D-Day 75 – Marking the 75th Anniversary of the Normandy Landings

Co-Publisher and Editor: Alan Spence – alan.spence@integrativemedia.co.uk Co-Publisher and Commercial: Julien Wildman – julien.wildman@integrativemedia.co.uk Design and Production: Paul Cunningham – paul@sprucecreative.com Editorial Services: Emily Eastman Printer: Pensord – www.pensord.co.uk Published on behalf of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity by Integrative Media Ltd, 152-160 City Road, London EC1V 2NX +44 (0)7402 319888 Disclaimer: any views expressed in D-Day75, whether in editorial content, advertisements or sponsored features and interviewees, are entirely those of the writers or interviewees and in no way reflect those of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity or Integrative Media Ltd. Moreover neither SSAFA nor Integrative Media Ltd. endorse any products or services which appear in this publication.

For every D-Day publication sold, £3 will be paid in support of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity. © 2019 The entire contents of this publication are protected by copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

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d-day75 CONTENTS

CONTENTS Sir ANdrEw GrEGOry ..................................9 FirST SEA LOrd ............................................... 10 ChiEF OF ThE GENErAL STAFF ................ 12 rOyAL Army CAdETS ................................... 13

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ChiEF OF ThE Air STAFF ............................. 16 rAF CAdETS ....................................................... 17 ThE EiSENhOwEr OrdEr ........................... 21 BrOKiNG ThE BEST dEAL .......................... 22 TO ThE LimiTS OF ENdEAvOUr ............... 24

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rESCUiNG A LONE SUrvivOr ..................40 ThE GrEAT d-dAy hOAx ............................ 46 ABF ThE SOLdiErS’ ChAriTy ................... 50 OPErATiON NEPTUNE .................................. 53 SErviNG ThOSE whO SErvE ................... 56

The front and back covers are based on a painting by the artist Terry Harrison and features British troops disembarking in Normandy on D-Day 6 June 1944.

Terry died on 13 June 2017 and use of the image was kindly donated to SSAFA for the covers of D-Day75 by Terry’s widow Fiona in memory of her husband and as a poignant reminder of his remarkable artistic talent and legacy.

SSAFA wishes to extend its thanks and gratitude to Fiona for her generous act of support for D-Day75.

Terry Harrison’s work can viewed at www.terryharrisonart.com

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CONTENTS d-day75

CONTENTS ThE mULBErry hArBOUr .........................60 ThE rOyAL NAvAL ASSOCiATiON........... 64 ThE imPACT OF Air POwEr ...................... 68 ThE rOyAL Air FOrCE mUSEUm ............ 72

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hiTLEr’S EUrOPEAN FOrTrESS ............. 76 SErviNG ANd SAviNG ..................................80 d-dAy LEAdErS - ChUrChiLL ................. 82 whErEvEr yOU SErvE, wE SErvE ...... 85 d-dAy LEAdErS - EiSENhOwEr ............. 88

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d-dAy LEAdErS - TEddEr .........................90 d-dAy LEAdErS - rAmSAy ........................ 92 d-dAy LEAdErS - mONTGOmEry ........... 94 d-dAy LEAdErS - LEiGh-mALLOry ....... 98

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wOmEN ANd d-dAy .................................... 100 ArmEd FOrCES dAy 2019 ........................ 104 d-dAy AT ThE mOviES .................................110 SSAFA d-dAy ArChivE ................................ 112 miLiTAry rE-SETTLEmENT ........................120

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© press association

d-day75 SSAFA’s Patron

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth SSAFA’s Patron for more than 60 years

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Sir ANdrEw GrEGOry d-day75

WeLCoMe

LiEuTENaNT GENERaL SiR aNdREW GREGORy Kbe Cb Ceo, ssAFA, THe ARMeD FoRCes CHARITY

W

elcome to SSAFA’s official publication marking the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, the greatest amphibious invasion in history, which opened the gates to the liberation of Europe.

In these pages you will read stories of great bravery, courage and sacrifice and how, through meticulous planning, technological innovation and real leadership at all levels, the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, breaking through Hitler’s redoubtable Atlantic Wall, and secured a bridgehead from which they could then advance to defeat the Nazis in France and Germany.

SSAFA is the UK’s oldest tri-service military charity; it was ready to support those serving in 1944, veterans and their families as it had done for the ninety years before then. And we are still assisting the now few survivors from the Battle of Normandy amongst the 82,000 people from the Armed Forces Community we help every year.

SSAFA prides itself on being, ‘There then, here now’, and we are very clear that our work is about helping restore the independence and the dignity of those who have served this Nation and their families when that is necessary. While we provide many different services – support groups for the bereaved or those affected by suicide, a refuge for women and children, ‘homes from home’ for families when serving personnel are receiving medical treatment or rehabilitation, helping families with additional needs and disabled children, an adoption service, mentoring for those leaving the military as well as working in most prisons in the UK to name but a few, the core of our work is provided by over 5,500 volunteers who act as ‘the frontline’ of the military charity sector. They visit those in need, ascertain their issues and then help them get the support they require, often bringing in resources from the Service Benevolent Funds and Regimental Associations.

The need for SSAFA’s support is growing – we assisted 10% more last year than in 2017, not least from younger veterans

who have served in more recent conflicts such has Iraq and Afghanistan; their issues are often complicated and take more time and money to resolve.

The D-Day 75 commemorations, and this year’s Armed Forces Day celebrations in Salisbury where SSAFA is the main supporting charity, will allow us to highlight our vital work. In reading SSAFA D-Day 75, you will also help us raise essential funds so we can continue our efforts. This publication is a tribute to all those who were involved in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, and especially those who paid the ultimate price for their role in securing our freedom. It is also very personal to me as you will read: my father, a Royal Artillery Forward Observation Officer, landed on Sword Beach on 6 June 1944 and my mother, a Wren, worked in the operations room of General Eisenhower’s D Day headquarters in Southwick House. They would both be very proud of what I and others seek to provide through SSAFA. I hope you enjoy reading these pages; they chronicle a turning point in the history of the British Nation. And please continue to support the work of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity in any way you can, perhaps by buying additional copies of this publication for friends and family, making a donation to the Charity or even offering your services as a volunteer. We are here to restore independence and dignity when necessary to those who have served – and nothing is more important than that.

Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory KBE CB CEO SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity

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d-day75 FirST SEA LOrd ANd ChiEF OF NAvAL STAFF

admiRaL SiR PHiLiP aNdREW jONES KCb ADC FIRsT seA LoRD AND CHIeF oF NAvAL sTAFF

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t 0400 on 5 June 1944, General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces Europe, made the “final and irrevocable” decision to land the forces under his command in Normandy on 6 June, now known to all of us as D-Day. So began Operation NEPTUNE, the code name for the assault phase of Operation OVERLORD, which would ultimately lead to the liberation of North West Europe.

The Naval component of Operation NEPTUNE, under the command of the Naval Commander Allied Expeditionary Forces, the Royal Navy’s Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, comprised an incredibly diverse and powerful maritime force totalling 1,212 Allied warships, 4,125 amphibious craft, 735 ancillary craft and 864 merchant ships, as well as 200 naval aircraft. To this Naval force fell the task of carrying the Allied landing forces across the channel to assault the five Normandy beach sectors that stretched the length of the Bay of Seine. To focus on the beach landings alone though would underplay the complexity of the task that faced Ramsay’s fleet. Minesweepers forging a path ahead of the main assault force. Mighty battleships bringing their 15-inch guns to bear to bombard enemy shore batteries.

Scores of warships screening the main assault force on all sides from submarine, torpedo boat or air attack. All of these elements and many more besides were vital to support the armada of specialist amphibious shipping – and plenty of non-specialist craft too – that delivered this unprecedented force of men, vehicles and stores from our shores to those French beaches.

In spite of marginal conditions, by midnight on 6/7 June, 132,815 men had been landed from the sea to secure a defensible beach head spanning all five sectors; their foothold reaching several miles inland. With Allied sea power securing unfettered access to the English channel, many more troops would follow in the coming days and by the time a month had passed, over a million men had made the crossing to France. Sustained by a logistics chain that stretched back across that same narrow stretch of sea, the Allied forces began their fight towards victory in Europe.

Whilst it is unlikely that we will ever again witness an amphibious operation on the scale of NEPTUNE, our ability to project power from the sea to the shore remains as relevant today as ever. Moreover, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines’ expertise in this highly complex field of maritime warfare has evolved significantly in the intervening years. In part this has been through hard-won experience from an alltoo regular drumbeat of conflicts, not least the landings at San Carlos Water in 1982 and most recently the assault on the Al Faw peninsula in 2003. Vital as this experience is, the evolution of our amphibious warfare is equally a reflection of technical advance. Our bold plans for the Future Commando Force will soon see the renowned warfighting pedigree of our Royal Marines Commandos enhanced through the integration of automated and autonomous capabilities. Together with new specialist amphibious shipping, this commando force will offer a world-leading high readiness littoral strike capability which can operate anywhere in the world to defend British interests against a host of modern-day threats.

Back in 1944, mounting an operation on the scale of NEPTUNE was a massive undertaking, drawing on every port, harbour and inlet from Cornwall to Kent. While our American allies, destined for Utah and Omaha beaches, mounted their initial assault forces from Dorset and Devon, it was right here, in the waters around the Solent, that the majority of British and Canadian assault convoys destined for Gold, Juno and Sword beaches on that fateful day were loaded and assembled.

And with that in mind, there is surely no more fitting a venue for all of us to gather, 75 years on, to reflect on the enormity of Operation NEPTUNE, and to give thanks for the incredible bravery, determination and sacrifice of all those who took part in the biggest naval and amphibious operation ever mounted anywhere in history.

Admiral Sir Philip Andrew Jones KCB ADC First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff

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d-day75 ChiEF OF ThE GENErAL STAFF

GENERaL SiR maRk CaRLETON-SmiTH KCb Cbe ADC GeN CHIeF oF THe GeNeRAL sTAFF

A

I am immensely grateful to SSAFA for their hard work and dedication to these commemorative events. SSAFA’s mission to support the person behind the uniform, any time they need us, for life, makes an invaluable contribution to the fabric of our Army.

s we gather to pay tribute to all those who fought to liberate Europe in 1944 I think of the hundreds of thousands of British, Commonwealth and Allied servicemen who made the journey across the Channel by sea and air to fight and seize the Normandy beaches and the families at home who hoped and prayed for their safe return.

I am delighted that SSAFA will be the official sponsor at this year’s Armed Forces Day in Salisbury and I encourage you to join us on the 29th of June to celebrate the unique contribution our soldiers make every day in the defence of our nation, at home and overseas, and in preparing to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

© MoD/crown copyright 1944

The foothold they secured was essential to launching the subsequent battles to free the continent from Nazism.

Their example, their courage and their sacrifice remain an inspiration.

The award of the Légion d’Honneur to Normandy Veterans is a poignant demonstration of the enduring gratitude of the liberated to their liberators, but also reminds us of the importance of our alliances with our United States, European and NATO partners, as we continue to work towards a safe and secure Europe.

General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith KCB CBE ADC GEN Chief of the General Staff

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SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ThE Army CAdET FOrCE d-day75

aRmy CadETS – THEN aNd NOW In the days running up to the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, hundreds of Army Cadet Force (ACF) members could be found on Normandy’s historic beaches, learning more of the amphibious landings and battles that changed history, and paying their respects to all those who took part – especially those who never returned.

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arshaled in to four parties of around 500 members with adult volunteer support, the Cadets’ itineraries covered most of the iconic locations along the Normandy coast which 75 years ago saw 156,000 troops struggle ashore from specially-constructed landing craft as the surprised German defenders unleashed withering machine gun and heavy artillery fire.

The Cadets were briefed on how the weather and the Channel tides played such an important role in picking the time and date of the landings, which had to be delayed 24 hours due to heavy seas.

They stood by Pegasus Bridge over the strategically important Orne River and were reminded of how British Airborne troops had snatched it from German troops in the middle of the night before the invasion force had arrived - making it the first place in France, indeed, Europe to be liberated.

They examined the remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches built in a matter of days in great sections towed from England to enable the landing of supplies, munitions and ever more troops.

© crown copyright 2018

“Many of those who fought in Normandy would previously have had their first experience of military training and activities in cadet forces around Britain before or in the early years of the War.“

Below : cadets crossing the channel to France.

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© shutterstock

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - THE army cadet force

They looked out over long seemingly endless beaches which once had codenames – Sword, Gold, Juno, Utah and Omaha…

And back at Arromanches, once the beating heart of British troops’ Gold Beach, each of the visits concluded with a parade and service of thanksgiving and remembrance.

Many of those who fought in Normandy would previously have had their first experience of military training and activities in cadet forces around Britain before or in the early years of the War. And those who, still too young to join the Army, would have played important roles in and around military bases as D-Day approached

As for today’s Cadets in Normandy, once their visit was over, they headed home across the Channel and back to their homes around the UK, many of them preparing for ceremonial duties during the country’s D-Day 75 commemorations and celebrations – equipped with a greater understanding of the events and sacrifice of 6th June 1944, and their great significance for us all.

Meanwhile, as in previous years, the Army Cadets have also spent much time preparing for their involvement in Armed Forces Day, which falls on 29 June and for which this year’s national lead city is Salisbury, Wiltshire.

© Crown copyright 2018

Many cadets volunteered to help prepare vehicles before they were sent to France. Jobs included washing off protective grease, kitting out the six-wheel DUKW amphibious vehicles, colloquially known as Ducks, and spraying the white star motif on the vehicles.

During the Second World War the ACF, the Officer Training Corps and the Junior Training Corps (the latter two being the forerunners of the Army elements of today’s Combined Cadet Force [formed in 1948]), continued to parade as they had done between the wars.

As in the First World War, groups of young men from their cadet force or corps units joined specific army units together – an echo of the so-called Pals Brigades - and the Second World War as a whole reinforced the importance of the ACF.

Army Cadets from across the ACF and the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) will take part in local Armed Forces Day events across the country.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - THE army cadet force d-day75

Cadets from across the South West, though, will have the privilege of participating in the national, high-profile event in Salisbury, joining in the parade, contributing a band and supporting the event with guards of honour and event guides.

And this work is to its credit: membership numbers continue to rise, especially among girls, who now account for around 30 per cent of Army Cadets.

Around the country Army Cadet units attend public community events to provide engaging activities for young people to experience, such as climbing walls, obstacle courses, observation skills, camouflage and concealment, and provide demonstrations of cadet skills, including first aid, field-craft, signaling, music and drill.

“There remains substantial demand for the activities and benefits of the cadet experience for children and young people,” he argues.

The ACF today remains one of the country’s largest voluntary youth organisations, sponsored by the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the British Army.

It has grown and developed immeasurably to become a force built on progressive training designed to build leadership skills and foster initiative, confidence, self-reliance, loyalty and a sense of service to others.

“Army Cadet units continue to make a significant contribution to the development of many young people and the quality and resilience of those who enjoy the experience remains very high”.

While the Army Cadets is not designed as a dedicated recruiting organisation, the army and other public service organisation benefit considerably from the abilities, enthusiasm, values and commitment of former cadets.

“These highly reliable young people with something about them have a tendency to perform well in training, achieve promotion and remain in service for extended periods,” says Colonel Williams.

