William Tyler
D-Day
William Tyler - D-Day
- I can’t get my picture up now.
Well, I can see you.
Oh, I’m all right now. Okay.
Looking good in pink, William.
Oh. we were just saying somebody wrote in to complain about the colour of my jersey on an email. “You weren’t wearing the right colour,” they said.
Oh no, I think you look great in pink.
Well, they wanted- I don’t know how to take that, really.
[Judi] You’re making him blush, Wendy.
No, no, no, no, you know what?
It takes more than that at my age, I assure you, Judi.
You can’t please everybody with everything. We can just do our best.
That’s what I always say. You can’t make everyone happy. You just try your best. That’s all you can ever do.
Exactly.
[Judy] Well, thank you. Myra has just said, “Love the pink.” And that’s from Myra.
I agree. I agree. I commented exactly. Looking good. So William, before I hand it over to you, I just wanted to say to our participants, because I didn’t mention it yesterday or the day before, there was a very sad incident in Israel. Tragic incident, actually. Absolutely tragic. So in my other life, of course, we’ve been dealing with that. But I didn’t mention it on Lockdown University, so I just wanted to say to participants, as well, if anybody had loved ones that were lost or wounded, family, just our thoughts from the faculty and from myself, from all of us. We are with you, and of course our thoughts are always in Israel, as well. So just that’s condolences and thinking of you and just a difficult time. All right, William, what can I say? I’m going to hand over to you to talk about D-Day, right?
You are indeed. Thanks very much, Wendy. Yes indeed.
Thank you.
Thank you very much and welcome, everyone. If you’ve been with me before, welcome back, and if you haven’t, welcome. And yeah, we’ll launch straight in this afternoon. It’s this afternoon for me. I know it’s morning for many of you. 77 years on next month, we still remember the men from Britain, America, Canada, France, and many other countries, too, who were part of the largest armada the world has ever witnessed, who on the 6th of June, 1944, crossed from beaches here in southern England to the heavily Nazi-fortified coast of Normandy in Operation Overlord, which we call D-Day. D-Day simply means, D is for emphasis like H-Hour, D-Day, nothing odd about that. This invasion of Europe was to prove the beginning of the end for Hitler as the invaders gained a foothold in France that they would not give up. I’m grateful to one of you who only this morning sent me a written account of D-Day, well, actually, mainly two days after D-Day when his father landed in Normandy.
Forgive me if I pronounce your name incorrectly, but Captain Barelowitz, who won the military cross after D-Day in the bocage of Normandy in June 1944, who was with the County of London Yeomanry and had fought through North Africa, had landed at Salerno, and had been brought back from Italy to Britain to prepare for the invasion of Normandy. It’s so easy to say that, isn’t it? And just think of what those men had gone through. North Africa, Salerno, then Normandy, and then finally the advance into Germany. And our friend’s father was wounded three weeks before the end of the war as the British army advanced through towards Berlin. He wrote, “The devastation except on the beach itself was not as frightful as we would thought it would’ve been. Most of the villages were quite untouched and most of the villagers were there to watch us go by. Some cheered, others watched. Obviously they didn’t feel sure whether we had come to stay, but we didn’t care. We knew we were here for keeps and they’d be only too willing to take our francs.” There was a certain determination amongst ordinary soldiers, officers and men, let alone those at the top, that this had to work. It just had to.
An American lieutenant colonel who also landed on D-Day said this to his men. “You know where you are going. We’re going to hold there till hell freezes over or we are relieved, whichever comes first.” There was a steely determination and high morale that once we got a foothold in France, we were going to hold that land and advance. There was going to be no retreat from the Normandy beaches. We will remember them 77 years on. And one historian has written this. She writes, “The courage of all these men who refused to be thrown back into the sea, not to mention the audacity of the military panels, is a recurring topic even in the 21st century. This multitude of heroes fought for the noble principle of freedom, and that helps them loom large in the collective consciousness. Here, America, Canada, and across the globe where these soldiers came in the cause of freedom.
General Eisenhower referred to it as a crusade for freedom. Not only is it a heroic moment, but it’s also very important history. This was an opportunity that would not be repeated perhaps to destroy once and for all the Nazi hold on Europe and the destruction of Nazism in Germany itself. The Germans too realised the significance of the landing, and Field Marshal von Rundstedt said this, because he realised how important this invasion was to the future of the Third Reich. He said, "This war will be won or lost on the beaches.” In other words, if the Allies managed to hold the beaches and advance beyond the beaches, then in his view the Germans had lost the war. The planners were determined that this landing, as I just said, would not fail, and it would not be a repeat of the smaller raid on Dieppe in August 1942. The raid on Dieppe in ‘42 resulted in the death or capture of some 4,000 Canadian troops.
Many of those Canadians were stationed here where I’m sat in England today in the town of Worthing on the coast just west of Brighton, a seaside town, and a Canadian flag flies proudly every day of the year about half a mile to my right on the promenade, together with a memorial which says that these Canadians were to leave young men, young boys, many of them, to give their lives in the cause of freedom. And this town has never forgotten those Canadians, and every year there is a ceremony held by the flagpole and the memorial. What went wrong, the Canadians, by the way, took part not just in the Dieppe raid from here, but also at D-Day from here. What went wrong in 1942 the planners for D-Day were determined would not happen again. And Karen Barrington, the historian, writes this. “The operation at Dieppe underlined the need for secrecy. At the French port, the defending Germans were expecting some action and were well prepared. Secondly, the Navy’s heavy cruisers and battleships would be sorely needed during a large-scale action.
