149 Neil Griffiths is press and publicity officer for the Royal British Legion Scotland