© Crown copyright 2018

These days it places more emphasis on mental well-being and helps cadets to develop their individual identities, offering significant space for experiential learning and personal growth.

According to Colonel Stuart Williams, Chief of Staff of the Army Cadets, the future of the ACF and CCF is bright.

© Crown copyright 2018

“Membership numbers continue to rise, especially among girls, who now account for around 30 per cent of Army Cadets.”

Opposite, top : Remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Arromanches.

Opposite, left : Army Cadets take part in parades across the country to celebrate Armed Forces Day .

Above and right : Cadets have the opportunity to try out exciting activities and learn valuable new skills.

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d-day75 ChiEF OF ThE Air STAFF

aiR CHiEF maRSHaL SiR STEPHEN HiLLiER KCb Cbe DFC ADC MA RAF CHIeF oF THe AIR sTAFF

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aving successfully defended the Nation’s freedom in the Battle of Britain in 1940, the Royal Air Force played a critical role four years later in the success of the D-Day Landings which opened the door to European freedom.

On D-Day itself over 11,500 Allied aircraft were deployed – over a half of which were RAF and their tasks were many and varied. They ranged from dropping parachutists behind enemy lines and towing gliders filled with troops to blasting coastal defences and perpetrating deceptive manoeuvres over the Channel to further convince German radar operators that the invasion was coming in the Calais region. Other units swept the Western Approaches and the Channel for German U-boats and surface vessels.

In recalling the courage, bravery and sacrifice of RAF personnel in the many and varied air operations which surrounded D-Day, I also reflect not just on the young age of so many of them, but also on that of the RAF itself in 1944.

The RAF was also active on the ground. In fact almost 2000 RAF personnel landed and with over 450 RAF vehicles on D-Day – advance parties to set up servicing and air control facilities, and construct air bases. Thousands more were to follow.

Founded just 26 years before as the world’s first independent air force, its rapid strategic progression through the 1920s and 1930s, driven by great technological achievement and remarkable human endeavour, enabled the RAF to make such a vital contribution to the outcome of the Second World War.

As the subsequent Battle of Normandy got underway and the Luftwaffe re-grouped to provide German troops with air support, the British and American air forces fought not only to retain air superiority over the battle zone, but in close support of the Allied ground forces - destroying communications and directly attacking enemy positions and supplies.

Allied air superiority was critical to the success of the D-Day Landings. Without it the invasion would not have been possible. And any - unlikely - attempt to successfully contest the skies as battle raged on the sea and beaches below would in all probability have ended in disaster.

That Allied superiority did prevail over the Landing Grounds largely reflected the intensity of the British and American Strategic Air Campaign over Germany in the months leading up to D-Day with aircraft factories and air bases increasingly targeted.

Attempts by the Luftwaffe to defend these and other strategic industrial and military targets, coupled with increasing air duels with long range fighter escorts, severely eroded German air power to the point that, come D-Day, there were only around 100 or so German aircraft in the whole of France.

And hardly any made it in to the battle zone.

Also in the weeks ahead of D-Day RAF Bomber Command turned its attention to destroying key rail and road links to the planned invasion area to hamper and inhibit German reinforcements .

D-Day was a great turning point in the history of Europe in a terrible war which saw the RAF truly come of age, and ready and able - with its fellow military services and international allies - to face the many and complex challenges which lay ahead.

Seventy-five years after the world-changing events of D-Day, the RAF remains unwaveringly committed to that same mission.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier KCB CBE DFC ADC MA RAF Chief of the Air Staff

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SPONSORED FEATURE - THE RAF CADETS d-day75

RAF CADETS – THEN AND NOW Founded in the run-up to the outbreak of war in 1939, today’s RAF Air Training Corps is a modern, relevant air-minded youth organisation providing challenging opportunities to develop valuable skills for both civilian and service life.

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s the nation approached the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day landings, RAF Air Cadet units around the United Kingdom finalised plans to participate in remembrance services and celebratory events at both local and national level in tribute to all those who fought so valiantly in a campaign which opened the way to Europe’s liberation.

Although only six years old at the time of D-Day, the Air Defence Cadet Corps (ADCC), as it was initially known, had become an important means of recruitment in to the RAF, which played such a crucial role in the Second World War from the Battle of Britain – Hitler’s first defeat – to D-Day, and beyond to final victory.

For D-Day to be successful the Allies had to possess air superiority before and during the landings to protect troops and equipment from attacks by the Luftwaffe. The RAF played a core role in achieving this – with many ex-cadets in its ranks and serving cadets doing invaluable jobs around Britain’s airfields from loading miles of ammunition to moving aircraft and equipment, filling sandbags and acting as couriers.

So as today’s cadets parade on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day in tribute and respect, they do so partly in memory of their own young forbears who as cadets experienced a time in history which changed the world.

© Crown copyright 1944

Below : Air cadets learn the basics of flight at RNAS St Merryn in Cornwall, February 1944

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d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - THE RAF CADETS

Left : Lord Trenchard (left) and Sir Arthur Tedder during World War II.

© Crown copyright 1944

© Crown copyright 1944

Below : Air Commodore A J Chamier now known as the father of the Air Cadet Organisation.

“At a time when very few people had taken to the skies, the prospect of doing so met with great appeal amongst young men seeking an adventurous future in aviation.”

Lord Trenchard was the former British army officer who championed the creation of the Royal Air Force as the world’s first independent air force – one which was not part of another Service, principally the army or the navy.

too short due to operational demands, and wanted to create an organisation which could provide as much as possible of both to young men before they joined the RAF itself, and possibly engaged in front-line air combat.

His equivalent in the air cadet movement was Air Commodore A J Chamier who became known as its “father”.

Like Trenchard, he was a former army officer who served in the Royal Flying Corps before, in April 1918, the latter joined with the Royal Naval Air Service to become the Royal Air Force.

The ADCC, founded in 1938, attracted much support around the country with units especially popular in the vicinity of RAF bases. At a time when very few people had taken to the skies, the prospect of doing so met with great appeal amongst young men seeking an adventurous future in aviation.

Chamier understood the need to create an organisation, partly in the mould of the military cadet tradition dating back to the mid-19th Century, which would generate an interest in military flying - the exciting new strategic dimension in warfare – at a time when the possibility of another European conflict seemed increasingly possible.

Although Officer Training Corps Units attached to schools already had RAF sections, Chamier’s plans were separate from these, albeit convergence with the ATC came later with the onset of the Second World War.

The quickly proven capability of the ADCC as a sound recruitment pipeline for the RAF itself, coupled with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, resulted in the organisation being taken over by the government and renamed the Air Training Corps (ATC) with King George V1 as Air Commodore-in-Chief.

By the end of the Second World War, a mere seven years after its formation, the ATC had over 100,000 members.

In 1948 the OTC were renamed the Combined Cadet Force and most of ther OTC Air Sections became CCF (RAF) and girls were admitted in its ranks from the early 1980s.

Reflecting on his First World War experiences he was concerned that training and flying experience had often been

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SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ThE rAF CAdETS d-day75

Today, the RAF Air Cadets remain an essential part of the RAF. The modern-day aims of the organisation are to promote and encourage among young people a practical interest in aviation and the RAF, provide training that will be useful both in the services and civilian life, foster a spirit of adventure, and develop the qualities of leadership and citizenship.

© crown copyright 2018

“.... Its key aspirations are to be a modern, dynamic, sustainable, air-minded youth organisation offering fun and challenging opportunities that develop valuable skills for the future.”

Above : air cadets at the royal internanational air tattoo enjoy some hands-on experience of a cockpit and its controls.

Below : air cadets can perform at national level in Marching, concert, & pipes & Drums Bands and they even have a national choir.

The vision of its 2025 Strategy, a roadmap prioritising its key aspirations for the future, is to be a modern, dynamic, sustainable air-minded youth organisation offering fun and challenging opportunities that develop valuable skills for the future. © crown copyright 2018

Cyber-safe courses have been introduced and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) remain at the heart of its progressive training syllabus.

The RAFAC innovative Cadet Aviation Offer embraces flight simulation, gliding, flying, aviation musters and support to air shows, as well as visits to RAF stations.

Meanwhile, specialist camps are a core feature, with cadets participating in camping, climbing, walking, overseas expeditions and the International Air Cadet Exchange programme with 20 other nations.

RAFAC is a world-class organisation delivering training for youngsters aged 12-19 at 1,000 ATC squadrons and 230 CCF (RAF) schools across the UK and overseas – and it’s heading for a stronger future still.

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Find out more To find out more about what you can gain from joining as a cadet or an adult volunteer, visit the RAF Air Cadets website at

www.raf.mod.uk/aircadets

Once Navy, Always Navy

The Royal Naval Association is proud to be associated with D-Day 75 Commemorations

With over 11,000 members across 300+ branches in the UK and overseas, we are a family of current and former Naval Service personnel, relatives and supporters of our country’s Royal Navy.

Whether we are catching up with friends at our regular social events, fundraising, advising on welfare and employment matters, or just providing an arm around the shoulder, our natural willingness to help others stems from the tradition and camaraderie that only Naval Service life can instil.

Everything we do is inextricably linked to our core values: Unity

Comradeship

Loyalty

Patriotism

Shared backgrounds and equality in rank. We share the same bonds, the same mindset, and even the same language (Jackspeak!). We are all equal. We are the heart and soul of the RNA.

To each other and our dependants. We will always support and look out for each other. Our loyalty is to all our shipmates, our local communities, the personnel and dependants of the Naval Service, along with other charities or organisations with naval connections.

Friends in fun, fellowship and need. Your shipmates will always be here for you, whether it’s about a job, ideas for a fun day out or just an arm around the shoulder. We will never leave you or your dependants in despair.

We are proud to serve and proud to represent our country and the Naval Service. Our pride in serving our country never leaves us. Nor do we forget those who have fallen for our country or who fight now. We are deeply honoured to represent them on both a national and international level.

Our Full Members come from all walks of life, but have their shared time in the Naval Service as well as a desire to carry forward the traditions and values that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines embeds, bonding us together. The Association reflects the wider Naval family with wives, husbands, and proud parents joining as Associate Members as well as those who care about Britain’s Naval Heritage and all it embodies. If you want to join as a member of the Association, please do so online at our webpage below.

visit www.royal-naval-association.co.uk

RNA Central Office, Room 209, Semaphore Tower, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth, PO1 3LT

EiSENhOwErS mESSAGE d-day75

Order from

GENERaL dWiGHT d. EiSENHOWER suPReMe ALLIeD CoMMANDeR Below is the printed Order of the Day for June 6, 1944, which Eisenhower began drafting in February. The order was distributed to the 175,000-member expeditionary force on the eve of the invasion.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - TriNiTy iNSUrANCE

BROkiNG THE BEST dEaL FOR BRiTaiN’S aRmEd FORCES Mark Austin, managing director of Trinity Insurance Ltd, talks with Alan Spence about the role of the Armed Forces Covenant in generating ever-closer ties between the military community and civil society, as well as Trinity’s own partnership approach to providing financial services and support to members of the armed forces, veterans and their families.

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ince the seminal publication of Soldiering –The Military Covenant by the Ministry of Defence almost 20 years ago spelling out the mutual obligations between the Armed Forces and the Nation, the Armed Forces Covenant has become the Holy Grail for the ever-closer partnership between the military community and civil society.

“This has been fuelled by a number of factors, including increased public awareness of military courage and sacrifice by conflicts involving British military personnel in the Gulf, Afghanistan and elsewhere,” says Mark Austin, a former Gurkha officer and these days Managing Director of Chichester-based specialist military insurance broker Trinity Insurance.

He adds that “the mounting popularity of Armed Forces Day since its initial inception as Veterans’ Day in 2006, coupled with increased international security concerns – terrorism and other issues – have also played their part”.

“Then, of course, we are continuing to pass through a period of pretty intense national and, indeed, personal period of remembrance of two world wars…

“Last November brought to an end four years of First World War Centenary remembrance, this year it’s the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and next year it’s the 75th Anniversary of VE-Day….they all add to the public’s memory bank of military sacrifice…

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SPONSORED FEATURE - trinity INSURANCE d-day75

“…..and emotionally so, “ he adds, “especially in the case of the Second World War as we still have many veterans from that conflict with us, not to mention civilians who can remember lives lost, the Blitz, rationing and so on”.

“Our products are designed specifically for the Armed Forces Family

“This whole area of West Sussex was filled with troops – British, US, Canadian - and their equipment 75 years ago ahead of D-Day.

We operate under the time honoured military values; service, loyalty, integrity and trust.”

“Indeed, General Eisenhower stayed a few nights in Chichester just around the corner from here in the Ship Hotel and convened a meeting of his advisors there”.

“Put it all together and celebration and appreciation of our Armed Forces then and now has probably not run so high for many years….. and it comes through in the support for the Armed Forces Covenant”.

Meeting Austin in his small suite of offices just off Chichester High Street, you can sense that his company is not just a specialist broker in insurance and other financial products for serving members of the Armed Forces, veterans and their families.

“We have a proud 20 year record of serving the military and strive to understand the financial needs of our armed forces customers providing them with the excellent solutions at great value for money”.

It’s also a fully committed member of the military community which seeks to do its best for serving and retired personnel who need the specialist advice and services Trinity can provide.

And on top of this it not only generously supports a range of military events and causes, but does so in the spirit of partnership and participation.

Trinity Insurance is one of the 3000 or so organisations that have signed up to the Armed Forces Covenant which officially seeks to ensure that “those who serve or have served in the Armed Forces, and their families, should be treated with fairness and respect in the communities, economy and society that they serve with their lives”.

Trinity signed the Covenant in 2016 and last year received a Silver Award for its support of the Armed Forces, veterans and their families.

And through a link-up with UK nationwide fee-free mortgage broker BFG Mortgages Trinity is able to assist with mortgages which can be tailored to easily address issues as associated with guiding military personnel through the journey to home ownership utilising initiatives such as the forces help to buy scheme.

Trinity is fully armed forces friendly back in its own offices and representatives across the country. Most of the broker’s employees have some connection with the military.

As part of its overall community partnership with the Armed Forces, Trinity signed up a partnership agreement in 2017 with SSAFA, the UK’s oldest tri-service military charity, under which Trinity makes a donation to SSAFA for insurance policies signed up.

Trinity also has a proud track record of sponsorship support for a series of sports events and organisations. These include: • The Army Women’s Football Team to help advance the development of the sport at all levels within the Army • The Royal Navy Football Association Inter-Region Championships • The Army Lawn Tennis Annual Indoor Championships As well as support to many unit level sports events across the country, such as boxing nights at Lympstone and Infantry Training Centre Catterick and the Corps of Royal Engineers Sapper Games 2018.

“I would urge any company or organisation which has yet to sign up to the Covenant to consider doing so,” he says.

Trinity’s core commitment under the Covenant within its professional area of operation is its specialisation in products which are tailored to assist members of the Armed Forces, veterans and their families.

For example, life insurance covers war risks and personal accident insurance includes low cost cover on deployment in all areas of conflict as well as military kit and personal possession cover, on or off duty, anywhere in the world.

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Mark Austin is a former Gurkha officer and these days Managing Director of Chichester-based specialist military insurance broker Trinity Insurance.

©UK MOD Crown Copyright 1944

To the Limits of Endeavour D-Day was a tempestuous journey to the limits of human endeavour in a momentous bid to open freedom’s door in Europe. Alan Spence, Editor of D-Day75, takes up the story of the largest and riskiest amphibious invasion in military history.