At the same time the Dieppe raid took place, the Royal Navy was exercising extreme caution in permitting ships into the exposed English channel, and that Dieppe allowed nothing bigger than a destroyer into the waters to protect the men going ashore. Air supremacy also proved to be crucial, another element missing at Dieppe. Poor communications between beach and operation commanders meant waves of men were sent ashore when they had no hope of survival. This was a further issue that urgently needed addressing, as was the lack of meaningful reconnaissance. Many soldiers deposited at Dieppe had no idea where to exit the beach. There was following Dieppe a clear need for specialist amphibious craft to protect men emerging from the waters. As for the Germans, the debacle at Dieppe made them feel impregnable and perhaps contributed to an air of complacency.” It was an extraordinary failure. But in times of war you have to experience failure. Often you have to experience defeat in order to move forward to victory. And the planners, American and British, were determined after Dieppe that they would plan meticulously for what was to come.
Let me just set out for you, and I apologise for those of you who know everything about D-Day, the basic facts of D-Day as these. 160,000 troops in all embarked in 5,000 sea craft and sailed from ports in southern England to attack Hitler’s fortress Europe. The ground troops, unlike at Dieppe, were supported by a large overwhelming naval force and by a large air force cover. There was also French resistance who had risen at the message from the BBC over the radio and they had risen in order to cut German lines of communication towards the beaches. There were also troops landed, paratroops landed before the main body arrived. Some tasks like clearing some mines on the beaches. This was meticulously planned, perhaps the greatest planning operation of a military exercise in history. There were five designated beaches, Omaha and Utah, which were to be stormed by American troops under General Bradley and General Collins, Sword and Juno by British Canadian troops under General John Crocker, and Gold under British troops under General Terry Bucknall. As it happened, Utah, Sword, Juno, and Gold were okay. Omaha wasn’t because at Omaha there were German veterans from the eastern front fight with Russia. Also there were cliffs at Omaha.
And Omaha was the one beach which caused serious problems to the Allied landing, to the Americans there. The supreme commander on D-Day was General Eisenhower and the commander of land forces was the British General Montgomery. Eisenhower found Montgomery a real problem. But then, everybody found Montgomery a real problem. But somehow or other, both of them worked together, as did the other senior commanders. The planning, as I’ve said, had been meticulous. We fed disinformation to the Germans. We built a whole military camp in Kent. We made ships out of wood and tanks out of rubber, and we set up a tented whole town of troops, except there were no troops there. But each night they lit fires as though there were a large number of troops cooking their evening meal. Because the Germans expected us to go from Kent, from Dover across to Calleigh, the shortest crossing in the English channel, instead of which the allies decided on Normandy. The place between Normandy and Calleigh was Le Havre, but that was heavily defended. And had they gone further south, the idea was that they might have gone through Spain or Portugal, but both were neutral countries and we had no idea how they might react to that.
There were also, of course, plans to invade through Southern France, through Provence, and we did do that six weeks later, but that would not have helped. We’d’ve had to have fought the whole way through France. So if the choice was Normandy and the choice were these beaches and in the end in a sense there was no other choice. This was the clear decision of the planners. So talking about planners, let me begin the story of the 6th of June on Monday the 15th of May. On Monday the 15th of May all the senior military commanders together with the British Prime Minister Churchill and the King George VI met at St. Paul’s School in Hammersmith in London for the final briefing of Doomsday. I’ll put these books tomorrow on my blog. But this is James Holland’s magnificent book, “Normandy 44.” James Holland is a excellent British historian and he writes in this book, “On the 15th of May, the invasion was now just three weeks away. The day of judgement was almost upon them. In the school assembly room, the atmosphere was palpably tense.
So much rested on this enormous enterprise to which they were all committed. Failure,” here again, exactly the point I’ve been stressing. “Failure was inconceivable, yet transporting armies across more than 80 miles of sea through waters peppered with enemy mines and landing on beaches defended by armed forces that had cowed much of Europe just a few years earlier and with secrecy of paramount importance seemed a Herculean task. And so it was. Much could go wrong.” One of the things that did go wrong is that secrecy was not maintained and there were ample opportunities for the German high command to have realised what was going on. They simply didn’t. One of the interesting things about the war is the incompetence of German intelligence and their incompetent use of it. Whereas the Allies, of course, had excellent intelligence by this stage of the war because of Bletchley Park breaking the codes of the Germans. So despite everything, we had an advantage there.
James Holland goes on to write this about that meeting on the 15th of May. “The briefing was in the morning, and after lunch, Churchill was asked to speak to the senior commanders. It was no secret that Churchill had doubts about the invasion and the terrible cost in lives it might cause. But now his rallying cry was one of optimism and growing confidence. 'Gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘I am hardening to this enterprise.’ No one there, however,” says James Holland, “was under any illusions. The task before them was a monumental one, and their plan based on assumptions and variables over which they had little control. There was no wonder they were feeling the heat that warm early summer day in London.”
There’s an interesting quotation from Churchill. Churchill also reminded the leaders of D-Day at that meeting, “This is an invasion, not the creation of a fortified bridgehead.” So what was going through Churchill’s mind is absolutely clearly Gallipoli in 1915, for which Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty carried, whether rightly or wrongly, a great deal in the blame. The allies at Gallipoli never got beyond the beaches. The intelligence was appalling. When Lord Kitchener went to view it whilst they were still fighting there, he said, “If I’d known it was like this, I would never have sent you,” he said. Well, thanks a lot. So Churchill said, “This isn’t a beachhead. You’ve got to push on,” said Churchill. And why was he concerned about the loss of life? Because of the loss of life at Gallipoli. I don’t know how many of you know, but Churchill’s deputy, the labour leader Clement Atley, had been an officer, a major at Gallipoli. So Churchill not only had his own experience as the politician to whom the finger pointed after Gallipoli, but his deputy in cabinet had actually seen it and fought there.
