Alexander McKee - Caen: Anvil of Victory

TheArmadasailsAlerteinFrancetheAirborneLandings: nightof 5/6 June

D.D.TanksonD-Day: JunoandSwordBeaches

TheBritishDashforCaenandtheGermanCounter-AttacktotheCoast: 6June

TheGermanTwo-PanzerDivisionCounter-Offensive: 7,8June

TheGermanThree-PanzerDivisionCounter-OffensiveandtheBritishDoubleEnvelopmentofCaen,9to12June

TheRightHookroundCaen: theTwinTank-BattlesofVillers-BocageandCaumont: 10to18June.

DeathontheBeachesMineClearancetheSnipertheBayeuxTapestrytheNormansthePriesttheConventsatCaenandPontlAbbe;8to18June

TheBattleoftheBuild-uptheV. IBombardmentBeginstheFhrerconfersMontgomeryordersanewattackonCaenbuttheGaleintervenestheOysterMinesDeathofaRegiment: 13to24June

PreludetoEpsom: theBattleofFontenay: 25June

EpsomtheDrivetotheOdonandHill112: 26and 27 June

EpsomThePanzerDivisionsGatherRoundtheCorridor : 28Juneto2July

TheBitterCanadianBattleforCarpiquet: June/July

TheBombingandBattleofCaen: 7 to9July

TheTakingandRe-takingofHill112: 10Julyto1August

GoodwoodthePlanPreparationsRommelwoundedontheEve4,000Bombers: 16to18July

Goodwood: 18and19July

TheLastDayofGoodwoodthePlotof20JulytheCanadiansattackVerriresRidgetheFrontstabilisedagaintheLandingoftheLastDivisions: 20Julyto1August

TheBreak-outfromCaumontBegins: 30 Julyto4August

TheBattleforMontPinconBattleoftheOrneBridgehead:5to12August

TheBattlesfortheFalaiseRoad: Totalize (DowntheCorridor) andTractable (TheMadCharge): 7to15August

TheBattleoftheFalaiseGapPursuittotheSeine: 15to31August

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The thin grey line on the horizon was France. As it came closer it grew trees, houses, church spires, sand dunes; and billowing clouds of smoke, alive with spurting debris. Not all saw it. Corporal Raymond Arthur Hill, having eaten for breakfast one tin of self-heating soup, was boxed down inside his Sherman tank beside the gun, and could see nothing. I just heard shell-fire , rockets, and so on, and presumed wed arrived. Most of the men had had no breakfast, nor did they want it. They wanted only to get ashore. Most of yesterdays half-digested meals were spewed, still reeking, on the steel-plated decks of the landing craft, and sloshed to and fro in the heads with each sickening lurch and heave of the ugly, clumsy vessels, as they punched through half-gale seas towards the shore. It wasnt too bad for us sailors, said Ronald McKinlay of the R.N. Commandos, but I think one of the main reasons why Normandy was a great success was that the soldiers would much rather have fought thousands of Germans than go back into those boats and be sea-sick again. Serjeant Leo Gariepy, of the Canadian 6th Armoured Regiment, skipper of a 30-ton tank temporarily turned into a boat by means of a canvas hull supported by frail struts, found himself wallowing in a near-sinking condition; and, to make matters worse, he was not allowed to invade France until 0730 hours, in ninety minutes time, if his D.D. tank stayed afloat that long. I cautioned my crew of the situation, but three of them were so sea-sick they did not care any more.

By that time, the airborne troops would have been fighting in France for seven hours already. The first seaborne troops ashore to support them would land behind armour platein D.D. tanks to quell the beach defences and Engineer tanks (AVREs) to blast open beach exits for the infantry and ordinary tanks to pass through. Perched on one of the AVREs, incongruously, was an officer in R.A.F. uniform, Squadron Leader A. E. L. Hill, commanding a unit responsible for flying the protective barrage balloons from part of the invasion armada. He was going in with the first wave, having arranged to meet his men on the beach shortly afterwards. They said he wouldnt. Youll have been shot by then, sir. What most impressed him now was not so much the fury of the covering bombardment as the number of wild ducks flying about, presumably stirred up by it. A thousand heavy bombers had already struck; now the defences were being swamped at short-range by massed rocket salvos from special landing craft, the whistle-swoosh of their missiles thickened up by the express-train roar of heavy shells from the warships. Awe-inspiring, said Petty Officer Johnson, an expert in these matters; and when he noted that a few German guns were replying, his reaction wasCheek!

Johnson and McKinlay were friends and both had the same job: to go in with the D.D. tanks and immediately erect signs to mark the beach exits and to bring in the follow-up landing craft to the right places; for a seaborne invasion requires more precise planning and organisation than any other military operation . McKinlays D.D. was about to launch into the rough sea, when the landing craft shuddered under the impact of an explosion at the bows, which jammed the ramp. Out of control, the vessel began to drift helpless with the tide along the Normandy coast, bullets whining and cracking overhead, mortar bombs throwing up fountains of water alongside. We were pretty annoyed: we had been practising for so long, and this was our day; and now it looked as if we were not going to make it. For Johnson, matters were not going right, either. There should have been a long stretch of sand in front of them, so that they would ground in the shallows short of the mined beach obstacles which stood near the high water mark. But the strong wind, on this particular beach, at Courseulles, was literally driving the flooding tide before it up the sand; the sea was rising faster and higher than had been predicted, foaming already among the angle-iron obstacles; and the tank landing craft directly ahead was driving inexorably at the explosive-ridden barrier. She just about hit everything, said Johnson. But she had punched a hole in the defences all the same, and the LCT Johnson was in manoeuvred alongside the wreck, using it as a quay. Johnson scrambled across her and got ashore on the far side. He had taken part in three small commando raids on the French coast, escaped from a sunken landing craft during the Dieppe raid, carried out two similar landings in North Africa, and had even served aboard a suicide Fire-ship intended to stop the German invasion of 1940. But Dieppe was his most vivid memorythe sight of the helpless Churchill tanks, piled up on the beach by the exits, unable to get off it and into the townthe classical bad moment of any seaborne assault. The time for the counter-attack.