D

-Day 6th June 1944 is one of the most momentous days in the history of Europe – and if it is to one day that Europe owes its freedom it is arguably this day. For it marked the beginning of the end of Hitler’s domination of the European land mass which had been completed and consolidated just over four years before as the last of Britain’s beaten forces evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk, and France fell.

D-Day was a day that had to happen if Nazi Germany was ever to be defeated. It called for the best of everything - in strategic and tactical planning, logistics, equipment, technological and practical innovation, engineering, and collaboration between military services and countries - principally Britain and the United States.

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D-Day 6th June 1944 d-day75

And to successfully carry it through required outstanding courage, bravery, dedication and a tempestuous journey to the limits of human endeavour.

From Dunkirk and the fall of France in the Spring of 1940 to the United States’ entry into the Second World War in December 1941, Britain stood alone against the might of Nazi Germany protected by the RAF, the Royal Navy, the Channel - and a Prime Minister whose rhetorical genius inspired a nation to fight on regardless of the cost to preserve its freedom and independence.

On assuming the job of Prime Minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill told the country that all he had to offer was “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. And he was right.

It was an epic period in Britain’s long history which he named “The Finest Hour” when the “Few” of the Royal Air Force inflicted on Hitler his first military defeat – and then the nation stoically buckled down to withstand the Blitz of the winter of 1940/41, the German dictator’s attempt to bomb Britain in to submission.

But out of allies and increasingly short of vital military and other supplies, Churchill was acutely aware that Britain did not possess the means of its own salvation, and that this lay across the Atlantic Ocean in the United States.

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Top : Winston Churchill became Britains Prine Minister in May 1940 Below : Aircraft spotter searches the sky with binoculars during the Battle of Britain. St. Paul’s Cathedral is in the background.

Opposite : British troops are seen here landing on the beaches of Normandy, France on the 6 of June 1944.

d-day75 D-Day 6th June 1944

As the German bombs rained down on London and Britain’s provincial cities and ports, Churchill’s over-arching strategic objectives were two-fold and interwoven: to sustain Britain’s survival long enough to form a powerful military alliance with the United States capable of ensuring Britain’s future as a free and independent country and, ultimately, freeing Europe from Nazi domination.

In short, he foresaw a day when British and American troops would storm ashore somewhere on continental Europe’s coast and commence the liberation of its peoples. D-Day. For some in 1940/41 Britain’s mere survival was a dim prospect, and the idea of one day liberating Europe in partnership with the United States fanciful.

One of the key problems Churchill faced with his alternative view of the future was that there were many in the United States who didn’t want the country dragged in to another European war - especially if its only ally was on the point of collapse.

Churchill marshalled an intense diplomatic assault on Washington, which not only spelt out Britain’s needs, but the long-term strategic implications for the United States in the event that Britain with all its assets and resources both at home and around its Empire where to fall under the control of Nazi Germany, including possibly the British Navy.

Put simply the proposition was: fight Hitler now from Britain, rather than in your own backyard.

and all view of Britain by his host ranging from a review of the Fleet to the badly bombed docks in Glasgow.

It sounded logical and appealing, but it was still a difficult sell for Roosevelt to the powerful isolationist lobby and others in the US who were worried that America could declare war on Germany only to discover that Britain was defeated before the two countries could fuse together as effective allies against Germany.

And night after night he was dined with different guests from all sides and classes of British society from industry to trade unionists, the armed forces to the professions - who spoke of the country’s united determination to fight on.

For President Roosevelt to convince detractors to enter the war on Britain’s side he had to be sure that Britain had the

For President Roosevelt to convince detractors to enter the war on Britain’s side he had to be sure that Britain had the will to fight on.

Hopkins was ultimately convinced of Britain’s sense of purpose under Churchill and tears ran down the Prime Minister’s face when Hopkins announced at a dinner in Glasgow that his proposed advice to Roosevelt could be summed up in lines from the Old Testament’s Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest I will go….….. thy people shall be my people”.

Brilliantly choreographed by Churchill, the visit was arguably the genesis of what became the Special Relationship between Britain and the US as personified, in the beginning, by the personal friendship between Churchill and Roosevelt who throughout the war exchanged over 1700 letters and telegrams

will to fight on if supported by vast flows of new military aid and ultimately the US’s own military assets - and he sent Harry Hopkins, one of his closest advisors, to find the answer.

Churchill was delighted to take up the challenge. Hopkins, a social worker who had worked with Roosevelt on the New Deal to tackle unemployment in the 1930s, was given a warts

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Top : An American newspaper reflecting public opinion to the war, July 1940.

Above : Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt sit in the White House.

Opposite : U.S. Navy battleships at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941

d-dAy 6Th JUNE 1944 d-day75

- 7 DECEMBER 1941 -

Without declaring war and without warning, Japan attacked the US naval base of Pearl Harbour in Hawaii.

- 8 DECEMBER 1941 -

Congress declares war on Japan.

– not to mention phone calls which in Churchill’s case were usually made from a tiny room deep below Whitehall which was not only roughly the size of a toilet but had a familiar toilet engaged/vacant lock on its door. It’s still there for all visitors to the Cabinet War Rooms to see.

Soon after Hopkins’ visit Lend-Lease was approved by Congress whereby Britain could take US military supplies on a promise to either return or repay them after the war – “the most unsordid act in the history of any nation”, said Churchill.

And then came the secret Newfoundland Summit and the Atlantic Charter in early August 1941 when the USS Augusta rendezvoused with HMS Prince of Wales in the quietude of Placentia Bay, Newfoundland carrying their respective charges to their first Summit.

Churchill came to persuade Roosevelt to go to war, but it was still too early for the American President to do so with much still to be argued back home. But if they were to go to war together against Hitler and any nation that allied themselves with Nazi Germany, they would need a common vision of

what their war aims should be and it was on this that they spent their time in their secret, peaceful refuge. And it was time well spent – not just for the US and Britain, but for both countries’ allies around the globe for they produced the basis of the Atlantic Charter, a comprehensive compendium of freedoms to be recognised, achieved and protected by all those who subscribed to them. They had, between them, laid the foundation stones of the United Nations – something worth going to war for.

But it wasn’t the trigger for America to go to war. That wasn’t pulled until 7 December 1941 when, without declaring war and without warning, Japan attacked the US naval base of Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, as well as US-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and the British Empire territories of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong.

On hearing the news Churchill is said to have raised his arms aloft and exclaimed: “we’ve won”. On 8 December Congress declared war on Japan, as did Britain, and three days later Japan’s allies Germany and Italy both declared war on the US, which immediately reciprocated.

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D-Day 6th June 1944 d-day75

D

-Day - well some form of D-Day - was now quickly on the agenda. Churchill, not wasting any time, crossed the Atlantic and on 26 December spoke stirringly to Congress of two countries united together to protect and deliver freedom.

The US military build-up in Britain commenced almost immediately with some 4,500 troops arriving in North Ireland in mid-January 1942 – the first of some 1.5 million American military personnel who, under Operation Bolero, arrived in Britain in the period before D-Day, around half of them in the first six months of 1944.

Britain’s own military forces also rose rapidly during this period, and were substantially boosted by troops from Canada (around 250,000) and other countries around the Empire or Commonwealth, such as Australia and New Zealand, whose airmen, in particular, made a major contribution both ahead of and during D-Day.

Then, notably, there were those from countries which the Nazis had occupied, including France, Belgium, Holland, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

As the build-up continued basic provisioning for such great numbers became, in itself, a massive undertaking with much in the way of food and other supplies making its way across the Atlantic from North America.

There was also the need for military camps the length and breadth of the United Kingdom to accommodate personnel.

Temporary barracks were erected in some of the most far flung areas of the country; stately homes and other large buildings and establishments were requisitioned – or volunteered – particularly for military HQs and planning offices.

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Above : American troops landing on the beach in England during a rehearsal for D-Day.

d-day75 D-Day 6th June 1944

“The mission was clear enough – to free Europe of the Nazis. The means of achieving this was also well accepted – the invasion of Europe by the Allies.”

And, particularly in the months before D-Day when the roads and lanes of southern England were becoming jammed with soldiers, sailors and airmen, there was always the traditional military option – huge fields full of canvas tenting.

Training not only brought its challenges but also its dangers – never more so than at Slapton Sands in Devon in the weeks before D-Day when a massive training exercise involving amphibious landings went tragically wrong when heavy landing craft packed with troops, tanks and other equipment were picked up by fast-moving German torpedo boats and mayhem ensued with one landing craft sunk and others damaged.

On that particular exercise a combination of this incident and friendly fire resulted in over 700 US troops losing their lives – more than were lost when the Americans stormed Utah Beach a few weeks later.

And of course this vast military force not only needed feeding, clothing and equipping, but to be fit (an obsession with General Montgomery who was in control of all land troops for the invasion) and trained in the multiplicity of skills armies require, not just for fighting, but amongst many things the maintaining and operating of equipment, logistics and healthcare, both emergency and routine.

Above : A Sherman tank comes out of the hold of an LST during landing exercises.

Below : A German Schnellboot (“E-boat”) was responsible for the attack on the landing craft at Slapton Sands

This accelerating build up of military power and presence in Britain over two years or so to D-Day suggests that it was all part of a pre-conceived plan with a clear agreed objective.

Which in some ways it was, but in other ways it wasn’t.

The mission was clear enough – to free Europe of the Nazis. The means of achieving this was also well accepted – the invasion of Europe by the Allies. But there were two fundamentally important issues which were not settled until late 1943 when Churchill and Roosevelt met in Cairo and then flew up to meet Russian leader Joseph Stalin in Tehran: when and where would the invasion of Europe begin? When and where would D-Day take place?

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d-day75 D-Day 6th June 1944

There were many different factors in play from the first eager conversations Churchill and Roosevelt shared at Christmas 1941 all the way through to the last weeks before D-Day actually took place.

Indeed, purely from the perspective of the weather, it was almost cancelled - possibly for good as all elements of surprise would have been lost - in the hours before it was scheduled to launch. In the end it was postponed for one day.

Weather was always going to be a potential factor, but so were the shifting individual fortunes of war of the United States, Britain and Russia – the Allies’ “Big Three”; the mathematics of critical supplies of both men and equipment; the arguments and views of top commanders, particularly Eisenhower and Montgomery; and more importantly the interactions between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill based on their own shifting thoughts and pre-occupations.

That D-Day did indeed happen in June 1944 and in Normandy was by no means a foregone conclusion: originally some form of action on the Channel/North Sea coast was being seriously considered as early as 1942 before Roosevelt had to tell Churchill, who, himself, wasn’t too keen on the plan, that US resources, big as they were – and getting bigger by the day--wouldn’t stretch at that point to a second front in Europe whilst simultaneously addressing threats to the US and its interests in the Far East.

On the other hand there was constant pressure from Stalin for a second front in the West to take pressure off him in the East where the Nazis had thrust deep in to Soviet territory in their bid to take Moscow and the country’s oil fields.

Gallipoli brought Churchill’s political career to a temporary halt, but its impact on him personally was permanent – and arguably played both a conscious and sub-conscious role in his strategic thinking during the Second World War, once the United States became an ally and the opening of a second front against Hitler in the West became both a possibility and a probability.

On the one hand, his predilection for grand military schemes, such as Gallipoli, to achieve seismic shifts in an adversary’s fortunes never left him, but neither did thoughts about their huge potential cost in human life – whether successful or not.

And this led to what some saw as his mentally dichotomous approach towards the planning of D-Day in the form, structure and place it eventually assumed.

All of these impacted on the “where” and “when” of D-Day as did the many technical and practical problems such a military venture harboured for a cross-Channel D-Day. In 1942 the Allies focused on North Africa, and then came the invasion of Sicily and Italy, putting increasing pressure on Hitler from the south and, for Churchill, generating thoughts of his First World War strategy of attacking Germany’s “soft underbelly” in Europe as the way to victory, but this time without the mistakes made at Gallipoli.

But in the end the political, strategic and military consensus finally hardened – and “where” became Normandy and the “when” 5th – not 6th – June.

This was another situation that Britain and the United States had to carefully calibrate and manage. They couldn’t afford to rush in to a second front, but they were also concerned that Moscow might be forced in to an armistice with Germany, leaving the latter free to focus on a new challenge in the west.

And as much as Churchill wanted a second front, fought for one and recognised one was needed, he had never thrown off the effect on him of the failed Gallipoli landings in the First World War and its huge casualties.

“That D-Day did indeed happen in June 1944 and in Normandy was by no means a foregone conclusion”

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D-Day 6th June 1944 d-day75

F

or D-Day, Operation Overlord, the Allies assembled a remarkable team led by the unflappable US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, later to become the President of the United States, as Supreme Allied Commander. Although he had never commanded troops in battle, he was chosen for his great skills in handling senior commanders, his organisational abilities – particularly when collaboration between different military services was essential – and his constant sense of the “bigger” picture and how to engage with it – politically, diplomatically, strategically and tactically.

Beneath him as Deputy Supreme Commander was Britain’s Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Tedder and overall command of Allied sea, land and air forces for the invasion was also handed to British personnel – respectively Admiral Bertrand Ramsay, who in 1940 master-minded the evacuation from Dunkirk, General Bernard Montgomery – “Monty” the irrepressible victor over Rommel in North Africa – and Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory.

On the German side Hitler appointed top General Irwin Rommel to mastermind the defence of his Atlantic Wall.

As the eyes of German planners travelled down the enormous length of Europe’s western coastline from the top of Norway to the Spanish border they wrestled with the advantages and disadvantages of all potential targets trying to second-guess the Allies.

Regardless of how they tallied up the pros and cons the outcome always looked the same: the invasion would most likely come in the Pas de Calais region – so near to England you could see it from Dover. And importantly for the Allies, that was Hitler’s view -regardless of what anyone else said.

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Above : Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commanders at a conference in London in January 1944.

Left to right: Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

D-Day 6th June 1944 d-day75

“After the Dieppe Raid by British and Allied Forces in August 1942 it was plain that attacking a well-fortified Channel port was not viable” As for the pros and cons of landing in Normandy, to the German defenders there didn’t seem an obvious basis for sending an invasion force across such a long stretch of water at the outer limits of Allied fighter cover to beaches with no deep water facilities for landing huge amounts of troops and equipment not only at the point of invasion but increasingly afterwards to consolidate and extend the bridgehead.

Which was a prime reason why the Allies chose Normandy – it indeed wasn’t an obvious choice.

Further, because it wasn’t obvious as an initial landing ground, the Allies reasoned that even after it had been used as one, the Germans might think it wasn’t the main one.

It could be a feint with the real invasion coming elsewhere most probably in the most obvious place after all - the Pas de Calais - with Germany delaying the transfer of its forces from there to confront the invaders in Normandy.

In the weeks before D-Day, the Allied Air Forces blitzed transport routes and strategic facilities, particularly oil installations, to de-grade the German army’s ability to rapidly move resources in response to the invasion – but the distribution of damage didn’t obviously lean towards Normandy’s hinterland for fear of giving the show away - see D-Day and the Air Force.

Meanwhile, much of the Allied Navies’ fundamental strategic contribution had been done ahead of D-Day with years of hard fighting, including the longest engagement in the entire war – the Battle of the Atlantic with German U-Boats and to a much lesser extent with surface vessels. This meant that no significant German naval presence was likely to confront the invaders as they crossed the Channel –which is largely what happened.