So that is what is in Churchill and Atley’s minds at D-Day. Pray, God, this isn’t a second Gallipoli. A second Dieppe, yes, but a second Gallipoli would’ve been, well, they just couldn’t contemplate it. So after that meeting on the 15th of May, 1944, as Sherlock Holmes might have said, the game’s afoot. Nothing now could prevent the invasion from taking place. The senior military officers and the two allied political leaders, Churchill and Roosevelt, had just got to hope all would go to plan. But they knew, as everyone else knew, that the best laid plans don’t survive the first contact with the enemy. It would in the end, as ever in war, depend upon the training and the morale of the frontline soldiers, officers, and men. Would they go through hell to get beyond the beaches? Would they be able to take what is assumed to be an appalling loss of life to come? And although much effort was put into planning, things began to go wrong even before D-Day happened.
I’m sure many Americans listening tonight will remember the huge tragedy on a Devon beach called Slapton, S-L-A-P-T-O-N, Slapton Sands near Tawky on the southern coast of Devon. There’d been countless American exercises on this beach preparing for D-Day. It was thought that Slapton Sands was the best beach they could find which replicated the beaches they would find in Normandy. And when operation, the last one, operation Tiger on the 27th of April 1944 was a dreadful disaster. Now I’m going to read you from another British historian. This is, he is a fantastic writer and he’s written three or four books. He’s got another one shortly coming out. This one is called “Sand & Steel.” I’ll put it on my blog tomorrow. It’s by Peter Caddick Adams. Now, I know it’s big, but it’s the sort of book you can dip into. He writes, I think he writes beautifully. And if you are at all interested, then everything is in this book for D-Day. “Sand & Steel. And he writes this about Slapton Sands. "Operation Tiger began on the morning of the 27th of April ‘44 and included a live naval bombardment to acclimatise the troops.
At the last minute, H-Hour was delayed for 60 minutes, but some landing craft did not receive word of the change. Arriving at their original scheduled time, they were then hit by live friendly fire, allegedly suffering a never specified number of casualties. Rumours circulated it amounted to hundreds.” We now know 946 American GIs were killed and missing. That’s a terrible, terrible number from friendly fire. The Americans blame the British for it. It’s a terrible thing. You can go and there’s memorials at Slapton Sands today. And Caddick Adams writes this. “If there was a positive side to the tragedy of Slapton Sands, the lessons learned, better warship escorts, all units on the same wireless frequencies, improved designs of life jackets, and overall strict adherence to timetables. This was going to be helpful on D-Day itself.” But it was a terrible, terrible tragedy, hushed up at the time and for a long time afterwards.
But perhaps the biggest thing that went wrong and was uncontrollable was the weather. Originally Eisenhower had decided to go on the 5th of June, but because of the weather had to postpone it, postpone the invasion for 24 hours, hence the date that we all know, the 6th of June. However, even that was a risk. The meteorologist said there’s a tiny window of opportunity and it could’ve been disastrous. The weather doesn’t do always, even today, what is forecast for it. And Caddick Adams writes this. “High winds scattered the airborne forces on the day itself, on the 6th of June. High winds scattered the airborne forces and at least 10% of the seaborne fatalities on the 6th of June were due to drowning.” So that’s, when we say seaborne, we don’t mean sailors. We mean the troops going over in the boats. “Another point on the Beaufort scale might have been enough to literally sink the assault.”
So it was a tiny, tiny window of opportunity. “The choice of times and dates was dictated by the necessity for a full moon and low water. Though a decision to land at high water, which in practise meant most units ended up doing, might have yielded some different dates.” Once you go into action, it’s up to the troops on the ground to deal with the unexpected. To deal with these conditions which were not ideal by any means, but at least they had proper amphibious craft and they had the famous mulberry harbours, which had been taken over in sections for after D-Day. Everything had been meticulously planned for D-Day itself and post D-day. The captain whom I quoted at the beginning, whom our friend so kindly sent me his father’s, the captain’s, account, says, “Slowly D-day approached. Leave was curtailed, finally stopped. Hours lengthened more and more. Documents marked to secret came through from corps and army. Surreptitious comings and goings, conferences the nature of which was not divulged to subitants or even captains, arrival of reinforcements all pointed the way.
Meanwhile, the newspapers and neutral forces prophesied this weekend or next weekend. There was no flap in the regiment. We just went on drinking our beer and bemoaning the curtailment of leave. Then suddenly came a warden order that we were to move to a concentration order. We subitants didn’t pay a great deal of attention. It was the night after the regimental dance and we were all madly drowning gin and beer, trying to sober up, the while only getting drunker. Everyone was in wonderful spirits. This was to be the last crack at the hum. Then Paris, Berlin, real champagne, music, boats, yes, a big factor. And then finally, peace and home. No one paid heed to the fact that not all of us would make the grade, that many would fall by the wayside. A few days later came the news that we were to move again still closer to the point of embarkation.
That afternoon the whole regiment was completely out of hand. Everyone from the sergeant major to the sanitary man was completely blotter drunk. What a shambles our squadron looked as they marched down to the tank park. Nobody could carry their kit properly and odds and ends were littered along our way. They looked anything but the cream of the British army and certainly not like the squadron that had been seen in northern France. Peter had an O group, an officer’s briefing group. Peter had an O group to give orders out. Peter had an O group with the subitants and we were told the regimental order of march in the first action in which the division would participate, George Moxon was to be centre leading, John Lawson left leading, myself right leading, and Angus in reserve. Strangely enough, we didn’t feel frightened or nervous, only very proud of the honour, and they were due to land two days after, that is to say, on the 8th of June. By dawn on the 6th of June, thousands of paratroopers and glider troops, troops landed by glider, were already on the ground behind enemy lines securing bridges and exit roads. And of course the French resistance were cutting the infrastructure behind the front line, as well.
