D-Day remembered 75 years later

It was June 6, 1944: D-Day.

Eisenhower's message, contained in his Order of the Day, was aimed at the vast army of thousands of Allied personnel who were about to undertake the largest amphibious assault ever undertaken, the aim of which was to liberate western Europe from occupying Nazi forces.

"The tide has turned," Eisenhower declared. "The free men of the world are marching together to victory. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory."

The scale of the invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, remains staggering.

In the words of author Antony Beevor in his bestselling account, D-Day: "In one night and day, 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armoured bulldozers, were transported across sixty to a hundred miles of open water and landed on a hostile shore against intense opposition. They were either carried by or supported on," Beevor adds, "5,333 ships and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes."

A stupendous amount of planning had gone into the operation. Absolutely nothing had been left to chance.

Remarkable efforts had been made to deceive Hitler as to the precise location of the invasion. The Allies needed him to think that the target was Pas de Calais rather than 120 miles away in Normandy, so that he would keep half a million of his troops in Pas de Calais.

Fortitude North, one part of the deception operation, Plan Fortitude, revolved around a fake 'Fourth British Army' based in Scotland that was preparing to invade Norway, so as to keep German divisions tied up in that country.

The Allies desperately needed Overlord to succeed. As Max Hastings writes in All Hell Let Loose, his account of the Second World War - if it had failed, civilian morale would have plummeted on both sides of the Atlantic, senior commanders would have had to be replaced, and the western Allies' prestige would have suffered grievously.

The invasion began late before dawn on June 6, when US and British airborne divisions dropped into occupied Normandy to secure the flanks of the assault zone.

A fierce naval bombardment softened up German coastal defences, prior to thousands of soldiers being taken in on landing craft and storming five beaches, codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah. British and Canadian forces took the first three, US forces the other two.

Figures vary as to the number of Allied dead on D-Day, but one recent statistic, quoted by historian Andrew Roberts, says 4,572 Allied soldiers were killed that day, including 2,500 American, 1,641 British, 359 Canadian.

“Every Scottish Regiment was represented in the D-Day Operation Overlord in some shape or form," comments Legion Scotland - the Royal British Legion Scotland. "Some of the Battalions taking heavy losses in the east, wiping out full battalions, with their numbers then being passed on to fellow battalions to hold on to their number - i.e. 2nd battalion being wiped out, the 10th battalion back home became the 2/10th battalion."

The 15th Infantry Division on D-Day consisted of infantry brigades made up of Scottish regiments, including battalions from the Royal Scots, King's Own Scottish Borderers, the Argyll and Sutherlands, Royal Scots Fusiliers, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), Glasgow Highlanders, Seaforth Highlanders, Scots Guards and the Coldstream Guards.

A vivid first-hand account was given in 1984 by broadcaster Sir Huw Wheldon, who had become Managing Director of BBC TV.

In 1944 he was a major with the Royal Ulster Rifles, and on June 6 he landed in a glider in a Normandy field, part of the 10,000-strong British 6th airborne division.

Standing in the same field 40 years later for a BBC documentary, Destination D-Day, Wheldon told the camera: "On our right, coming off the beaches, were British and Canadians, for about 25 miles. Beyond them, Americans for another 25 miles, and beyond them, American airborne divisions, doing the same job as we were doing, on the right flank. So we constituted the left of the bridgehead.

"I don't really remember my feelings from that day. It was a long time ago. There was, no doubt, a feeling of relief that you always have, when you get down on dry ground and have the smell of grass and the feel of solid earth under your feet.

" I think I remember a feeling of elation. We had come over in waves during the day, Some of our people had started very early, in the small hours before the seaborne troops came in, and the rest of us came over the day in these waves, and accordingly, by the time we came, we were able to see the ships standing off the coast.

"We were able to see the great capital ships blazing and blasting into inland targets. We were able to see people on the beaches. And there were aircraft all over the place. A great comfort they were, too - 14,000 sorties were flown during that 24 hours."

