Brian Williams - The Normandy Beaches

I found myself trying to take cover behind one of those fencepost type obstacles. I must have looked like an ostrich hiding. But believe me, at the time it looked like a wall. I was seasick and exhausted and scared to death.

Private John MacPhee landed on Omaha Beach with the US Armys 1st Infantry Division.

E-book published in 2012 by Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc., in
association with Arcturus Publishing Limited, 26/27 Bickels
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This edition first published in 2010 by Arcturus Publishing
Distributed by Black Rabbit Books
P.O. Box 3263
Mankato
Minnesota MN 56002

Copyright 2010 Arcturus Publishing Limited

The right of Brian Williams to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Series concept: Alex Woolf
Editors: Sean Connolly and Alex Woolf
Designer: Phipps Design
Picture research: Alex Woolf

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, Brian, 1943
The Normandy beaches / Brian Williams.
p. cm. -- (A place in history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61535-600-3 (e-book)
1. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--France--Normandy-
Juvenile literature. I. Title.
D756.5.N6W54 2011
940.54'21421--dc22

2010014194

Picture credits:
Archives Normandie 19391945: 28.
Arcturus: 10 (Stefan Chabluk), 33 (TMS), 38 (TMS).
Corbis: 9 (Bettmann), 15 (Jacques Langevin/Sygma), 19 (Bettmann),
20 (Bettmann), 29 (Bettmann), 39 (Hulton Deutsch Collection), 40
(Bettmann), 41 (Bettmann), 4243 (Peter Turnley).
Getty Images: cover background (Time & Life Pictures), cover
foreground (Time & Life Pictures), 67 (US Army/Time & Life Pictures),
8 (Keystone/Hulton Archive), 11 (LAPI/Roger Viollet), 12 (Galerie
Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive), 14 (Keystone/Hulton Archive), 18 (AFP),
22 (Apic/Hulton Archive), 23 (Popperfoto), 24 (Popperfoto), 26
(Popperfoto), 27 (Frank Scherschel/Time & Life Pictures), 31 (Paul
Popper/Popperfoto), 32 (Popperfoto), 34 (Paul Popper/Popperfoto), 35
(Frank Scherschel/Time & Life Pictures), 36 (Roger Viollet), 37
(Popperfoto).
Shutterstock: 25 (Anyka).
TopFoto: 16 (The Granger Collection).
US Army: 13.
US Department of Defense: 21 (Weintraub), 30.
US National Archives: 17 (Army Signal Corps Collection).

Cover pictures:
Foreground: Members of an American landing party help their
comrades ashore from a life raft after their landing craft was sunk by
enemy action on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Background: US troops land with supplies and equipment on the
Normandy beaches the day after D-Day.

Every attempt has been made to clear copyright. Should there be any
inadvertent omission, please apply to the copyright holder for rectification.

SL001441US Supplier 03 Date 0510

Normandy is a funny place. You never get over it. You hear it, feel it When I went to the cemetery at Bayeux [40 years later] my mind went straight back to 1944. I could smell it then. I could see it all so clearly I could suddenly smell the tanks burning.

Jack Woods, British Army Churchill tank crewman, who was 20 years old in 1944.

As D-Day approached, every port in southern England was crowded with ships, vehicles, and soldiers. These Americans are loading LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) at Brixham in Devon.

O n June 5, 1944, a vast army waited in southern England. Its mission: to invade and liberate Nazi-occupied France. The operations code name was Overlord.

For weeks, every road in southern England had been jammed with trucks, every train packed with troops and tanks. A total of 300,000 Allied soldiers waited for the invasion to begin, but with the English Channel lashed by storms, D-Daythe date set for the invasionwas postponed. The soldiers waited, joking to hide how nervous they felt, cleaning weapons, writing letters home. Most were scared.

They would have to cross 80 miles (130 kilometers) of sea, to land on five beaches in Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. Guarding those beaches was the German army, the most professionally skillful army of all time according to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allies supreme commander. The general anxiously waited for the weather to break. At 3:30 our little camp was shaking and shuddering under a wind of almost hurricane proportions, Eisenhower wrote. But then came good news: RAF Group-Captain James Stagg forecast a period of relatively good weather probably 36 hours by the following morning (June 6). Eisenhower made his decision: OK. Lets go. On D- Day, the so-called Longest Day, the battles on the Normandy beaches would change the course of history.

W orld War II began in September 1939 when Adolf Hitlers Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Germany and its allies were known as the Axis powers. The countries that opposed them (including Britain, France and, later, the United States and the Soviet Union) were known as the Allies. By 1941 German forces had occupied most of Europe, bombed Britain, and invaded the Soviet Union.

In December 1941 Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, prompting the United States to declare war on Japan. Germany and Japan then joined forces to fight the Allies. The US entry into the war soon tipped the balance in the Allies favor. American factories began to produce guns, tanks, ships, and planes in staggering quantities. By 1942 the Allies were winning in the Pacific and in North Africa. However, German armies still occupied most of Western Europe, and in Eastern Europe German and Soviet armies were locked in huge tank and air battles.

FACT FILE

The Dieppe raid

In August 1942 the Allies learned a costly lesson when 6,000 of their troops, with tanks, raided the French port of Dieppe. It was a disaster. About 1,000 soldiers, mostly Canadians, were killed, and 2,000 were taken prisoner. The Dieppe raid showed that a seaborne invasion of occupied France would not succeed without massive force, careful planningand luck.

German soldiers inspect a captured Canadian Churchill tank, following the failed attack on Dieppe in August 1942. In the Dieppe raid the Allies suffered heavy losses, and learned lessons.

The big three Allied war leaders (left to right: Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) meet at Tehran in Iran between November 28 and December 1, 1943. The Allies agreed plans for the invasion of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The Soviet people were suffering terribly. Their government urged the United States and Britain to open a second front in Western Europe to relieve some of the pressure on the Soviet army. The Americans were already fighting fierce battles in the Pacific against the Japanese, but agreed that the war in Europe must be won first. In early 1943 the Allies decided to invade Western Europe, forcing the Germans to fight on two fronts.