The amphibious invasion began at 6:30 AM. The British and Canadians overcame light opposition to capture Gold, Juno, and Sword, as did the Americans at Utah. American forces, however, faced heavy resistance at Omaha, where there were over 2,000 American casualties. And that was probably half the casualties of D-Day of all the beaches. And there were thousands missing and wounded. At Omaha, as I said before, the Americans came close to defeat because the air and naval bombardments failed to knock out the strong defences.” Excuse me. “The strong defences which the Germans had.” I heard you say bless you. Thank you. The Americans came close to defeat partially because of the preliminary failure of the air and naval bombardment, which failed to knock out the German strong defences. And they faced, as I said before, regular German troops and experienced regular German troops that had fought on the eastern front. But they hung on. They hung on. Getting off the beaches was difficult. And English NCO wrote this poem. “Keep moving. Keep moving, lads. Keep moving. Don’t huddle on the beach.
Don’t make yourselves a target for those guns up there to reach. Keep moving, lads. Keep moving. There’s the sea wall over there. Keep moving, lads. Keep moving. Don’t falter or despair. Don’t look at comrades falling around you everywhere. Keep moving, lads. Keep moving. We can take this on the chin. Keep moving and keep praying before those guns, they zero in.” As an officer cadet, gosh, over 50 years ago, I took part in an exercise which was an amphibious exercise. Oh, this was kids playing at it, if you like. Down in Devon, as it happened. And we landed early in the morning having gone, it seemed to me we went round in circles all night. But we landed in the morning. And although there was an “enemy,” inverted commas, on the beaches and there were thunder flashes and big fireworks and lots of shooting of blank bullets, I have to say it was unnerving as you jumped into the water when it was still dark and people were shouting everywhere and you couldn’t quite make out where you were meant to be.
I can’t begin to imagine what it must have been on the 6th of June. You’ve already come across the channel. The water’s been rough. The enemy have been attacking from the air. And now you land and you’ve got to get up the beach. And at Omaha the Americans come face to face with a cliff. And you know you’ve got to move fast because if you don’t, the German artillery will be able to get a fix on you and blow you apart. And so many of us are on the beaches that they can strafe the machine guns across the beach. It must have been truly horrifying. Somehow or other, they made it. This is a Scott, a Sergeant Scott who landed at Sword Beach. “I honestly cannot say I was nervous. I was anxious, but I’d been warned about what to expect during six months of lectures beforehand. There were bodies in the water of both British and Germans. One of the officers told us afterwards how when he was walking up the beach, he felt he was walking on cushions, but it was the bodies of dead soldiers he was walking on.”
That was a British view. This is an American view from an American officer in the first infantry division, a Captain Dawson. “We landed at H-Hour plus 30 minutes.” So H-Hour was 6:30. He landed at seven o'clock. So the first troops had landed. He’s in the second wave. “And found both the assault units rendered ineffective because of the enormous casualties they suffered.” This is at Omaha. “Fortunately when we landed, there was some let up in the defensive fire from the Germans. Even so, the boat containing assault unit company G, which I commanded, took a direct hit from the artillery of the Germans and I suffered major casualties. I lost about 20 men out of a total complement of 250 from that hit on my boat.” And this is before they actually touched down on the soil, on the sand. “And this included my naval officer, who was the communications link with the navy, who were to support us with their fire from the battleships and cruisers some 8,000 yards out to sea.
As soon as we were able to assemble, we proceeded off the beach to a minefield which had been identified by some of the soldiers who’d landed earlier. We knew this because two of them were lying there in the path dead, which I selected. Both men had been killed by the mines. From their position, however, we were able to identify the path and get through the minefield without casualties and proceed up to the crest of the ridge which overlooked the beach. We got about halfway up when we met the remnants of the platoon of E Company commanded by Lieutenant Spalding. This was the only group somewhere less than 20 men we encountered who’d gotten off the beach. They had secured some German prisoners and these were sent to the beach under escort. Above me, right on top of the ridge, the Germans had a line of defences with the excellent field of fire. I kept the men behind, and along with my communication sergeant and his assistant, we worked our way slowly up to the crest of the ridge.
Just before the crest there was a sharp perpendicular drop and we were able to get up to the crest without being seen by the enemy. I could now hear the Germans talking in the machine gun nest immediately above me. I then threw two grenades, which were successful in eliminating the enemy and silencing the machine gun, which had been holding up our approach. Fortunately for me, this action was done without them having any awareness of my being there. So I was no hero. It was an act of God, I guess.” The morale of the troops, American, British, Canadian, French, and the rest, was extraordinarily high. And remember, these are all young men, a young officer and young troops, and some of the Americans were seeing action for the first time. Crikey. Later that day, the 6th of June 1944, Churchill got up to speak in the House of Commons. Churchill was careful throughout the war always to report to the Commons because he believed that we were fighting for democracy and that’s what he should do. If you’ve been following contemporary British politics, you’ll know that today’s prime minister doesn’t necessarily follow Churchill’s example.