He added: "What I am absolutely certain I remember, and I'm in no doubt about, was that there was a very, very definite sense of everything going according to plan."

By the end of the day, the Allied forces had established a bridgehead, but the hard work was only just beginning.

"The importance of D-Day often overshadows the overall significance of the entire Normandy campaign," says the Imperial War Museum. "Establishing a bridgehead was critical, but it was just the first step. In the three months after D-Day, the Allies launched a series of additional offensives to try and advance further inland. These operations varied in success and the Allies faced strong and determined German resistance.

"The bocage - a peculiarity of the Normandy landscape characterised by sunken lanes bordered by high, thick hedgerows - was difficult to penetrate and placed the advantage with the German defenders. Yet the bloody and protracted Battle of Normandy was a decisive victory for the Allies and paved the way for the liberation of much of north-west Europe.

Writes Beevor: "British, Canadian and American armies all shared one belief. To reduce their own losses, they would always rely on a massive artillery bombardment, and on several occasions heavy aerial bombing. The battle for Normandy led to the deaths of 35,000 French civilians and the serious wounding of probably 100,000 more.

"... All one can say, as French historians have been the first to recognize, is that the martyrdom of Normandy at least spared the rest of France from similar destruction."

Many events are being held in Normandy and this country to commemorate the 75th anniversary of that momentous day.

THE events of D-Day have been recalled in countless books, films and TV dramas.

* Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan, recreated, to gruelling and bloody effect in its opening sequence, the US landing on Omaha beach.

* The TV mini-series Band of Brothers follows Easy Company, 506th regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, as it parachutes into Normandy on June 6. The series follows the company until the end of the war, in 1945.

* The Longest Day (1962) is a classic D-Day film, shot in at least a couple of the real locations used on D-Day.

* More recently, Brian Cox starred in Churchill (2016), in the days before the invasion of Normandy.

New books on the subject include Sand & Steel, by Peter Caddick-Adams; Normandy '44, by James Holland; and D-Day, The British Beach Landings, by John Sadler.

A LIVING HISTORY re-enactor will take centre-stage at Fort George, a Historic Environment Scotland (HES) property near Ardersier, Inverness, on Wednesday and Thursday (11.15am-4pm each day) to explain the role it played in the preparations for the D-Day.

Fort George and the Moray Firth were used as landing training for the top-secret D-Day preparations. Battalions and regiments were stationed there in rotation before moving to other training locations around Scotland (including Loch Fyne) and the UK.

General Montgomery ('Monty') visited on February 5, 1944, to watch the preparations. A parade was held at or near Fort George with over 3000 troops.

The HES learning resource says: “From 1943 Fort George played a significant role in rehearsals for the D-Day landings that took place in the Moray Firth. Concrete replicas of the German gun emplacements of the Atlantic Wall were constructed and destroyed; landing craft were tested on the beaches between Fort George and Nairn.”

ONE of the most famous images of D-Day concerns piper Bill Millin, who played his pipes as he followed Brigadier Lord Lovat, Commander 1st Commando Brigade, onto Sword beach. Millin was Lovat's personal piper. "Give us a tune, piper," Lovat said.

Writing in our sister paper, the Evening Times, 10 years after D-Day, Millin said: "I blew up my pipes and played [the Commandos] ashore to Highland Laddie’ amid bursting mortar shells. Lord Lovat then ordered me to march up and down the beach playing The Road to the Isles while the rest of the brigade assembled in bombed-out houses just off the beach. I don’t think anyone was paying particular attention to my efforts!”

As was the custom, Millin wore nothing under his kilt. He once told author Peter Caddick-Adams that the coldness of the water played havoc with his anatomy, while his kilt floated around him 'like a tartan jellyfish'.

IN order to bring essential supplies into Normandy after the invasion, two colossal Mulberry harbours were constructed in pieces in England and towed to Normandy, where they were put together. "IKEA on an epic scale ... one of the great Allied successes of D-Day," writes author John Sadler. The remains of the artificial port can still be seen off Arromanches today.