On D-Day itself the central job of Ramsay’s Operation Neptune was two-fold: a fearful barrage of the German coastal positions just ahead of the invasion forces’ arrival and to get the Army, its equipment and Mulberry harbours across the Channel to Normandy, protecting them against any naval, but more likely air attack, albeit on D-Day the Luftwaffe, also wrong-footed, had little resistance to offer.

Which is exactly what happened.

After the Dieppe Raid by British and Allied Forces in August 1942 it was plain that attacking a well-fortified Channel port was not viable, but an efficient deep water harbour facility was nevertheless needed.

The Normandy beaches had no such facilities and so, literally, the Allies had to bring their own – the Mulberry harbours, huge, ingeniously engineered structures which they had to tow across the Channel in sections and assembled once the beaches had been occupied by the initial invading forces.

The full story of the Mulberry harbours appears later in this publication.

Meanwhile, whilst there was no disguising to the Germans that an invasion was coming somewhere at some point, protecting information about the time and place was critical to success.

This they did with a brilliant campaign of deception – Operation Bodyguard – which was not only aimed at keeping the details of D-Day secret but giving the impression even after the invasion that Normandy was a feint and that the “real” invasion was still to come elsewhere. And where would that be? Hitler’s choice – the Pas De Calais.

This, too, is tackled in detail later in the publication, along with the detailed reasons for the failure of the Atlantic Wall to hold back the invaders.

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Above : Field Marshall Erwin Rommel inspecting the beach defenses in Normandy, 1944

d-day75 D-Day 6th June 1944

I

n the months before D-Day, Eisenhower had set up his headquarters in Southwick House, just north of Portsmouth – where the original map of Normandy he used remains on the wall - and it was here on 4th June that he received the news that forecasts of storms in the Channel had put the invasion planned for the following morning in grave doubt.

Despite the all-important element of surprise being put at risk and men already being tossed around in a giant flotilla of landing craft, he held back for 24 hours – the risk of rough seas causing chaos with the beach landings was too great.

Although the forecast for 6th June wasn’t pretty, it did appear to offer a window of opportunity when the storms looked set to subside for some hours.

And even now, at this late hour – especially at this late hour – the deception continued with the RAF flying a special mission over the Channel dropping metal foil and flying in carefully choreographed, overlapping formations which generated a radar pattern suggesting an invasion fleet was crossing the Channel. To where? Inevitably in to the Pas de Calais!

Meanwhile, small exploding dummy paratroopers were dropped around the Normandy countryside to distract and confuse German defenders.

The main workhorses for the air drop of thousands of paratroopers included the Horsa Glider, and American C-47 Dakotas. The Horsas were towed across to Normandy, released and left to navigate their final descent to the target area,

“We go” he calmly announced to his assembled commanders.

And they did – over 150,000 troops, 5000 ships and 10,000 aircraft.

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Above : The D-day map at Southwick House on which the progress of the Operation was plotted.

D-Day 6th June 1944 d-day75

As paratroopers descended across the Normandy coast’s hinterland, the first patch of Europe to be liberated was that around Pegasus Bridge over the River Orne by the British airborne troops led by Major John Howard.

Meanwhile as 02.00 approached US Airborne troops were dropped around the strategically important town of St. Mere d’Eglise on the road to the port of Cherbourg.

Their force had been reduced by a number being dropped in the wrong zone – where many drowned in the deliberately flooded fields before they could disconnect from their heavy kit. But 1000 or so took St. Mere d’Eglise - the first town to be liberated on D-Day. And as the C47s and Horsas delivered their valuable human cargoes, heavy bombers, including RAF Lancasters, were targeting coastal batteries and defensive installations.

“the first patch of Europe to be liberated was that around Pegasus Bridge over the River Orne by the British airborne troops led by Major John Howard” At first some German commanders thought it could be a heavy raid, but as the night sky steadily gave way to the first chinks of dawn, the defenders began to focus onthe steady appearance of the biggest military armada the world had ever known.

Meanwhile, out to sea two midget submarines, submerged for two days, rose to the surface and erected telescopic poles with lights and radio equipment to guide in the approaching armada.

At 05.30 at Ver-sur-Ver HMS Belfast opened fire with her four-inch guns, and a naval barrage along 40 miles of beaches savaged Normandy’s coastline.

And then at 06.30, the first US seaborne troops landed on their target beaches code-named Omaha and Utah. And at 07.30 British, Canadian and French troops landed on Juno, Sword and Gold Beaches.

German resistance varied along the beaches, but was particularly strong at Omaha Beach or “Bloody Omaha” as it came to be known. Even where in some cases opposition was less bloody, troops had to tackle lethal mines and obstacles.

The timing of the landings – H-Hour – was deliberately chosen so that the retreating tide would have exposed the maximum number of mines, but there were still plenty hidden under water.

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Above : The D-day invasion begins.

d-day75 D-Day 6th June 1944

By late morning some troops were heading inland beyond the beaches seeking out pre-agreed targets – though German resistance was in some cases greater behind the beaches than on them.

By mid-afternoon the Allies’ beach masters tried to get greater order on the beaches as they became jammed with newly arriving vehicles and debris from earlier fighting.

Bulldozers cleared pathways for tanks and other vehicles and special teams of engineers removed tank-traps known as “hedgehogs” – some laced with mines.

Meanwhile, the Germans put up strong resistance around the strategic town of Caen, and the Allies feared counter attacks

by Panzer units.

©Crown Copyright 1944

By mid-afternoon the convoy of Mulberry Harbour sections started to cross the Channel and during the evening more

reinforcements were coming in to buttress the bridgehead, many transported in Horsa gliders.

As dusk slowly enshrouded the carnage of the day, medics tended to the wounded and dying.

D-Day casualties numbered around 10,000, about onethird of them British. Overall deaths were about 2,500, though more recent research suggests they may have been significantly higher.

D-Day did not achieve all its territorial objectives including the taking of Bayeux and Caens, and it had inevitably taken a heavy human toll.

But it had achieved its single most important objective: the Allies had got their bridgehead from which they could commence the liberation of mainland Europe.

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - The National Museum of the Royal Navy

RESCUING A LONE SURVIVOR The National Museum of the Royal Navy

The last of her kind to see action on D-Day, LCT (Landing Craft Tank) 7074 is a rare survivor. Amy Crichton, Deputy Head of Fundraising at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, explains how her restoration will tell the story of her crew and the tanks and armoured vehicles they delivered to Normandy - and those of others who served on D-Day.

O

n 7th June 1944, 20 year-old Sub Lieutenant John Baggott, an as yet unqualified solicitor from Swindon, was about to find his place in history.

Little did Sub Lt Baggott and Sub Lt Stephens know, they were in command of an LCT which would be the last to survive of all 800 that served in 1944 – LCT 7074.

Baggott was an inexperienced officer of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who, along with the equally youthful Sub Lt Philip Stephens, was about to play his part in the largest seaborne invasion in history.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy is now working to restore this incredible piece of history and tell the vivid and moving story of her crew and all who served on D-Day.

Their task was simple; with their twelve crew members to deliver their precious cargo of 10 tanks to Gold Beach, Normandy as part of Operation Overlord – and then repeat this 32 times.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy is lucky to hold a first-hand account of the crew’s experiences, due to Sub Lt Stephens remarkable and vivid diary detailing his service on board LCT 7074 during D-Day, which the National Museum of the Royal Navy are fortunate enough to have in transcript form. Below is an excerpt from the diary:

Sub Lt Baggott was in command of a 59 metre long, 300 ton Landing Craft Tank (LCT). No mean feat, considering its blunt bow and chronic lack of power. LCTs were notoriously difficult to maintain on course in strong winds or currents.

Like Sub Lt Baggott, Commanding Officers of LCTs were often young men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, weekend sailors with limited seafaring experience who were arguably underprepared and received short periods of training for such a huge responsibility.

Regular Officers in the Royal Navy were often sent to purposebuilt warships, however young men like Sub Lt Baggott, with far less experience at sea, were sent to command Landing Craft, which were arguably a far greater challenge.

Command responsibility for a ship, ten tanks and their crews, at just 20 years old would not have happened anywhere else within the Royal Navy, and the way these young COs successfully rose to the challenge is a huge credit to them.

They carried out their difficult task with great courage and they played a huge part in ensuring D-Day was a success.

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‘With daylight we saw the Bay of the Seine packed with ships as densely as traffic in Piccadilly Circus. Cruisers, destroyers, troopships, LSTs, LCTs, MGBs, every type of ship in the Navy was there – at least 4,000 of them.

On the bridge we had the nightmare task of steering 7074 through this mass of shipping, colliding only with one, which ripped away our port guardrails…The craft alongside was a wreck, having received three direct hits as she went in.

In a pool left by the receding tide, beside an underwater steel obstruction loaded with live mines, there floated the body of a soldier – mute witness to the battle which had raged to secure the beachhead.

We examined our damage, and found we could not raise the ramp because the port wire was broken and the starboard winch smashed. The door wire we replaced, and eventually got the ramp up on one wire.

All day we were stuck on the beach, and some of the crew went ashore to Asnelles-sur-Mer and were toasted with champagne in the village restaurant. We took on board 200 German prisoners and were told to take them back to England. But when we pointed out that we had no guards they were transferred to an LST’.

Sub Lt Philip Stephens

LCTs were built quickly and considered to have covered their build costs if they made one successful trip, so few survived beyond 1945.

This critically significant association with D-Day gives her a unique interpretative value and consequently she has been designated as part of the National Historic Fleet, Certificate Number 713.

After a chequered post-war career involving conversion into a floating clubhouse and nightclub, and then an illfated attempt to conserve her by the now-defunct Warships Preservation Trust, LCT 7074 was lying in private hands, semi-derelict and sunk at her moorings at East Float Dock, Birkenhead.

However, in 2014 she was successfully salvaged and moved to Portsmouth by the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with the help of a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy is now working closely with its affiliate, Portsmouth City Council’s D-Day Story, the only museum in the UK specifically devoted to

D-Day, to restore LCT 7074 and display her to the public on Southsea Common in 2020.

As the last of her kind in the world to have seen action on D-Day, LCT 7074 is an incredibly rare and crucial survivor.

As we approach the 75th anniversary, this project becomes more poignant and significant than ever before.

The only other major warship on UK public display from the D-Day campaign is HMS Belfast and as a 10,000 ton cruiser providing gunfire support from miles offshore, she commemorates half of the story of naval participation in the operation.

The equally important task of transporting troops ashore and keeping them supplied is not commemorated by any other UK historic ship and the preservation of LCT 7074 will be an appropriate way of remembering and telling the stories of the thousands of men and women who designed, built, maintained and serviced these vital craft, as well as the young men who took them into action.

Above : Lct 7074 on gold beach, 7 June 1944.

Opposite : sub Lt John Baggott, co of Lct 7074.

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©uk MoD crown copyright 1944

“All day we were stuck on the beach, and some of the crew went ashore to Asnelles-sur-Mer and were toasted with champagne in the village restaurant.”

©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - The National Museum of the Royal Navy

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SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ThE NATiONAL mUSEUm OF ThE rOyAL NAvy d-day75

LCT (Landing Craft Tank) 7074 As the last of her kind in the world to have seen action on D-Day, LCT 7074 is an incredibly rare and crucial survivor. As we approach the 75th anniversary, the restoration project becomes more poignant and significant than ever before.

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d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - The National Museum of the Royal Navy

The ten tanks carried by LCT 7074 included a pair of Sherman tanks operated by 5th Royal Horse Artillery, a unit equipped with Sexton Self-Propelled artillery, a 25 pounder gun on a Ram tank chassis).

The Shermans were observation post (OP) tanks, which had their main armament removed so that extra crew, radios and a map table could be fitted in the turret instead. We know

from identification of the temporary embarkation number assigned to LCT 7074, that one of her tanks was involved in the Battle of Villers Bocage on the 13th June 1944.

German photographs taken after the action clearly show a knocked out Sherman OP with 7074’s embarkation number chalked on the hull.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - The National Museum of the Royal Navy d-day75

When LCT 7074 is displayed in Southsea, two tanks will be installed on her tank deck; a Churchill Crocodile (D-Day Story accession no. 1990/1405) and a Sherman Grizzly (D-Day Story accession no. 1990/1400).

In addition to this, the project will hire two apprentices for one year each, allowing a young person to develop their skills in curatorial work and take the steps into a career in heritage conservation.

The Churchill was the most important British-designed tank of the Second World War. The Crocodile was a flamethrower variant, specially developed for dealing with German fortifications in Normandy. The American-designed Sherman was one of the most numerous Allied tanks of the Second World War and was used by all the Allied armies in Normandy.

The Grizzly was a Canadian-built version.

Against the odds, LCT 7074 now lives on to tell the story of D-Day from a new perspective. Once restored and displayed, the public will be able to access the ship, interact with her and experience her in the same way as visitors to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard experience HMS Victory and HMS Warrior.

LCT 7074’s hull and superstructure (including her vulnerable and difficult-to-access double bottom and wing fuel tanks) will be stabilised. The ship will then be restored to her 1944 configuration and interpreted accordingly.

She will tell the story of the crew who served on her, living for months-on-end in cramped, uncomfortable conditions; the story of the tanks and armoured vehicles she delivered to the beaches of Normandy; and the stories of the many others who served on D-Day.

After restoration, the National Museum of the Royal Navy will safely move and transport 7074 by sea, from her current location at HM Naval Base Portsmouth, to the D-Day Story in Southsea. Bringing the ship to the museum offers an exciting opportunity to maximise public benefit, by placing her unique story in context, alongside other D-Day artefacts and the stories of hundreds of other men and women who were involved in Operation Overlord.

In parallel, the project will also ensure the construction of a strengthened base capable of bearing the weight of LCT 7074, infrastructure to manage visitor access, flow and ticketing and an awning-style canopy to protect the ship from water ingress.

The project will ensure a sustainable future for LCT 7074, ultimately saving her for the nation and adding a uniquely impressive asset, telling the often overlooked naval story of D-Day to the portfolio of extraordinary objects on display at the D-Day Story.

A range of formal and informal educational activities will engage schools and the local community. Formal educational programmes will focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), developing resources for schools and outreach sessions, hopefully inspiring children and exciting them about heritage and engineering.

The project will also provide taster days for young people considering a career in heritage and will focus on conservation, ship restoration and marine archaeology.

We need your help In total the project will cost £5.9 million. The National Museum of the Royal Navy has been awarded a generous grant of £4.7 million from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

However, it needs to raise matched funds of £1.1million. If these funds are not raised, the full extent of conservation work needed to restore 7074 to her 1944 configuration cannot be carried out and elements of her heritage will be lost.

We need your help to ensure a future for LCT 7074. Raising the full amount of funds is crucial for the project and we cannot do this without help from the public.

If you can help us raise the funds to carry out and complete the much-needed restoration work for LCT 7074 you can make a donation to the project on the National Museum’s crowdfunding page, which is aiming to raise £25,000 towards the matched funds.

Please help us save this incredible piece of history for the nation and continue to tell the story of D-Day for years to come.

You can donate here:

justgiving.com/campaign/saveLCT7074

Get in touch For more information on this project please contact Amy Crichton, Deputy Head of Fundraising at the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Opposite Top : One of the Sherman tanks embarked on LCT 7074 after the battle of Villers-Bocage in France, June 1944

amy.crichton@nmrn.org.uk.