Churchill said to the house, “I’ve also to announce to the house that during the night and the early hours of this morning, the first of the series of landing in force upon the European continent has taken place. I cannot, of course, commit myself to any particular details. Reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far the commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan. And what a plan. This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred. It involves tides, winds, waves, visibility, both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air, and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions which could not and cannot be fully foreseen. The battle that has now begun will grow constantly in scale and intensity for many weeks to come, and I shall not attempt to speculate upon its course. This I may say, however. Complete unity prevails throughout the allied armies. There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our friends of the United States.
There is complete confidence in the Supreme Commander General Eisenhower and his lieutenants, and also in the commander of the Expeditionary Force General Montgomery. Nothing that equipment, science, or forethought could do has been neglected, and the whole process of opening this great new front will be pursued with the utmost resolution, both by the commanders and by the United States and British governments whom they serve.” For Churchill, this justified his trust in the dark days of 1940 that with American help and support and involvement in the war, Germany could be defeated. Now that moment has come, and he feels, I think, nothing but relief. Well, he also feels, of course, a certain worry that it will succeed and a worry about number of deaths. And by the time he speaks later that day of the 6th of June 1944 in the House of Commons, he has been assured by Eisenhower that everything is going to plan. And indeed, in the broad, broad picture it had.
It’s only when you listen to stories like that American captain taking out the machine gun nest with two grenades that you see that intimate fighting on the ground which so depended upon the courage, the professionalism, and the high morale of the troops involved. It was a moment. Less than a week later on the 11th of June 1944, the beaches were all fully secured. Over 326,000 troops, more than 50,000 vehicles thanks to the Mulberry Harbours had been landed along with 100,000 tonnes of equipment. The allies were there to stay, as the American lieutenant colonel said, “until we are relieved or hell freezes over.” They weren’t going back. The eventual defeat of Hitler’s Germany had begun, but it is to take pretty well a year before final victory can be declared. It’s a long way to go yet. They knew it. They knew that the Germans would not be an easy pushover. And first of all, they had to get out of Normandy, and Normandy was a dreadful place in which to fight a war. Landing in Calleigh would’ve been so much easier.
I mean, not just because it’s further north, but in Normandy it’s what French called a bocage, B-O-C-A-G-E, a bocage, and the bocage was very, very difficult territory in which to fight. It was sunken lanes with high thick hedgerows. So easy to be trapped, so easy to be cornered. It was not an easy fight. And thousands of men were to lose their lives before the war is finally brought to an end. But this is a moment when Roosevelt and Churchill realise that victory is there. But that victory still requires enormous effort, enormous planning, and there will be moments when it looks as though we are being forced back. But remember, this is only one front in the war. There is Stalin’s Red Army advancing from the east, and as we all know it is the Red Army which reaches Berlin first. Stalin determined to do that. And so Stalin it was who had long argued that there should be a second front opened in Europe.
And so Stalin is there in the east and the Red Army ploughs through and of course reaches Berlin, as I said, first. And that famous picture of the Russian flag being flown in Berlin and Hitler’s suicide is all to come. And the big question is, without America in the war, would Germany have been defeated? I think probably most historians would say yes. Would Britain been able to land on its own with imperial troops without the Americans? It’s doubtful. We were fighting in Italy and we were fighting in Burma at the same time. We simply didn’t have the manpower to do so. And so if we hadn’t, the Allies, the Western Allies hadn’t been there advancing towards Berlin, then the worst nightmare of Churchill’s would’ve come true and Europe would’ve ceased to be Nazi, but would’ve become Marxist. Whereas Stalin’s paranoia was that the allies would not stop in Berlin, but would push on to Moscow. So although we’re allies and we’re all friends with good Uncle Joe, under the surface, no, we’re not. Under the surface, the beginning of the Cold War can be seen from this landing point on D-Day onwards. We sachet from World War II into the Cold War.
Churchill even suggested to the Americans, to FDR, that we advance against the Russians. And of course, the Germans under Admiral Dönitz, who took over from Hitler after the suicide, believed that perhaps it was possible for a allied German army to defeat the Russians. The Americans were having none of that. But as a result, the Americans had to stay in Europe forever and a day to prevent a Marxist takeover of Europe, or now a Russian takeover. So it’s fascinating in a wider historical context, not just in its immediate context. And don’t think people weren’t thinking about it, because people like Churchill were always thinking about the future. Always two, three, four steps ahead in his thinking. Now, I wanted to read you from Peter Caddick Adams’s “Sand & Steel.” And he writes this. He quotes a war reporter, Andy Rooney, and Rooney’s report says this on D-Day. “We all have days of our lives that stand out from the blur of days that have gone by. And the day I came ashore,” he’s an American journalist. “And the day I came ashore on Utah Beach four days after the initial invasion is one of mine.
As we approached the French coast, there were small clouds of smoke and sudden eruptions as German artillery blindly lobbed shells over the hills behind the beach. They were hoping to hit American troops or some of the massive amount of equipment piled up now on the shore. Row on row of dead American soldiers were laid out on the beach just above the high tide mark where it turned into weedy clumps of grass. They were covered with olive drab blankets, just their feet sticking out at the bottom, their GI boots also sticking out. I remember these boots. All the same on boys who were also different.” And they were young. They were young. The Americans and Canadians were a long, long way from home. And maybe some of the Canadians were thinking of girls they’d met at Worthing. There had been some marriages between Canadian boys and Worthing girls here.
