Photography, Research & Writting:
Danis & Lefteris Papagiannoulis
Edited by Harrys Pourouzidis
It had been a dream for years. And with the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings constantly turning in our minds, the desire to visit the five landing beaches and the nearby towns became impossible to ignore. This article is a historical reflection on the preparation, organisation, enormous cost, and equally enormous gain for humanity of the famous D-Day of 1944.
Behind the human cover of the last two guys, I reached the beach.
I threw myself flat and my lips touched the earth of France. I had no desire to kiss it"
In May 1944, the Western Allies were finally ready to strike the greatest blow of the war: the long-delayed landing in northern France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the operation, which eventually brought together the coordinated efforts of twelve nations.
After much discussion, it was decided that the landings would take place on the wide, sloping beaches of Normandy. There, the Allies would have the element of surprise. The German High Command expected the attack to come in the Pas-de-Calais area, north of the River Seine, where the English Channel is at its narrowest. It was there that Adolf Hitler had placed most of his panzer divisions, having been led to believe by Allied double agents, posing as German sympathisers, that the invasion would take place at Pas-de-Calais.
Surprise was an essential part of the Allied invasion plan. Had the Germans known where and when the Allies were coming, they could have driven them back into the sea with the 55 divisions they had stationed in France. The invading force would have been attacking at a manpower disadvantage of ten to one.
Arromanches-les-Bains
The challenges of a successful landing were immense. The English Channel was notorious for rough seas and unpredictable weather, and the enemy had spent months building the Atlantic Wall, a 2,400-mile line of defences. This defensive barrier included 6.5 million mines, thousands of concrete obstacles, gun emplacements containing both heavy and light mobile artillery, anti-tank ditches, and other formidable obstacles on the beaches. All of these defences overlooked the landing zones.
At the Tehran Conference in August 1943, the Allied leaders scheduled the landing, Operation Overlord, for no later than 1 May 1944. In the meantime, preparations for the attack continued without pause. Trucks, tanks, and tens of thousands of soldiers poured into England.
“We were preparing for one of the greatest adventures of our lives. We could hardly wait,” said one American sergeant.
Meanwhile, American and British air forces based in England carried out a massive bombing campaign targeting railway bridges and roads in northern France, in order to prevent the Germans from bringing in reserves to stop the invasion.
After General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Commander, he and General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery modified the plan, expanding both the size of the landing area and the number of divisions that would take part.
Bayeux
Special mention must be made of one of the key factors behind the success of the landing: the Mulberry harbours.
The Mulberry harbours were designed after the failed amphibious raid on the French port of Dieppe in August 1942. The German defence of the coast of western Europe had been planned strategically, with extremely strong fortifications around ports and harbour facilities. Because of the strength of those defences, the Allies had to find another way to move huge quantities of supplies onto the beaches during the first stages of an invasion.
The British solution was to bring their own harbour with them.
This idea had the support of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who, in May 1942, wrote the following note:
“Piers for use on beaches: They must float up and down with the tide. The anchor problem must be mastered… Let me have the best solution worked out. Don’t argue the matter. The difficulties will argue for themselves.”
Dieppe
The two artificial harbours designed and built by the British would allow supply ships to unload off the coast of Normandy immediately after the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944.
One harbour, known as Mulberry A, was built off Saint-Laurent on Omaha Beach, in the American sector. The other, Mulberry B, was built from Arromanches to Gold Beach, in the British sector. Once fully operational, each harbour had the capacity to move 7,000 tonnes of vehicles and supplies per day from ships to shore.
They were designed and constructed as follows. Each Mulberry harbour consisted of about 16 kilometres of flexible steel roadways, code-named “Whales,” which floated on steel and concrete pontoons known as “Beetles.” Each pontoon could carry 56 tonnes of bridging sections, plus the 25-tonne weight of a tank. The roadways ended in large pierheads facing out to sea. Each pierhead stood on four legs and could be raised or lowered with the tide by electric winches. Twenty-three pierheads were planned, eight of which handled spare parts and were known as “Spuds.”
Omaha Beach
These structures had to be protected from the frequent rough seas of the English Channel by lines of huge sunken concrete caissons known as “Phoenixes”. A total of 146 such caissons, each 60 metres long, 18 metres high, and 15 metres wide, formed approximately 10 kilometres of breakwater. They were watertight floating chambers, open at the bottom and fitted with air valves so that they could be lowered to the seabed in a controlled way. About two million tonnes of steel and concrete were used in their construction.
In addition, 70 obsolete merchant ships, known as blockships, were ballasted and filled with explosives. These vessels made the crossing under their own steam and were then sunk in five locations, including the two Mulberry harbours. They were known as “Gooseberries.”
