Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Britain At War Magazine 05/2014

D-DAY, as is well-known, represented one of the largest military enterprises ever undertaken. So, to mark its seventieth anniversary we decided to investigate some of the reminders of that momentous summer when Britain and her allies stormed the Normandy coast, sending a clear message to the Third Reich that its days were numbered. Our only proviso was that each of the sites or objects had to be located in the United Kingdom or its waters. Firstly, we looked at the remaining evidence of the enormous construction and training programmes which took place in preparation for D-Day. In Scotland we discovered a mock section of Hitler's Atlantic Wall which had been repeatedly assailed by troops that would have to breach the Normandy defences. We found that there were artificial landing craft made of concrete in North Devon from which the troops practised those first few, frightening moments of landing on the enemy's shore. Actual relics from the invasion were scarce, yet there are still ships to be seen that sailed across the Channel in June 1944. These include an infantry landing craft, a lightship that helped guide the assault forces and even a Landing Barge Kitchen which kept the men fed.

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