It must’ve been frighten and dreadful and a sense of relief if you survived, and yet also knowing that this was but the beginning and not the end. Or if you prefer, the beginning of the end. There was this long, long march towards Berlin. And when as a historian you talk about this, it’s difficult. It’s difficult because it’s so recent. Many of you my age or older, maybe younger, had parents, had fathers who fought in the Second World War in whatever theatre they fought in, and maybe some of you had grandparents and family who fought over the same ground in Europe in World War I. And if I talk about the Battle of Trafalgar or if I talk about the Battle of Agincourt, I can do it without feeling emotional. It’s a long time ago. And I can talk about the strategies and the personalities and it’s fine. But when you come to the First and Second World War, and I’ve given, I hope I’ve given you just a taste tonight of some of the men, boys who fought there and wrote about it themselves, then it’s much more emotional. And those of us of my generation remember our parents and their friends talking about the war and even older family members talking about the First War, except very few of them ever did talk about the First War, but the Second World War, my father’s generation never ceased to talk about it. For them it was time of enormous comradeship.
That’s what comes over. And of course, I’ve just given you the example of the Canadians here in Worthing, some of whom got married to English girls, and of course the same with Americans. Oh, a long time ago now, I was talking on the outskirts of London to a little group of people about the Second World War, and I mentioned American troops and the reputation that they had in Britain, that they’re over here and oversexed. And one very elderly lady suddenly said, “Oh my God,” she said, “I haven’t thought of Hank in all these years.” She said, “God, I knew it was a mistake to marry Fred.” Her American boyfriend was Hank, but she married in the end an Englishman called Fred, and she regretted it for the rest of her life. It’s the emotion of all of that. And I came to, I had, any of you who teach know, you have to have a beginning and an end, and the middle sorts itself out. And I have a number of endings for this, and I hope those of you who are not British will forgive me, but I’m going to read a poem, or part of a poem, at least, by an Englishman called Lawrence Binyon.
And the poem was written in the First World War and it’s called “For the Fallen.” And it was published in the Times newspaper actually very much at the beginning of the war in 1914. And so I make some apology that it’s an English poem. And I think what he says applies to Americans, Canadians, South Africans, Zimbabweans, Australians, everybody, New Zealanders, whoever fought. And he wrote, “With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill: death august and royal sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. There is music in the midst of desolation and a glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe.” 4,000 of them on D-Day itself, 2,000 Americans on Omaha Beach fell with their faces to the foe.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; they sit no more at familiar tables at home; they have no lot in our labour of the day-time; they sleep beyond England’s foam. But where our desires are and our hopes profound, felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, to the innermost heart of their own land they are known as the stars are known to the Night; as the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, to the end, to the end, they remain.” We will remember that. Thank you very much for listening. Now, I’m sure lots of you have got lots of stories you want to share, and I’m happy for you to do that. I’m more than happy for you to do that.
Thank you, William, for that really heart-rending presentation. Oh, tragedy of war. So you’re going to answer some questions?
Yes, if I can.
[Wendy] Yes, thank you.
Q&A and Comments:
- And if people would like to make comments, I think a lot of people might want to make comments this evening. Yes, what a very clever comment.
The first person I read. “Like Israel, they had a great general called No Choice.” That’s true. There wasn’t, that’s exactly it. There was no choice. This had to be done.
“Another account on the internet is by Mervin Kirsch, who is 99. His recollection is amusing in parts. He’s heavily involved with an association of Jewish ex-serviceman. He’s appeared in the Celebration of Thanksgiving at the Royal Albert Hall in 2019 and 2020.”
Oh, and someone’s put, “Hi, Mervin Kirsch is a cousin that I recently met online. I’m in Toronto in Canada.” Crikey. You see, this is so real to many people. My father didn’t happen to be there. He was being prepared to go to India for the war against Japan. And I guess lots of Americans listening had parents and family who were already fighting in that war.
No, D-Day is simply the day, D-Day, in the same way that H-Hour. It’s just a thing that the army do. Don’t ask why, but they do.
Please can I show you the cover book? I’m not sure what you mean. I’ve got three books. One is “Sand & Steel,” one is “Normandy '44,” one is “Accounts from World War II,” that one, and the other one is “Victory in Europe.” But I will put all of these on my blog together with some others that you might also like to look at.
Q: Yes, it was planned. Who planned it?
A: Well, whole teams of people broken up into different sectors. There were lots of technical people like for the Mulberry Harbours. There’s lots of people planning for the amount of equipment that was needed as well as the overall strategic and tactical plan. And it was entirely cooperative. There was not difficulty, as Churchill said, there was no, you couldn’t get a cigarette paper, as we say, between the American and the British planners. It wasn’t done like that. It it was meticulously planned in group. Everybody had their specific job to do. That is why it’s so impressive that there was so much detailed planning. Crikey.
John, oh, it’s John. John Marches, sorry. “I unloaded ambulance trends with German wounded a week after D-Day. Their arrogance was unbelievable. This was a mere phase in the war. A close friend still alive directed the guns on HMS Belfast.” Wow, thank you, John, for that. HMS Belfast is now a museum anchored in the middle of London. And if any of you are in London and you’re not British and you don’t know where it is, it’s easy to find. If you find the River Thames you’ll find HMS Belfast.
Shortly, Churchill wanted to go on D-Day and he wasn’t allowed to. He had to go afterwards. And he asked the king permission to go and the king said, “Well, they won’t let me go, so we certainly aren’t letting you go.” When Churchill eventually went, and he was on a British warship, and he was taken quite close to the Normandy coast, and he said to the captain, “Where are the nearest Germans?” And the captain said, “Well sir, they’re down, they’re about,” whatever it was, three miles to the west of us. So Churchill said, “Well, sail there.” And he said, “But sir, I can’t put you in danger.” He said, “I’m ordering you, sail there.” So the captain had nothing. He couldn’t refuse. And he got there and he’s well offshore. And Churchill said, “Will your guns reach the Germans?” And the captain said, “Well, I would have to get a bit closer.” “Well, then get closer, said Churchill, "and open fire.” And he said, “No, I really can’t do that, sir,” and didn’t. But Churchill was game to have a go.