Opposite : A Churchill Crocodile tank (left) and a Sherman Grizzly tank (right)

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d-day75 The Great D-Day Hoax

The Great D-Day Hoax Surprise was critical to success on D-Day – and to generate and retain it, the Allies arguably assembled the most complex and comprehensive deception operation in military history.

T

he Germans were expecting D-Day. But they had a number of problems. They didn’t know when it would take place, where it would take place, whether there would be one D-Day, two D-Days or more and, if so would they all be on the same D-Day or would there be several different D-Days– and, if so, how far would they be spread out - both geographically and chronologically?

For German military planners preparing to defend western Europe’s vast coastline from the Arctic Circle down to France’s border with Spain it was their worst nightmare. And if that wasn’t bad enough there was also France’s Mediterranean coastline from Spain across to Italy. After all the Allies were now in control of North Africa…

The Germans could not fail to miss the massive build-up of Allied troops and equipment in the UK, but what were the Allies going to do with it all?

They thought that their intelligence network in Britain was providing helpful information – which, indeed, it was but helpful to the Allies not the Germans.

Germany’s spy network had been dismantled by the British - some had simply handed themselves in to the authorities, whilst a good number had been turned into double-agents prepared to pass to their old masters what their new masters gave them and thereby becoming, in the process, a perfect conduit for Allied deception.

Then, of course, there was the remarkable work of Bletchley Park, the forebear of GCHQ which this year celebrates its Centenary. Since early in the war the cracking of Germany’s Enigma Code – which the Germans themselves believed to be uncrackable – meant that Britain and her Allies were able to read German cyphers.

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© Lenscap Photography / Shutterstock.com

The Great D-Day Hoax d-day75

Above, right : Juan Pujol Garcia (alias Garbo) was a Catalan spy who worked for both Britain and Germany. The false information Pujol supplied helped persuade the Germans that the main attack would be in the Pas de Calais, so that they kept large forces there before and even after the invasion.

Above : Enigma Machine, Used to decode enemy messages which meant meant that Britain and her Allies were able to read German cyphers.

Opposite : Inflatable tanks were used during Operation Fortitude,

A vital source of information and intelligence, it became a critically important means of discovering how far Allied deception was succeeding ahead of D-Day – and afterwards as the invasion force sought to build-out a broad bridge-head from the initial landing grounds.

Deception and warfare had gone on down the ages but nothing on the scale of that which preceded D-Day. During the Second World War itself it had been used ahead of the battle of El Alamein and involved, amongst other things, mocked-up model tanks to give a false impression of strength and deployment.

“Germany’s spy network had been dismantled by the British - some had simply handed themselves in to the authorities, whilst a good number had been turned into double-agents...”

And during 1943 there were attempts in the Channel to confuse the enemy and lure the Luftwaffe in to confrontation with Allied fighter aircraft by sailing a fake “invasion force” towards the French coast…with, as it happened, little success.

The big D-Day deception was code-named Operation Bodyguard and was officially approved on Christmas Day 1943 after the Allies had settled the details of Overlord.

Bodyguard’s objectives were threefold – to convince the Germans that the invasion was coming in the Pas de Calais, hide the actual location along with the timing and strength of the invasion force, and after the invasion had taken place in Normandy ensure that reinforcements were retained in the Pas de Calais for at least 14 days.

Bodyguard comprised a number of component operations, the largest and most important of which was Operation Fortitude – so big that it comprised two component parts: Fortitude North and Fortitude South.

Fortitude North was aimed primarily at Scandinavia and Fortitude South at the Pas de Calais.

Using fake radio traffic and false intelligence relayed through double-agents to Germany Fortitude North fostered a fictitious British Fourth Army based in Edinburgh which appeared to threaten Norway and would therefore, hopefully, keep German troops pinned down which could be used elsewhere.

Fortitude South, using similar methods, created the Fifth United States Army Group (FUSAG) in the south-east of England headed by none other than the uncompromising , rumbustious General Patton who the Germans had faced in North Africa, Sicily and Italy – and respected, indeed some had feared.

FUSAG, “located” so close to the Pas de Calais, not only had to convey the impression of being the real invasion force ahead of the Normandy Landings, but also after the latter had taken place, delaying the movement of German troops from Calais down to Normandy.

Fortitude South successfully provided German planners with everything they needed to reinforce their already held view that the Pas de Calais was the selected landing ground, whilst keeping Normandy safely under wraps.

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d-day75 DECEPTION

And then in the days that followed D-Day it became clear from cypher intercepts at Bletchley that the Germans were buying in to the ruse that FUSAG still remained the major invasion in force which could at any moment set sale for Calais. So much so that reinforcements from the region took seven weeks to join battle with the Allies in Normandy – five weeks longer than the targeted delay.

Fortitude was the most important and successful component of operation Bodyguard. Others played relatively minor support roles sowing confusion where possible.

Amongst them was Operation Copperhead involving an actor - Meyrick Edward Clifton James of the Army Pay Corps who had seen action at the Somme during the First World War. He was spotted by MI5 as Monty’s double and inveigled in to a plot to play the role of the – by now – famous General in an operation which, whilst deadly serious, has a strong dose of farce about it.

Unfortunately for Copperhead’s perpetrators his resemblance to Monty did not stretch as far as his drinking habits: Monty was tea-total and Clifton James liked a few snorters, along with a cigarette or two, which was another big Monty no-no.

Indeed Monty even once asked Eisenhower not to smoke in his presence.

This was all a trifle unfortunate as the role involved him flying to Gibraltar to meet the British Governor and on to Algiers to meet up with US General Maitland Clark, Supreme Commander North Africa – and be seen to be doing so for the benefit of German spies who duly reported his presence back to their masters.

The idea was that if he was down in the western Mediterranean a cross-Channel invasion in which the Germans expected him to play a major role could not be imminent. Indeed could Monty be discussing a possible invasion of southern France from North Africa instead of – or in addition to – a crossChannel invasion? Possibly, according to what Monty was overheard saying at a reception at a cocktail party given by the Governor of Gibraltar.

The ruse generally worked though it had its challenging moments including his initial arrival in Churchill’s private plane from RAF Northolt, having smuggled a bottle of whiskey aboard. Somewhat under the influence his handlers asked the pilot to keep circling whilst they sobered him up as best they could….and later in the visit there was talk of Monty being caught secretly drinking.

In the end his escort was happy to get him on board plane in Algiers and secreted away to Cairo for several weeks until Overlord had taken place..

But that wasn’t to be the end of such an entertaining story.

Clifton James wrote a book about it predictably entitled “I was Monty’s Double” which was made in to a film in 1954 starring John Mills and, you guessed it, Clifton James as Monty – as well as himself.

It’s unclear how much the Germans bought in to Operation Copperhead, but British public did at the box office!

Right : M. E. Clifton James had ‘rescued’ a failing patriotic show by appearing in it, quite briefly, as ‘Monty’. MI5 decided to exploit the resemblance to confuse German intelligence.

© Crown copyright 1944

Below : A film poster for “I was Monty’s Double”.

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d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - ABF THE SOLDIERS’ CHARITY

ABF The Soldiers’ Charity 75 Years of Service (1944–2019)

In 2019, The Soldiers’ Charity is celebrating 75 years of service as the Army’s national charity. Lizzie Stephens reflects on its long-standing commitment to soldiers, veterans and their families.

J

uly 1944. Joseph Connor, a Trooper with the 15th (Scottish) Reconnaissance Regiment, watches the ramp of the landing craft rattle down into the surf. Ahead, the Normandy coastline rears out of the mist: shingle, wet smooth sand and beyond it, rolling green country retreating into mist.

The skeletons of stranded landing craft project like fins from the sand as Joseph’s vehicle plunges into the spray, ploughing through six inches of water and on towards the dunes.

Joseph is one of millions of British servicemen currently involved in operations across the globe. As the tide of the war begins to turn, the Army Board in London turns its attention to the welfare of those soldiers after peace is won.

The mandate is clear: to protect this current generation from the hardships endured by those returning in 1918. Thus, even as Joseph’s vehicle is coursing across the Normandy shingle, plans are in motion for the forming of a national charity for the British Army.

The Army Benevolent Fund (ABF) – as the charity was then known – was born from months of careful planning. As early as February 1944, Secretary of State for War Sir James Grigg had placed before Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet a memorandum calling for the creation of a benevolent fund for the Army.

The fund would mirror the work of the other service benevolent funds by providing timely and confidential financial support “to the serving soldier and his dependents.”

The War Cabinet approved the scheme on 28th May – mere days before D-Day – and the ABF was established by Trust Deed on 15th August under the patronage of HRH King George VI. In Normandy, Joseph’s route takes him through dusty, potted roads; over trampled hedgerows and into a field where they come under attack from German mortar fire. He later recalls passing a tank on the side of the road “with just legs sitting outside it.” Joseph’s vehicle is a Humber Light Armoured Car, with a gun projecting from a central turret.

As reconnaissance, his job is to drive towards the enemy, drawing fire in order to pinpoint German positions. Flanked by two ‘heavies’ (tanks) he often finds himself in the first car driving towards enemy lines.

Joseph’s war ends in October 1944. While on sentry duty, his gun slips from his shoulder and discharges, wounding him in the arm, back and lung. Joseph is shipped back to Britain to receive treatment and is medically discharged from the Army. He is subsequently awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur for the part he played in the liberation of France.

Meanwhile, in Hogarth House in London, the Control Board of the Army Benevolent Fund has begun to direct its grant-giving activities, awarding block grants to Regimental and Corps charities and other organisations. These vital funds find their way to young soldiers like Joseph recovering from sickness or injury; to widows and families struggling with traumatic loss; to former soldiers embarking on the next chapter; and to elderly veterans in need of care, comfort and support.

In 2010, the ABF rebrands as ABF The Soldiers’ Charity.

Although its name has changed, its purpose remains the same: ensuring that soldiers, veterans and their immediate families can live a life of independence and dignity, now and in the future.

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“I appreciate the fact that I left the Army all those years ago and I still get help from The Soldiers’ Charity as if it was yesterday.”

Above : Joseph, pictured holding his newspaper citation.

Opposite : Joseph, left pictured with comrades in 1944.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ABF ThE SOLdiErS’ ChAriTy

“While there is a British Army, there will be The Soldiers’ Charity”

Left :Joseph can now drive up to his front door with ease, and is enjoying life with the independence and dignity he deserves.

Today, 75 years after the Battle of Normandy, Joseph is a sprightly 94-year-old living independently at home in Glasgow. He struggles with limited mobility and uses an electric scooter to get around.

Back in 2017, Joseph contacted his local SSAFA branch with a request for help. He was having difficulty accessing his car and scooter, which had to be stored in a lock-up several streets away from his house.

SSAFA contacted The Soldiers’ Charity, which acted promptly with a grant for a new tarmac driveway. Joseph can now get to and from town with ease, allowing him to continue enjoying life with the independence and dignity he deserves.

Reflecting on the grant, Joseph says: “I appreciate the fact that I left the Army all those years ago and still I get help from The Soldiers’ Charity as if it was yesterday.”

For the past 75 years, The Soldiers’ Charity has served as the Army’s National Charity, providing a lifetime of support to the soldiers, veterans and families when they are in need.

In the past year, it has helped over 70,000 people in 68 countries across the globe and funded 92 other charities and organisations to support the Army family at large. As long as there is a British Army, there will be The Soldiers’ Charity.

Support The Soldiers’ Charity ABF The Soldiers’ Charity is the national charity of the British Army. We were formed in 1944 to ensure that soldiers returning from campaigns like D-Day were well taken care of. Our purpose has not changed in 75 years: we exist to ensure that all soldiers, veterans and their families can live a life of independence and dignity, now and in the future.

To find out how you can make a difference, visit www.soldierscharity.org/donate

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© Crown copyright 1944

D-Day and the NAVY d-day75

OPERATION NEPTUNE Without command of the sea there would have been no D-Day. Peter Hore, a former captain in the Royal Navy and naval historian and author, explains how Operation Neptune’s success was built on masterful planning and previous hard won naval victories by the Royal Navy and its allies throughout the war - in particular the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest military campaign of the entire conflict.

T

he naval and amphibious part of the D-Day landings in Normandy was named Operation Neptune, after the Roman god of the seas, appropriately because the Royal Navy, with its allies, had to gain command of the seas.

First, this meant winning the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest, continuous military campaign of the Second World War, and the longest, largest, and most complex naval battle in history.

The defeat of the U-boat threat was a prerequisite for defeating Nazi Germany, and it was a strategic victory won at great cost: 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk in the Atlantic costing some 60,000 lives.

In return, 800 German and Italian U-boats were sunk, and some 50 major warships of the German surface fleet were eliminated.

By ‘Black May’ in 1943 the Germans were forced to suspend operations in the Atlantic and in the following months hundreds of thousands of mainly American and Canadian troops were convoyed safely by the Royal Navy as the buildup of men and supplies needed for the D-Day landings gathered momentum.

Second, amphibious raids on the coasts of Europe pinned down German forces, brought back valuable intelligence, and caused lessons to be learned.

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d-day75 d-dAy ANd ThE NAvy

The raid on the Lofoten Islands in March 1941, was the first of many which kept several hundred thousand German troops in Norway away from other, active war fronts.

naval forces from the island and reopened the Mediterranean sea lanes to Allied merchant ships, were dress rehearsals for D-Day in Normandy.

The bloody but clinical success of the Bruneval Raid in February 1942, which captured a German radar set, bolstered British morale, but was overshadowed by the relative failure of the Dieppe Raid in August that year.

Both these major operations were devised by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who in October 1943 was appointed Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Expeditionary Force (ANCXF) for the Normandy landings.

The lessons learned - and applied to subsequent landings comprised the need for intelligence, including beach surveys, surprise, naval bombardment, specialised landing craft, and the avoidance of a direct frontal attack on defended ports.

Ramsay would achieve what the historian Correlli Barnett called a “never surpassed masterpiece of planning”, coordinating and commanding a fleet of almost 7,000 vessels to deliver over 160,000 men onto the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944 and by the end of the month to land over 875,000 men and women, their supplies and weapons.

Meanwhile, the St.Nazaire Raid in March 1942 destroyed the dry-dock, which any German battleship would need for operations in the Atlantic, and helped motivate the Germans into building the so-called Atlantic Wall.

Comprising 15,000 bunkers, the Atlantic Wall wound its way from France’s Spanish border to northern Norway.

Ultimately, it proved useless but sucked vast resources and manpower out of the German war effort.

In addition to the logistics miracle which Ramsay wrought, no single issue was more often discussed during planning than that of H-Hour – the time of day the invasion would commence, and H-hour, in turn, determined the choice of D-Day.

Third, large scale landings in North Africa, Operation Torch in November 1942 against the Vichy French, and Operation Husky on Sicily in July 1943, which drove Axis air, land and

Opposite : aerial photograph of ships of the royal navy massing off the Isle of Wight before setting off for the normandy beaches.

Below : commandos are seen here wading ashore from landing craft, onto the beaches of normandy, June 1944.

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© MoD/crown copyright 1944

“To land five divisions with their stores, weapons and transport across heavily defended beaches on a 40-mile front in the Bay of Seine required exquisite timing.“

D-Day and the NAVY d-day75

“His decision to go-ahead on June 6 was the right one. A fortnight later a sudden gale from the north swept the beaches with 8-foot high waves.”

The Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower was faced with the choice of making the landings on 6 June during a temporary lull in the unseasonably poor weather or a delay of two weeks until the tide was favourable again during which time he might lose tactical surprise and face a loss of morale.

His decision to go-ahead on June 6 was the right one. A fortnight later a sudden gale from the north swept the beaches with 8-foot high waves. © Crown copyright 1944

On D-Day, the Royal Navy’s responsibilities were formidable.

They included the loading and berthing arrangements for Ramsay’s Armada; the measures for security against the enemy and the weather, the disembarkation and flow of men and equipment across the beaches, and the continued flow of reinforcements and supplies.

On top of this came direct support for the army by bombardment – some cruisers and destroyers closed to pointblank range to hit hardened targets.

Above: Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay KCB MVO Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Forces.

To land five divisions with their stores, weapons and transport across heavily defended beaches on a 40-mile front in the Bay of Seine required exquisite timing.

Time was needed before the landings for shore bombardment and as many daylight hours as possible of rising tide, so that the landing craft could be retracted and make room for follow-up craft, and a second high-tide before nightfall.

The best conditions would occur between three and four hours before high water and 40 minutes before dawn.

In the end, the Germans themselves chose H-Hour by placing underwater obstacles on the beaches: this required the first landing craft to touch down short of these obstacles so that they were visible and able to be countermined.

Besides the ships, 125 fighters and 132 torpedo-bombers of the Fleet Air Arm flew from shore bases in England in support of the Normandy landings.

Additionally, the Royal Navy’s carriers provided distant cover during the landings, operating off Norway to guard against the remaining units of the German fleet, or protecting shipping from U-boats far out in the Atlantic. And Royal Marine commandos were, of course, among the first to land on Gold, Juno and Sword beaches.

Ramsay already deserved great credit for having masterminded the evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. But he would become more famous still for his intricate and careful planning of Operation Neptune, surpassing anything yet to be seen in the history of warfare.

Tragically he was killed in an aircraft crash in January 1945.

As the tide filled the Bay, H-hour in the west would be approximately an hour earlier than in the east. Such conditions restricted the choice of D-day to three days in every fortnight.

The first ships for Operation Neptune, two Royal Navy miniature submarines (as marker buoys) from Portsmouth and Royal Navy battleships from distant Scapa Flow, had already sailed on 2 June, when bad weather in the English Channel forced a 24-hour delay.

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About the Author Peter Hore is the author of a number of books on naval warfare including The Habit of Victory: the history of the British Navy from 1545 to 1945 (2005) and Battleships of World War 1 (2007). His latest book is Henry Harwood: Hero of the River Plate.

d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - NATiONwidE BUiLdiNG SOCiETy

SERviNG THOSE WHO SERvE NATiONwidE BUiLdiNG SOCiETy

As Britain marks the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, the Nationwide Building Society’s Graeme Hood, a former serving Army officer and current reservist and now a Project Manager in Nationwide’s transformation team, reflects on the Society’s long tradition of support for members of the Armed Forces who protect and defend the country’s interests.

For me as a former serving officer in the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and now a reservist in the Royal Wessex Yeomanry, any major national military anniversary is a time of special reflection.

And the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings is no exception – especially as D-Day represented the beginning of the end of Nazi domination of Europe and the preservation of our freedom, albeit at great human cost.

Over 1,400 British troops died on D-Day itself, many more were injured and families, relationships and friendships were changed forever – or just torn apart.

As someone who has seen what conflict, albeit on a much smaller scale, can do, I feel a certain closeness to those who – tired, cold, wet, hearts beating furiously – stormed out of landing craft and on to Normandy’s beaches not knowing what to expect, but hoping beyond hope that Allied naval and air bombardment had done its stuff.

But it goes deeper than that – anniversaries such as these are acute reminders of the responsibility that society has today towards all members of the Armed Forces, and their families, who have served or currently serve their country.

“I am proud to be part of an organisation which takes its responsibility towards the military very seriously in line with the terms of the Government’s Armed Forces Covenant to which it is a signatory”

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SPONSORED FEATURE - nationwide building society d-day75

Opposite : Graeme Hood, a former serving officer in 9th/12th Royal Lancers.

Left : Post war housing shortage was eased by around one million new-builds between 1945 and 1955.

© Everett Historical / Shutterstock

Below : Firefighters tackling a blaze amongst ruined buildings after an air raid on London.

In this respect, I am proud to be part of an organisation which takes its responsibility towards the military very seriously in line with the terms of the Government’s Armed Forces Covenant to which it is a signatory.

However, Nationwide’s history of caring support for members of the Armed Forces and their families is not a recent development – it emanated from the organisation’s forebears’ spiritual roots as “mutuals” created and operated for the benefit of their members, and their caring ethos which usually extended to employees, whether members or not.

During the First World War, for example, building societies generally helped staff who were called up to join the forces by topping up their military pay to previous civilian levels, keeping jobs open for them, and often giving a period of paid leave before they joined their regiments.

Moreover, our own predecessor, the Co-operative Permanent Building Society, helped reduce housing loan costs of our members who were on active service by allowing them to pay only the interest on their loans during the war. Interest-only mortgages were non-existent at this time so this was very much a radical departure from usual practices.

It was deployed again much more widely during the Second World War when we adopted the principles of “sympathy, simplicity and speed” to help members whose property had been damaged or destroyed in air raids.

Much UK housing was lost to bombing and had to be replaced after the war. This coincided with house demolition and re-development programmes to improve the overall quality of housing stock in line with public expectations that the end of the War would and, indeed, should result in better living conditions, given years of hardship and great sacrifice.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - NATiONwidE BUiLdiNG SOCiETy

The Nationwide and its fellow building societies increasingly facilitated the mortgage lending needed to deliver this postwar national housing programme – and would have helped many former and serving members of the Armed Forces achieve their dream of owning a home of their own.

We recognise that frequent house moves are an integral part of service life, hence we enable military personnel to rent out their own homes when posted, and we ensure that applications with a BFPO address history are reviewed by our specialists so that serving overseas doesn’t affect accessing a mortgage.

Nationwide is proud that our historical support to our Armed Services forged during the First World War and the Second World War continues to this day via our commitments to the Armed Forces Covenant.

Finally, the Nationwide is an active advocate of our reserve forces. Not only do we help our colleagues in the reserves by providing two additional weeks of paid leave for annual training periods, but we also protect the jobs of anyone mobilised for active duty.

We are proud to support the Forces Help to Buy Scheme, which allows military personnel to use an interest free loan from the Ministry of Defence as a deposit for a home of their own.

We understand that the special circumstances of military service deserve special treatment, and we continuously strive to ensure that this is the case.

AbouT THe AuTHoR Graeme Hood is a Project Manager in Nationwide’s transformation team helping Nationwide meet the needs of its members now and in the future.

Key Points of the Forces Help to Buy Scheme The most difficult part of buying a home is often securing a deposit which can take a long time to save up for and is not always easy when you have other things to budget for such as legal fees and moving costs.

The larger your deposit then, generally, the lower the interest rate you may qualify for.

The Forces Help to Buy Scheme FHTB scheme is a government scheme offering Armed Forces Service Personnel an interest-free loan towards a deposit to buy a property.

Eligible applicants can apply to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to borrow up to 50% of their salary, up to a maximum of £25,000.

Eligible applicants can use their FHTB loan towards their deposit amount, on Help to Buy Equity Loan or Shared Ownership applications if they are also providing a deposit from our current acceptable sources.

You can find out more by calling us on 0800 30 20 10 (Mon-Fri 8am-8pm, Sat 9am-5pm) or visiting your local branch or via our web site www.nationwide.co.uk You can find out if you are eligible for Forces Help to Buy via

www.gov.uk/guidance/forces-help-to-buy

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© Everett Historical / Shutterstock

d-day75 The Mulberry Harbour

THE MULBERRY HARBOUR As a landing ground the Normandy beaches lacked one essential requirement – deep water harbours. So the Allies brought their own. Alan Spence tells the story of the remarkable Mulberry Harbours that helped change history.

F

or the invasion force to stand any chance at all of retaining the positions it occupied on D-Day itself, let alone of advancing inland, it needed immediate additional massive support in men and equipment to confront the inevitable German build-up of forces in the area, and fierce counteroffensives.

To land vast numbers of additional men and heavy equipment from tanks and artillery to every type of transport vehicle would need deep water ports with crane facilities where large vessels could dock and rapidly offload their cargoes, as protected as possible from the natural elements, let alone attacks by the enemy.

One of the few gains from the unsuccessful Dieppe Raid of late August 1942 by Canadian and British forces was the

demonstration beyond doubt that taking a heavily defended major port was out of the question. Even if successful, the battle to occupy it, coupled with likely sabotage operations by the Germans themselves, would likely render it unusable.

D-Day architects had wrestled with this problem for years.

Only so much could be delivered by landing craft directly on to beaches – even by the big front-end unloading vessels built for the invasion, the precursors of peacetime roll-on-roll-off ferries.

And the Germans knew all this only too well. Which made vast empty beaches, exposed by huge tidal shift, and long stretches of shallow offshore water, another reason why Normandy was amongst less than likely targets for the biggest amphibious invasion in history?

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The Mulberry Harbour d-day75

The answer was simple in concept - and immensely complex in delivery. At a meeting held after the Dieppe Raid, ViceAdmiral John Hughes-Hallett, who had been its naval commander, pronounced that if the Allied forces could not secure a suitable port by force they should take one with them…and that was what happened. Indeed, there were two and they were called Mulberry harbours.

The Mulberry harbour was a remarkable invention combining a number of components including, block ships, gigantic concrete and steel caissons –hollow chambers, huge floating pier heads and miles of roadways on pontoons, and floating breakwaters called bombardon.

The block ships were a motley collection of aging vessels, gutted of anything salvageable and then navigated in to position under their own steam – as part of a huge, perimeter wall half circling out to sea and back again to the coast.

“..... if the Allied forces could not secure a suitable port by force they should take one with them…and that was what happened.” and lowered by compressed air and were towed in sections across the sea, albeit very slowly at little more than 4.5 knots (five miles or 8 kms an hour), to take their place in the sea wall.

The bombardons comprised another floating half circle of breakwater to protect the Mulberry Harbour, whilst within the harbour large sea-going vessels docked at giant floating pier heads which were connected to the shore by up to a mile of floating roadway on pontoons.

Opposite : Mulberry harbor off Omaha beach in operation before the storm on June 19-22, 1944. Vehicles move from the piers over the causeway to the Normandy shore.

Below : Mulberry harbor off off Arromanches in Normandy, September 1944.

© Crown copyright 1944

The caissons were the most spectacular component of the Mulberry Harbours. Built at several locations around the UK from vast amounts of concrete and steel they could be raised

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“The worst gales in living memory blew up on June 19 eventually wrecking Omaha’s Mulberry Harbour three days later and it had to abandoned.“

There were two Mulberry Harbours constructed – one for Arrogances (Mulberry B) on the British/Canadian Gold Beach and another ( Mulberry A) for the Americans’ Omaha Beach. The plan was that they would be used until the Allies were able to capture major French and other ports capable of taking the weight and volume of military traffic – a period possibly extending to three months.

Once the signals began to come through confirming beach heads had been taken on D-Day the Mulberry Fleet inched out in to the Channel with amongst everything else almost 150 caissons in tow.

Within 12 days (D-Day+12) two Mulberry Harbours were in operation – one at Arromanches in the British Gold Beach and one at Omaha Beach.

wrecking Omaha’s Mulberry Harbour three days later and it had to abandoned.

Its wreckage could only be used subsequently as a part breakwater for vessels in bad weather – and some its component were salvage for repairs at Arromanches, which continued to support the Allied Forces for 10 more months.

In all around 2.5 million men, four million tons of supplies and 500,000 vehicles were landed at Arromanches before it was eventually replaced by facilities provided by the increasing number of liberated ports from Cherbourg to Antwerp.

But without it in those early desperate weeks after D-Day many believe the invasion would never have succeeded.

Then disaster struck. The weather which had done its best to threaten D-Day had its last big ‘say’ on the operation. The worst gales in living memory blew up on June 19 eventually

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Above : twisted metal of ‘Mulberry a’, at omaha Beach. a storm on June 19-22, 1944, wrecked the harbor beyond repair, contributing to the allies’ supply problems.

© eVerett historicaL / shutterstock

d-day75 ThE mULBErry hArBOUr

The Mulberry Harbour d-day75

Mulberry Harbours majestic, practicable, inventive “The whole question of the invasion of Europe might well have turned on the practicability of these artificial harbours”

“One of the most inventive logistical undertakings of the war” US General Omar Bradley

Winston Churchill

Surviving caissons…. take a look

T

he best place to see caissons today is in Arromanches – a jumbled group of them still roughly describe the outer wall of the harbour and you can walk to the nearest at low tide. In Britain itself there are a few around the coast – including one that rests in Thorpe Bay, Southend where it foundered whilst being towed to Southsea in 1944, and a couple form part of the harbour at Castletown, Portland.

Whose idea was the Mulberry Harbour?

W

© Crown copyright 1944

ho conceived the idea of the Mulberry Harbour?

Answers to this question vary but Churchill himself looks as though he had a personal hand in it, coming up with a concept which resembled the final outcome during the First rather than the Second World War. Always restless to break the stalemate of trench warfare it seems to have been part of a plan to threaten Germany’s northern coast via amphibious landings from nearby islands

Caisson builders…..

T

he building of the caisson stretched to the limit Britain’s civil engineering and building skills….and the limited resources and materials available.

They were built in great secrecy mainly in shipyards around the British coast by companies many of which remain instantly recognisable names in the construction industry, including Bovis, Balfour Beatty, John Laing and Costain.

Together the absorbed over 250,000 cubic metres of concrete and more than 30,000 tons of steel. They varied in size some displacing 2000 tons of water – others up to 6000 tons.

Discussing this with Prime Minister Lloyd George he sketched a form of portable harbour comprising sections which could be towed in to position and assembled for much the same purpose as the Mulberry Harbour.

However, the sketches were filed away – in 1917 it’s time had not yet come…

It did though in 1942 as discussions about how to successfully invade France intensified. Frustrated with progress Churchill launched his precipitous memo entitled “Piers for use on beaches” on May 30 that year.

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© Chris Bourloton / Shutterstock

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander

“The whole project was majestic”

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL NAVAL ASSOCIATION

THE ROYAL NAVAL ASSOCIATION

Saluting Naval Veterans of the ‘Longest Day’ Captain Bill Oliphant, General Secretary of the Royal Naval Association (RNA) – motto Once Navy, Always Navy - pays tribute to the veterans of D-Day, and describes the work of the RNA in providing support to members and bringing the wider Naval Service family together.

A

s the General Secretary of the Royal Naval Association (RNA) it gives me great pride to pay tribute to the veterans of ‘the longest day’ on behalf of all the Naval Service Veterans we represent today.

Operation Neptune and the follow on Operation Overlord are rightly remembered as the largest invasion force assembled and launched against mainland Europe.

Speaking with the older generation of RNA members, I am humbled to hear their stories about this most precious time in their naval careers.

Some served on the 7,000 naval vessels involved in ferrying the troops, others served with the Marines as naval communicators or naval swimmers involved in mapping the beaches or lighting the way for the ships as they approached their assault positions.