Finally, as the outermost line of defence against rough seas, floating breakwaters known as “Bombardons” were positioned offshore. These consisted of enormous cross-shaped metal structures, ballasted and securely anchored in place. It is estimated that their construction required 252,000 cubic metres of concrete, 31,000 tonnes of steel, and 1.4 million square metres of steel sheeting.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel
With this plan in place, the Allied leaders set 5 June 1944 as the invasion’s D-Day. On the morning of 4 June, however, meteorologists forecast bad weather over the Channel, forcing Eisenhower to postpone the attack for 24 hours. The delay caused anxiety and nervousness among the soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
When the weather teams predicted a short break of clearer conditions over the Channel on 6 June, Eisenhower made the decision to launch the operation. It was one of the hardest decisions of the war.
Just after midnight on 6 June, Allied airborne troops began dropping behind enemy lines. Their task was to blow up bridges, sabotage railway lines, and take other measures to prevent the enemy from rushing reinforcements to the invasion beaches.
Hours later, the largest amphibious landing force ever assembled began moving toward the coast, through waters still rough from the bad weather.
Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer
The planners had divided the landing zone into five separate beaches. The Americans landed on Utah and Omaha. The British and Canadians landed on Gold, Juno, and Sword.
The fiercest fighting took place on Omaha Beach, where the enemy was positioned on steep cliffs and bluffs with a clear view across the flat shoreline. Troops jumped from their landing craft but were pinned down for hours by machine-gun fire, which turned the beach into a vast field of the dead. The sea ran red with blood.
“If you stay in the sea or on the beach, you will die. You have to try to reach the base of the cliffs where the Germans have organised their defences,” said Lieutenant Colonel Bill Friedman.
By noon, the Americans had broken through the cliffs and taken Omaha Beach, but at a terrible cost: more than 3,000 were killed, wounded, or missing from the approximately 34,000 who came ashore there that day — a casualty rate of more than nine percent.
Caen & Fecamp
Commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade, led by Brigadier Lord Lovat, landed on Queen Red Beach, in the Sword sector, on 6 June 1944.
Troops of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade landed on Nan White Beach, in the Juno sector, at Bernières-sur-Mer, shortly before noon on 6 June 1944.
Commandos of Headquarters, 4th Special Service Brigade, came ashore from landing craft on Nan Red Beach, in the Juno sector, at Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer, on 6 June 1944.
By nightfall, around 160,000 Allied troops were on French soil.
Ruen & Le Havre
The Normandy landings were one of the most important turning points in twentieth-century history. A vast army had entered Nazi-occupied Europe. At almost the same time, that same month, Germany faced a massive Soviet offensive from the east, one that would reach the gates of Berlin the following April.
One way to understand the importance of D-Day is to consider what might have happened had it failed — or what might have happened if the Allied invasion fleet had sailed into the great storm of 5 June, or even in mid-June, as some had suggested.
Another landing would not have been possible for at least a year. That would have given Hitler time to strengthen the Atlantic Wall, to bombard England with the newly developed V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets, to continue developing jet aircraft and other so-called “wonder weapons,” and to complete his campaign of murder against those he considered ethnically and sexually undesirable.
In such a case, both the post-war map and the history of Europe would have looked entirely different.
Μουσείο Μνήμης της Μάχης της Νορμανδίας
The American Cemetery, located east of Saint-Laurent directly above Omaha Beach, contains the graves of 9,387 American soldiers, most of whom were killed during the landings and the operations that followed. On the walls of the Memorial are inscribed the names of another 1,557 soldiers listed as missing in action. Even today, the exact number of those killed on Omaha Beach remains unclear.
At Ranville Cemetery, near Pegasus Bridge, lie 2,235 British and Commonwealth soldiers, 97 of whom remain unidentified. There are also 330 German graves, along with a small number belonging to soldiers of other nationalities.
At the Cimetière Militaire Allemand de La Cambe lie the graves of 21,222 soldiers, and every grave stands as a plea for peace. Many of these soldiers were still very young — only 18, 19, or 20 years old.
Αμερικανικό & Γερμανικό Κοιμητήριο
The latest estimates state that, during the Battle of Normandy, more than 425,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded, or went missing. This figure includes around 210,000 Allied casualties, with nearly 37,000 dead among the ground forces and another 16,000 deaths among Allied air forces. German losses are estimated at around 200,000 killed or wounded. A further 200,000 were captured during the campaign.
French civilian losses during the preparatory bombings for Operation Overlord are even harder to calculate accurately. It is estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 civilians were killed, while 19,000 were wounded.
A great deal of blood was shed in Normandy, most of it the blood of young people. Neither the nations of the world nor their leaders should ever forget that.
Etretat