Yes, there’s all sorts of problems that somebody said about Dieppe. There was a, Dieppe is a whole story to itself. It was a botched deal from the beginning.
Q: Why was Montgomery a problem?
A: Because he was such a pain in the backside. Eisenhower really had it up to there with him. Eisenhower said he was a great commander to serve under, that he was a good comrade to serve equal to, but he was an absolute pain to command. And when Eisenhower before D-Day had a meeting with the king, the king said to him, “How do you get on with General Eisenhower?” And he said, “Well, he keeps lecturing me and telling me what to do.” “Oh,” said the king. “I thought I was the only one he spoke to like…”
There’s another story about Montgomery. Montgomery was, in his personal life, was a very… What shall I say? Montgomery had issues in his personal life. Let me tell you a story which some of you who know me have heard me say before. Montgomery’s dead so it’s not libellous, and it happens to be true. When I was at Oxford, a friend of mine had been head boy at Harrow. Now, Churchill had gone to Harrow, Montgomery hadn’t, but Montgomery haunted Harrow after the war. And my friend had, as head boy, had had to take him round Harrow. When he was at, when we were at Oxford, he suddenly got an invitation to spend a weekend with Montgomery. And another Harrovian said to him, “But you mustn’t go because Montgomery is notorious.” And my friend said, “Well, I can’t turn down an invitation by General Field Marshal Lord Montgomery. How can I?” So he was advised to lock his bedroom door firmly. When he came back, we all asked him, we said, “Well, how did you get on?” He said, “It was fine.” And somebody said, “Well, did you lock your bedroom door, Peter?” And he said, “Yes, I did.” And he said, “Yeah, you’re right. He tried the door in the middle of the night.” That’s why Montgomery was difficult. Churchill never got on with Montgomery. But the thing is, both Eisenhower and Churchill realise that Montgomery as a general was outstanding. And of course, that sort of story that I told you, which is absolutely true, it was not well known at the time, of course. And many of the troops that fought with Montgomery in North Africa, the British troops worshipped the ground he walked on. But he was such a arrogant man, and Churchill could never stand arrogance, and I don’t think Eisenhower could at all, either.
Oh, somebody’s put some books up. “Normandy” by James Holland. That’s the one I’ve been talking about, which is excellent. And you’ve put “Guns at Last Light” by Rick Atkinson. That’s also excellent.
Q: Was the Soviet army able to defeat Germany without the Normandy landings?
A: Good question. My answer, yes. You may disagree. No one can be sure. But the Russians were prepared to, well, so was Hitler. The Russians were prepared to sacrifice large numbers of their population. Their population was larger than the Germans. They would, in the end, even at huge loss of life, Stalin would’ve pushed on to the very end, I believe. But you don’t have to agree with me.
Oh, what a lovely story from Alice. “Montgomery used to come to my school, St. Paul’s.” Well, let me, this is St. Paul’s girls school in Britain. Let me say all of you girls were quite safe from Montgomery. It was only boys’ schools that were in danger. “Montgomery used to come to my school in the 1950s.” So tell us about it. “And had a tendency to make non-PC remarks about Germans. He annoyed the high mistress by giving us a holiday one year.”
“He did the same at the boys school,” says someone. Yes, as I said, there was 500,000 tonnes of equipment. The equipment is the problem of how you got it there, particularly the tanks across the English channel.
Yes, there was a play which, about the weather. Am I right? That was on British television, therefore probably on American, as well.
“I heard an American veteran speak at the Holocaust Museum. He said he was 18 when they were loaded onto the boats, and he did, as the other, and the other soldiers did not expect to live. He was one of the few American soldiers who survived.” That would’ve been Omaha.
I know, oh, “Dieppe is known as Mountbatten’s Folly here in Canada.” Oh, don’t start me on Mountbatten. I told you… Mountbatten was also notorious with young men. Two stories which happened to be true. One, I had two men who were friends who came to talks of mine about Second World War and both had served in the Second World War as young men in the navy, and one of them had served on the ship which was commanded by Montgomery. And when he got on board, he was very young, very junior officer. He asked, “Is there anything,” he asked the senior officer, not Montgomery, was there anything that he should know about this ship? “Yes, young man. Do not remain on the breach with his Lordship alone after dark.”
And I told this story in another group and a lady there said, “Oh, you’re quite wrong, Mr. Tyler. Now, you’re quite wrong. Montgomery did not swing,” sorry, “Mountbatten did not swing both ways.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry, but it’s well documented.” She said, “Oh, no, no, no, you’re quite wrong. I know he didn’t.” So I said, “Well, how do you know?” She, “Well, because I had an affair with him in Malta.” So you get wonderful stories. Well, the intelligence, they failed to interpret a lot of intelligence. They had a great deal come over, particularly from a German who was, I’m sorry, a Turk who was a spy for Germany in Turkey. And Churchill had been manoeuvring with Turkey in terms of bringing them further into the war, and this spy overheard a conversation and reported it back to Berlin is one example. And they took no notice.
No, the Dieppe attack, if you take what it’s normally called, the Dieppe raid, then you understand what they were trying to do. This was the punch to show the Germans that we could do it if we wanted to. We showed them the opposite.
No, carpet bombing of Germany was not an option to D-Day for two reasons. One, military people will always tell you, you have to occupy the ground. You can’t just destroy it. You’ve got to occupy it. Secondly, that would’ve allowed Stalin to advance across Germany and into France. No, carpet bombing would not have worked.