Just recently I was at sea with some of our shipmates as they toured the harbour which 75 years ago had been solid with ships laden with men and their equipment.

Many marked their day with a toast to friends and messmates long-departed.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL NAVAL ASSOCIATION d-day75

I look forward to welcoming those who wish to continue their association with the Royal Navy and Royal Marines as members of our Association. Today, more than ever, veterans need your support, whether as a Member of the Association ‘keeping a watchful eye’ on fellow shipmates or offering advice and support to those leaving the Royal Navy and adjusting to life back ashore with their families.

Gaining its Royal Charter in 1954 and formed from the Naval old comrades clubs, the RNA of 2019 is fully engaged with the serving Royal Navy, and has flagship projects that are exemplars of social initiatives for the veterans’ community.

These embody our motto of ‘Once Navy, Always Navy’ and are impressive examples of bringing the wider Naval Service family together for the greater good.

Project Semaphore, for example, won the ‘Peoples Choice’ award this year at the ‘Soldiering On Awards’ - an opportunity to publicly recognise the hard work and innovative projects of those who support the Armed Forces community.

The project has a simple premise – if a veteran is not online, he or she is ‘digitally isolated’, and therefore likely to suffer socially and financially. It is estimated by BT Openreach that an individual who does not have access to online services could be £1,000 a year worse off, missing out on online shopping, banking, benefits, travel insurance and the like.

But more than this, Project Semaphore brings social benefits.

An iPad opens a new world of messaging and video links with family and friends around the globe, allows veterans to pursue interests and hobbies, maybe researching their old ships or keeping up with today’s Royal Navy.

Under Project Semaphore, more than 700 iPads have so far been issued free of charge to Navy (and other military) veterans to get them online, with funding from the Aged Veterans Fund, Greenwich Hospital and RNRMC, amongst others.

That new burst of social interaction begins with the training provided by RNA volunteers and supporters – serving sailors are involved, as are Sea Cadets, spanning the past, present and future of the Naval Service.

Another project that tackles the widespread problem of isolation in the vulnerable and elderly is a fleet of three modern, well-equipped minibuses, named after modern naval heroes that can be borrowed by branches or other groups to undertake activities.

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Opposite : Bill Oliphant with Chris Ward and Ron Hale from Aylesbury Branch.

Above : A veteran receives his free iPad as part of Project Semaphore. The project won the Peoples Choice award this year at the ‘Soldiering On Awards’.

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL NAVAL ASSOCIATION

“Shipmates and Oppos, provides ‘an arm round the shoulder’ of those leaving the Royal Navy or Royal Marines.”

Paid for by the LIBOR fines levied on the banking industry, the minibuses provide comfortable transport at minimal cost to members, whether they want to visit a local attraction or travel across country to a formal naval event.

Two further RNA projects were created specifically to meet a need in the Royal Navy.

The first, Shipmates and Oppos, provides ‘an arm round the shoulder’ of those leaving the Royal Navy or Royal Marines.

That could mean helping someone settle in a new area by providing contacts, or signposting the way to professional support.

By signing up to Shipmates and Oppos, an individual can opt for an annual ‘wellbeing check’ for up to five years after they leave the Service, smoothing their path to civvy street. Now in its fourth year, Shipmates and Oppos – which is funded by Greenwich Hospital – are fully supported by the Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy boasts centuries of illustrious deeds, bravery, innovation and loyalty, but as well as celebrating those tales it uses the golden thread of history to inform and enthuse sailors of today and tomorrow.

The second initiative is the Culture, Ethos and Values mentoring programme, through which new joiners to the Royal Navy and junior sailors are introduced to the history and traditions that underpin the Service.

RNA West Country branch members provide support to trainees at HMS Raleigh in Cornwall, with one recent captain commending the inherent qualities and determination of all mentors in establishing recruits’ confidence, extolling the virtue of service life, personal experiences and maintaining a good rapport with the training staff.

Top : CPO Kate Nesbitt, Military Cross recipient after whom one of the 3 LIBOR minibuses was named.

Middle : First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Philip Jones KCB ADC signing up to the Shipmates and Oppos Programme. He is watched by Capt Bill Oliphant GS of the RNA, Chrissie Hughes project Manager and Kim Richardson OBE Greenwich Hospital Trust (who fund the project) Above : Lt Cdr Andy Christie RN Rtd instructing a class of trainees during an RN Culture and Values tour of Portsmouth Dockyard.

Phase 2 trainees at HMS Collingwood and Sultan in Hampshire are briefed by RNA Central Office staff, usually in the Historic Dockyard, where they stand atop Semaphore Tower taking in the past, including HMS Victory and Warrior, and the present, represented by aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth and cutting-edge destroyers.

RNA mentoring is an integral part of the RN’s Operation Inspire programme that addresses the core values of commitment, courage, discipline, respect for others, integrity and loyalty. It is not everyone who can say that their ‘home’ is amidst such an historical setting as today’s sailors in their home ports of Portsmouth, Plymouth or Faslane.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL NAVAL ASSOCIATION d-day75

“The RNA also commissioned one of the most impressive structures at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.”

And, of course, there is still a need for the RNA to look back and pay tribute to the thousands of souls who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Besides supporting local, regional and national Naval, military and civic events, the RNA also commissioned one of the most impressive structures at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

The Naval Service Memorial was created for the entire Naval Service – Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Reservists, Wrens, RFA et al – and as RNA President Vice Admiral John McAnally observed at the Royal opening ceremony: “This striking design breaks with tradition, whilst incorporating the essence of the sea in all its moods.”

Marking the Association’s 60th anniversary, the Naval Service Memorial is a stunning arrangement of 13 glass panels representing the shades of the various oceans and seas, with a sailor figure bowing to the west in respect of lost comrades – “at the going down of the sun, we will remember them.”

Find out more

The glass ‘sails’ create the shadow of a modern warship on the stone plinth when the sun shines, and the memorial’s bright colours instantly catch the eye.

www.royal-naval-association.co.uk/join-us

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If you would like to continue your association with our naval heritage, whether as a Member of the Royal Naval Association or financially in support of our ongoing work please apply to join or find out more about what we do from our website.

© MoD/Crown copyright 1940

D-Day: The Impact of Air Power Dr. Paul Stoddart, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, explores the impact of air power before, during and after the D-Day landings.

A

ir power arguably played a decisive role in the preparation for and the execution of the Normandy landings of 6th June 1944. The operation faced huge risks, including significant coastal defences and armoured divisions held as a mobile reserve.

A prompt counter-attack could have inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the invading forces. Achieving favourable conditions for the invasion involved the massive application of air power in a range of roles, including air superiority, reconnaissance, deception, airborne assault and interdiction.

The Allied air campaign comprised three phases. First, gaining air superiority through defeating the Luftwaffe. Second, isolating the Normandy battlespace by interdiction of transport links. Third, post invasion, battlefield interdiction and close support.

Historian John Terraine asserted “allied air power was so overwhelming that the defeat of Allied intentions on the ground never threatened disaster, only delay …. what made the ultimate victory possible was crushing air power”.

All European theatre Allied air power was assigned to supporting the invasion preparations, despite objections from RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF 8th Air Force whose commanders wanted to focus their total effort on the strategic bomber offensive over Germany.

Major preparation missions included the air attack of the French railway system and reconnaissance of the defences.

To avoid highlighting Normandy, much effort was applied across north-west France; for every radar site attacked in the invasion area, two were struck elsewhere.

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D-Day and the Air Force d-day75

Heavy gun batteries were struck along the French Channel coastline. The Germans noted that the Pas de Calais received twice the bomb tonnage dropped on Normandy and this reinforced their belief that Calais was the planned invasion site.

This air effort was central to the overall deception campaign, Operation Fortitude. The three-month ‘Transport Plan’ attacks greatly delayed German movements on, and after, D-Day.

It was won not on D-Day, as some air chiefs had expected, but months earlier through the strategic bomber offensive.

That campaign forced the assignment of 80 per cent of German fighters to home defence, leaving the Luftwaffe a spent force in France with fewer than 900 aircraft facing the Allied total of well over 11,000. The Luftwaffe managed barely more than 300 sorties on 6th June to the 14,000 flown by the Allies. Allied losses were only 113 aircraft to enemy action (and mid-air collision), a loss rate below one per cent.

“The Germans noted that the Pas de Calais received twice the bomb tonnage dropped on Normandy and this reinforced their belief that Calais was the planned invasion site.”

For example, it slowed an armoured division’s deployment to Normandy from two to seven days, a critical difference in the early vulnerable period of establishing the beach head in strength.

Air supremacy over the UK prevented Luftwaffe reconnaissance, thus enabling the huge build-up of personnel, equipment and shipping in secret in southern England.

© MoD/Crown copyright 1944

Conversely, Allied air photo-recce produced a detailed understanding of the coastal defences and the location of German reserves. Allied air superiority over Normandy was decisive.

The air campaign by Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force against Germany’s synthetic oil industry caused a crippling fuel shortage. Aviation fuel production fell from 175,000 tons a month in early 1944 to only 30,000 in June.

Opposite : WAAF plotters at work in the underground Operations Room at HQ Fighter Command, Bentley Priory, in north-west London. A senior officer studies the unfolding events from the viewing deck above.

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Above : De Haviland Mosquito FB.VIs of 248 Squadron attacking a German ‘M’ Class minesweeper and two trawler-type auxiliaries in the mouth of the Gironde River, off Royan, France, on 12 August 1944.

© MoD/crown copyright 1944

Remarkable vertical photograph taken during the night attack on the German tank and vehicle depot at Mailly-le-Camp, France, on 3/4 May 1944 by 346 Lancaster’s and Halifax’s of Nos 1 and 5 Groups, Bomber Command.

A Lancaster, silhouetted by a large explosion, clears the target area during the raid which, although successful in the levels of destruction caused, was costly in terms of losses, 42 being shot down by Luftwaffe night fighters.

This practically eliminated pilot training in the summer of 1944 and greatly limited the use of the fighter and bomber aircraft still being produced. The anti-aircraft defences tied up around two million men of Service age.

deep into Germany. American losses were high, but bearable; not so for the defenders. During February and March, the Luftwaffe lost nearly 1,000 fighters, and many pilots, an unsustainable rate of loss.

Thirty per cent of artillery production and 20 per cent of ammunition were devoted to Reich air defence. Thus, around 9,000 heavy artillery pieces were held in Germany rather than being used in the anti-tank role in Normandy and on the Russian Front.

From midnight on 5th June, more than 2,200 Allied bombers attacked targets on the coast and inland; 66 radar stations were particularly important targets.

A major factor in winning control of the air was the USAAF’s fielding of long-range fighters in early 1944 providing effective escort for 8th Air Force bombers to targets across all Germany in their daylight campaign.

The resulting severe damage to vital industries and heavy attrition of the defending fighter force achieved air superiority for the bomber offensive, the Normandy landings, the breakout from the beach head and the subsequent liberation of Europe.

February 1944 saw the decisive ‘Big Week’ operations of heavily escorted daylight bomber formations penetrating

On and after 6th June, RAF Coastal Command guarded the flanks of the invasion fleet against attacks by Kriegsmarine torpedo-boats and U-boats. This was in addition to its attacks on major German warships such as the powerful Narvik destroyers in the Bay of Biscay.

Airborne assault by parachute and glider troops was key to the early securing of crucial assets. Over 13,000 men of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were parachuted in to the west of Utah beach to secure key land routes.

The British 6th Airborne Division was tasked in the east to capture intact the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, destroy five bridges further to the east, and to destroy the Merville Gun Battery overlooking Sword Beach.

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The RAF played a major role in the deception measures.

617 Squadron (Dambusters) flew an overlapping series of ‘racetracks’ while dropping radar reflecting metal foil, to simulate an invasion fleet approaching the area of Le Havre; 281 Sqn did the same in the Pas de Calais region.

Additionally, 500 dummy paratroopers were dropped in four areas away from the invasion beaches to deceive and distract the defenders.

D-Day succeeded through the courage of those who stormed ashore under fire and the skill and dedication of the many thousands in support. Air power played a major and arguably decisive role in ensuring success at a human cost well below that some had feared.

Shortly after the landings, General Eisenhower toured the beaches and noted that despite their concentration, the huge array of Allied troops and equipment were not subject to air attack.

Asked for his opinion, he commented ‘‘If I didn’t have air supremacy I wouldn’t be here’’.

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About the Author Dr. Paul Stoddarts early career involved eight years in the RAF working as an aerosystems engineer. He is now an analyst at RAF Waddington’s Air Warfare Centre and lectures and writes on air power. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Founded in 1866, the Royal Aeronautical Society is the world’s only professional body dedicated to the entire aerospace and aviation community. We are committed to recognising aerospace professionals, sharing knowledge and expertise, promoting professional standards and development, and inspiring future generations.

www.aerosociety.com

THE ROYAL AIR FORCE MUSEUM Meet the aircraft that helped deliver D-Day’s success - and a couple that tried to stop them!

The Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon and Cosford is home to many of the aircraft types involved in the period before and during the D-Day Landings. RAF Museum Researcher Kris Hendrix details which aircraft types the RAF deployed where for D-Day and those which are available for viewing at the Museum.

M

ost stories about D-Day understandably focus on the actions on the ground. And rightly so. However, it has been widely recognised, then and now, that the invasion could not have been successful without the contribution of air power.

The Royal Air Force Museum has in its vast collection a multitude of documents, photographs and objects relating to D-Day. Most visually, the aircraft on display at the Museum’s London and Cosford sites tell the story of the invasion in their unique way.

Top : One aircraft closely associated with the invasion in Normandy is the Hawker Typhoon.

More than any other service, it was the Royal Air Force which prepared the ground troops for the invasion. Photo reconnaissance aircraft had mapped every square foot of the Normandy beaches and the areas behind, providing vital information to the ground troops. Several weeks prior to D-Day, RAF bomber aircraft had started ‘softening up’ the German defences.

Infrastructure was targeted, aiming to impede Germans bringing up supplies and reinforcements. Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers and North American Mitchell and de Havilland Mosquito medium bombers attacked roads, bridges, major crossroads, airfields and rail targets.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL AIR FORCE MUSEUM d-day75

Also the heavy bombers, the Avro Lancaster and its lesser known twin, the Handley Page Halifax, became involved.

They dropped 55,000 tons of bombs on larger targets, such as depots and railway junctions. Closer to D-Day, coastal gun batteries and radar stations came under attack. With all six of the long-range radar stations taken out, the Germans were blind to what was coming.

One aircraft closely associated with the invasion in Normandy is the Hawker Typhoon. Originally contemplated as a successor to the Supermarine Spitfire, the Typhoon was inferior as a fighter aircraft. However, its rugged construction, powerful engine and heavy armament of four 20 mm cannons, bombs and rockets made it excellent for low-level attacks. Before, during and after D-Day Typhoons bombed, rocketed and strafed anything that moved and that could be deemed hostile.

The main American heavy bomber, the Boeing Fortress, also served with the RAF. For D-Day, some were equipped with devices such as the ‘Airborne Cigar’. This consisted of powerful receivers and transmitters, jamming German radio frequencies. Now, the German forces were not only blind, but also deaf.

It was the RAF which brought in the first troops, hours before the beaches were stormed. 15 RAF squadrons with aircraft such as the Halifax and the Douglas Dakota, flew the British 6th Airborne Division into Normandy. One week after the invasion, RAF Dakotas were the first transport aircraft to land in France, flying in supplies and bringing back wounded soldiers. These were cared for by air ambulance nurses, who became the first British women in active service to be sent into a war zone.