The Mulberry Harbours were a brilliant concept. Yeah, they were indeed. There’s a lovely story, which I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it’s said they were called Mulberry because Churchill had a servant of the Duke of Marlborough’s who could never pronounce the word Marlborough and always said Mulberry, and so Churchill used it. Now, whether that’s true or not, I really don’t know. There are too many stories about Churchill which are untrue. I suspect that one is.
“You didn’t mention the E-boat attack at Slapton.” No, I didn’t. And I could’ve done, but I didn’t want to go into too much detail, to be honest, about Slapton tonight, because I thought it… Funnily enough, I wrote it, and then I threw away lots of the papers that I’d written because I thought it wasn’t putting enough emphasis upon D-Day. So I apologise for that. Yes. Yeah.
Montgomery was not an… Montgomery was a problem to senior officers. In other words, to Eisenhower. He always, he’s one of these people who always knows better than you. And he was very prickly and very difficult. But then poor old Eisenhower had real problems because he had to cope with De Gaulle, as well. And remember that in the advance on Paris, which was of course coordinated by Eisenhower as commander in chief, the whole plan, De Gaulle overruled him and sent the French forces, the free French forces into Paris without Eisenhower’s permission so that he could claim that France had liberated itself. And the interesting thing about that is De Gaulle selected the road into Paris, and the road into Paris he selected was the road Napoleon taken in his 100 days leading up to Waterloo when he landed in the south of France, he advanced to Paris, and he advanced on this particular road, and that’s the road that De Gaulle took. The more you read about it, the more you feel sympathy with Eisenhower. Thank God he had a lady friend. That’s another story for another day.
Q: Well, was it a surprise if the Germans were bombing them?
A: Well, yes, because by that time, the Germans couldn’t do much. They had their forces, a lot of their forces were at Calleigh. Hitler refused to move them. Rommel was actually in Berlin for his wife’s birthday. They were in chaos, I’m afraid. Well, I’m not afraid, but they were in chaos.
“My father was in the American troops on Omaha. He almost drowned when he stepped into a shell hole, but luckily he was pulled to safety by a fellow soldier. He rarely spoke of that day.” Well, the problem was if you did fall like that, your heavy equipment that you’re carrying would drag you down, and so you physically couldn’t get out of the problems you were in. So he was very lucky that somebody had the sense to pull him out. One of the problems was you were told just to press on. So I’m pressing on with a friend. I’m hit and I fall. Maybe I’m not dead. Maybe I’m just seriously wounded. But the friend has to go on and leave me behind. That was what they were trained to do. So your father was very lucky that he was pulled out and didn’t drown.
Yes. Yes, when you were, I was speaking relative terms, Omaha was far worse than Juno, Gold, and so on, but of course there were lots of people killed. I mean, one death is too many. That was what was worrying Churchill all throughout this.
The one with the spitfire on the cover, the book. Oh yes, it’s called “Victory in Europe” And it’s written by Karen Farrington. I promise I will put them all on my blog, which is www dot, one word, talk, T-A-L-K, talkhistorian.com. If you put talkhistorian.com, it should come up, and I’ll type them up tomorrow morning. Yes, there are books about the German side. There’s lots of books about German soldiers. I’ve got one in a pile over there. I’ll try and put that one on for you.
If D-Day had failed, we probably wouldn’t be here to discuss it. Well, it’s difficult to know what would’ve happened had it failed. It would’ve taken a lot for a second attempt, and I doubt whether they would’ve gone for northern fronts. They might have gone for southern France. They might have died, because in six weeks after this, there’s a successful landing in southern France. They could’ve redeployed troops. But the problem is the fall in morale. After Dunkirk one of the store at one of the, what was that at the time suppressed was that morale sank amongst the British soldiers that were returning from Dunkirk. They were a defeated army and it took a great deal to bring morale back up again. So morale would’ve taken a hell of a lock. It wouldn’t have taken America out of the war for one moment, I don’t think. And there would’ve been another attempt, but it would’ve prolonged the war. And in prolonging the war, it would’ve meant that Stalin had an opportunity to occupy more of Europe. We know what happened in Germany. He occupies East Germany and East Germany remains Marxist right the way through to the last decade of the 20th century. I think probably I should come to an end, Wendy.
William, thank you very, very much. Excellent.
I’m losing my voice.
Another excellent presentation. Thank you very much.
You’re welcome. And if people haven’t had their questions answered, email me and I will get round to replying.
Thanks, William. Oh, there were over 2,000 participants today, so I would not suggest-
If I have 2,000, I can’t reply. And somebody said, would I ring them? And I really can’t take on board ringing people. But I can-
To do what?
I can’t ring, somebody asked me to ring them, and I can’t telephone people, and it would, I’m sorry. I just don’t have the time. I’m actually doing another three lectures around this week. So I will try and answer people, and some people have sent lovely comments, but more than that, it’s like the, it’s like the material I was sent. If you send anything, even if I don’t reply, it means a great deal to me, and I don’t destroy any of that. I file it all the way for future use.
Thank you very much. And also, as we develop our website, hopefully we’ll be able to use the website as a resource and also to answer some questions. But I’m not promising anything, because as I said, this started off as a family with 20 participants and it’s grown into this global family. But, you know-
It’s fantastic.
Doing our best.
All due to you. It’s fantastic, Wendy.
Oh, well, no, no, it’s our team.
It’s a wonderful thing to be part of.
Yeah, it’s great. Thank you very, very much. So just enjoy the rest of your evening, and to everybody else, thanks so much. We do our best to accommodate and we don’t always succeed, so I’m apologising in advance. So that’s it. Thanks, William. Night-night, everybody.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
Take care, thanks. Bye.
Thank you.