© Crown copyright 1944

The Supermarine Spitfire, of which the RAF Museum has five versions on display, was the main RAF fighter aircraft.

It did what the Typhoon did, but it excelled as a fighter aircraft. While the armada of ships sailed toward the beaches, Spitfires were patrolling over the fleet, keeping a look out for any German aircraft, or escorting bombers to their targets.

Others were spotting for Royal Navy guns, making sure the shells landed on target.

After blinding the German forces, the RAF fed them wrong information. The 1943 Dambuster Raid – the RAF Museum London has recently launched the excellent Dambusters Virtual Reality Experience – was carried out by the famous 617 Squadron. It was tasked to drop bundles of ‘Window’, large quantities of thin aluminium strips. These gave German radar false signals and convinced them that another fleet was heading toward Calais.

An Avro Lancaster of 44 Squadron running up its engines in a dispersal at Dunholme Lodge, Lincolnshire, before setting out on a night raid to Berlin in early January 1944.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ThE rOyAL Air FOrCE mUSEUm

© crown copyright 1944

“.... little came away unscathed from a brush with the Bristol Beaufighter, armed to the teeth with ten guns and rockets, bombs or a torpedo.”

While Spitfires and Mosquitoes protected the invasion fleet from German air attacks, other aircraft under Coastal Command protected it from German fast launches and submarines. Day and night, their aircraft patrolled the approaches to the invasion fleet.

Able to take off and land from short runways, it would also land and evacuate wounded soldiers.

Short Sunderland flying boats or Consolidated Liberator long range aircraft were equipped with radar and were excellent at spotting and engaging German submarines. But when it came to attacking, little came away unscathed from a brush with the Bristol Beaufighter, armed to the teeth with ten guns and rockets, bombs or a torpedo.

So where was the Luftwaffe, the German counterpart to the RAF? The incessant attacks on airfields and the deception missions had left it in absolute disarray. While the RAF conducted a total of 5,656 sorties, the Luftwaffe struggled to get 319 aircraft in the air that day. Only two Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters appeared over the beaches that day, led by German ace Joseph Priller. He was convinced it was to be a one-way mission, but against all odds, he survived and finished the war with 100 victories.

In the two months prior to D-Day, the RAF flew 71,800 sorties, dropping 94,200 tons of bombs, almost half of the total of the Allied air forces. Unfortunately, it also meant that 702 aircraft were lost before D-Day. Many aircrew were shot down over sea. The RAF had its own Air Sea Rescue Units, a combination of patrol aircraft, even old Spitfires, flying boats, such as the Short Sunderland and hundreds of Marine Craft boats, especially high-speed launches. On D-Day alone, 163 aircrew and 60 other personnel were rescued.

The air plan for D-Day was the most complex ever devised, involving thousands of aircraft, each with their own task, route and time schedule. Not only did the RAF need to coordinate with the Americans, the RAF itself was an amalgamation of different nationalities from the Commonwealth and also from several countries which had been subjugated by Nazi invasion.

Several ‘national’ RAF squadrons were raised and participated on D-Day: Dutch squadrons flying Mitchells, Polish Mosquitoes, Belgian Spitfires or Norwegian Sunderlands.

Once the troops were on shore, they were supported by Spitfires, Typhoons and other powerful combat aircraft.

However, not all aircraft fit that description. The tiny, unarmed and unarmoured Taylorcraft Auster was an Air Observation Post aircraft, directing artillery fire with devastating accuracy.

The RAF had trained them to the highest standard and, united, they achieved victory on D-Day.

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Top : raF armourers loading belts of 20mm hispano cannon shells into a Bristol Beaufighter NF Mark VI of no. 96 squadron raF at honiley, warwickshire

SPONSORED FEATURE - THE ROYAL AIR FORCE MUSEUM d-day75

D-Day aircraft on display

Below is a guide to the various D-day aircraft that are on display at each museum site and where they can be located.

at the RAF Museum, London

1

Hangar 1

Hangar 5

• Marine Craft boats • Short Sunderland 1 • Supermarine Spitfire V, XVI, F24 • de Havilland Mosquito

• Avro Anson • Avro Lancaster • Boeing Fortress • Consolidated Liberator • de Havilland Mosquito • Focke-Wulf Fw 190 • Handley Page Halifax • Junkers Ju 87 • Messerschmitt Bf 110 • North American Mustang • North American Mitchell

Hangar 3

• Hawker Typhoon • Hawker Tempest V • Supermarine Spitfire V, XVI, F24 • Taylorcraft Auster 2

Hangar 4

• Bristol Beaufighter

2

at the RAF Museum, cosford War in the Air

3

• de Havilland Mosquito • Focke-Wulf Fw 190 • Junkers Ju 88 • Messerschmitt Bf 109 3

National Cold War Exhibition

• Douglas Dakota

The Royal Air Force Museum has two sites. One located in Colindale in north-west London and one located in Shropshire next door to RAF Cosford.

Each site is open daily from 10.00am. Admission is free.

The Royal Air Force Museum London Grahame Park Way, Colindale London, NW9 5LL

The Royal Air Force Museum Cosford Shifnal Shropshire, TF11 8UP

T: 020 8205 2266 Email: london@rafmuseum.org

T: 01902 376 200 Email: cosford@rafmuseum.org

Directions for London site SAT NAV Users, please use postcode NW9 5QW. Our London site is just 10 minutes from Junction 4 of the M1. Please Follow the brown and white tourist signs from M25, M1 (Junction 4 Southbound), A41, A5 and North Circular (A406) roads

Directions for Cosford site SAT NAV Users, please use postcode TF11 8UP. Cosford is centrally located with good motorway access from the M6 southbound (Junction 12) via the A5. It is one mile from junction 3 on the M54 for northbound travellers.

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d-day75 Why Did Hitler’s European Fortress Fail?

Why Did Hitler’s European Fortress Fail?

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itler’s failure to effectively fortify and subsequently defend the coastline of western Europe against Allied invasion reflected many different factors – amongst them the fact that the Germans were convinced Calais would be the Allies’ target, not Normandy with its huge sweeping beaches and lack of deep water ports for landing heavy equipment.

The British Expeditionary Force fell back, encircled, on the French port of Dunkirk and over 350,000 men scrambled aboard Royal Navy destroyers, pleasure steamers and a flotilla of “little ships” - everything from cabin cruisers to fishing smacks – and headed for home. Shortly afterwards France fell, and Germany’s control of western Europe was complete.

But another key reason was that in the opening years of the war, Hitler saw no need to construct many hundreds of miles of impregnable coastal defences after Germany’s stunning victories in the spring of 1940. In a matter of weeks the speed and power of a new type of all-embracing, fast-moving warfare by land and air – Blitzkrieg – destroyed the French and British armies.

Not only did Britain, now alone in the war against Germany, pose no threat to Germany, it was, itself, about to become Germany’s next target.

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Above : Rommel tours the Atlantic Wall in 1944. The German field marshal harboured grave doubts as to the effectiveness of the fortifications.

why did hiTLEr’S EUrOPEAN FOrTrESS FAiL? d-day75

Above :german troops man an Mg-34 somewhere along the coast of France.

Left : an illustration showing the extent of the atlantic wall.

In the late summer of 1940 Germany began its attempt to establish mastery of the skies over Britain as a prelude to possible invasion.

This famously failed with “The Few” of the RAF in their Hurricanes and Spitfires inflicting the first defeat of the war on Germany’s Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain - a dramatic conflict often fought in bright sunshine and clear blue skies over the fields and towns of England, especially in the southeast of the country.

“... the strongest defences had focussed on the major ports starting with Calais and Boulogne and then all the way south to the Spanish border.”

Indeed, as 1941 progressed Hitler remained so confident that Britain posed no credible threat in the west that in June that year he hurled an army of over three million men and over 3000 tanks at Russia in Operation Barbarossa.

Coastal defences continued on the back-burner and might have remained there for the foreseeable future had Japan not attacked America’s strategic naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii in early December 1941. This surprise act of aggression triggered the entry of the United States into the war and the crafting of the so-called Special Relationship between Britain and the US by Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt.

From the outset of the Special Relationship Churchill and Roosevelt explored ways of opening up a second front against Hitler, but knew it would take time – much longer than their new, hard-pressed Soviet friend Josef Stalin demanded it take.

However, whilst the outcome of the Battle of Britain reduced and ultimately removed the threat of German invasion, it posed no foreseeable challenge to Germany’s European hegemony. This, in turn, obviated the need for developing an all-embracing impregnable system of heavy defences along Europe’s North Sea, Channel and Atlantic coasts provided key installations, such as major ports and related facilities, where heavily defended – which in the main they were.

As for Hitler, he was gambling he could defeat the Soviet Union before Britain and its new American ally were capable of mounting a realistic threat to Germany in the west.

But this was were it started to go wrong. Germany’s initial attack through the summer of 1941 proceeded successfully and broadly in line with plans for a quick victory, but it wasn’t quick enough. Russian resistance proved stronger than expected – strong enough to ensure the Wehrmacht had to eventually battle an additional enemy for which it was not prepared – the fierce Russian winter of 1941-42.

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d-day75 why did hiTLEr’S EUrOPEAN FOrTrESS FAiL?

“Make no mistake, the Atlantic Wall was a massively formidable obstacle for the Allies to tackle on D-Day “

The momentum of Hitler’s Russian campaign was checked and a long, hard vicious war of attrition seemed likely – whilst over in the west Churchill and Roosevelt continued to plot and plan. And lend all the support they could to Russia mainly via Arctic Convoys which ploughed north around the top of Scandinavia through often tempestuous seas in sub-zero temperatures to the Russian ports of Archangel and Murmansk.

If the Germans needed a reminder that they were employed in valuable work it came in late August 1942 with the Dieppe Raid when British and Canadian troops tested Hitler’s defences. For the Allies it was also a statement of intent as well as a grim reminder of what could happen in the wrong set of circumstances - many of the raiding force were killed or taken prisoner before the remainder retreated back to sea.

The strategic balance of the war was beginning to change and with it the priority given to robust defences along Europe’s western coastline.

Serious construction work began on what came to be known as the Atlantic Wall in 1942.

Previously the strongest defences had focussed on the major ports starting with Calais and Boulogne and then all the way south to the Spanish border. But now it was different. Not only did the major ports generally see substantial increases in their defensive capacities - three massive gun batteries with 406 mm cannons were erected in Calais which threatened Dover, let alone shipping in the Channel - but many hundreds of miles of coastline became intricate networks of oddlyshaped anti-tank traps and obstacles, great behemoths of steel and concrete nesting huge cannons, labyrinthine bunkers and shelters of all shapes and sizes, pillboxes, trenches and minefields. And barbed wire – miles and miles of it.

Make no mistake, the Atlantic Wall was a massively formidable obstacle for the Allies to tackle on D-Day – and even at a place where they were never expected to land the fighting and carnage was so appalling it was likened by some to the worst scenes of slaughter from the First World War.

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Top : steel ‘hedgehogs’ at the pas de calais, april 1944 Above : wrecked allied tanks and landing craft lie strewn across a beach at Dieppe, France, following the failed raid there in 1942.

GOOD IN A CRISIS Armed Forces personnel have crucial skills which will build your future in the NHS. As one of the UK’s largest hospital trusts, East Kent Hospitals can offer training, development and career growth across our five hospital sites.

Ian Setchfield: Acute Care Nurse Consultant

A&E Dept, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital, Margate

Ian served 13 years in the RAF as a Sergeant in the Critical Care Air Support Team before joining East Kent Hospitals.

From delivering critical care in one of the country’s busiest A&E departments, to running one of the UK’s leading trauma units; we require ambitious, forward-thinking clinical staff to develop our services and drive exceptional healthcare.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - FOrCES CArS dirECT

SERviNG aNd SaviNG ArmEd FOrCES CAr diSCOUNTS

Alan Spence talks to Steve Thornton, ex-Army Air Corps and Managing Director of Forces Cars Direct, on life in the military and how he created a company, amidst Lincoln’s proud military heritage, which for almost two decades has served and supported the armed forces community.

L

incoln lives and breathes military history, says Steve Thornton, ex-Army Air Corps and now Managing Director of Forces Cars Direct – a specialist car brokerage company focusing on sales to current and former military personnel and other key professionals in the public sector, including the police and the NHS.

Lincoln Cathedral was a prominent land mark for bombers going out and coming back – though many didn’t.

His company, located to the south of Lincoln amidst a vast suburb of car showrooms and dealerships, is just up the road from a roundabout whose central feature proudly announces “Lincoln – Birthplace of the Tank”.

His enthusiasm for all things military is infectious. “The Red Arrows are based at Scampton now and across at RAF Coningsby we’ve got the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

We see quite a lot of both of them during the flying season”.

And indeed it is – courtesy of Winston Churchill as First Sea Lord using naval budget funds at the Admiralty to support research and development in Lincoln at the agricultural machinery manufacturer William Foster Ltd, which had experience with tracked vehicles for towing equipment.

Thornton enlisted in the forces himself in early 1990, joining the Army Air Corps. “I always wanted to join the military and travel the world, but didn’t want to be in a tank or a boat”.

From Thornton’s offices Lincoln Cathedral dominates the skyline to the north. During the Second World War the surrounding flat Lincolnshire countryside was a patchwork of RAF stations, partly because of the shorter flying distance between the area and the heart of Germany.

“The Dambusters – 617 Squadron - flew from Scampton just north of Lincoln on the A15,” Thornton reminds me. “Only about half of them came back from the Dams Raid….

“The same squadron played a big role in bombing strategic targets ahead of D-Day, and on D-Day itself 617 was part of the deception campaign dropping alloy foil to confuse German radar”.

Basic training took place at Winchester, and then it was on to Middle Wallop for trade training, followed by a specialist driving course at RAF Leconfield in East Yorkshire.

Then in September 1990 he was transferred to Germany where the Army Air Corps were soon involved in preparations for Operation Granby, Britain’s contribution to the allied coalition to force Saddam Hussain’s Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.

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“Thornton returned to the UK to set up Forces Cars Direct Ltd. in 2001, negotiating deals directly with car manufacturers and eventually setting up a core team of brokers.”

“On 12th December 1990 I left two-feet of snow behind in Ramstein and flew with my AAC contingent and a brace of Gazelle helicopters in a Galaxy Starlifter to Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia where the temperature was 35 degrees”.

Thornton says he had a quiet war in southern Iraq compared with many others, but the experience reinforced his great admiration for the courage and professionalism of Britain’s Armed Forces – which, in turn, triggered his first thoughts about what he could eventually do to serve those who serve.

He returned from the Gulf to Germany where he served for another five years before being told his unit was heading home. But he loved life in Germany and returning to the UK at that point didn’t appeal.

Resigning from the Army Air Corps, he worked in various security jobs, mostly linked to his former military base, and eventually, through a chance meeting playing golf, he met a manager from a car dealership who thought Thornton would make an effective salesman at his military sales outlet.

“I sold a BMW 5 Series on my first day,” he says, and successful years followed ahead of the new Millennium.

Then a decision to return to the UK triggered his next quantum leap – starting his own business with the boss who had backed him as a car salesman.

With the increasingly powerful presence of the internet, he and his mentor hatched plans to set up an on-line car sales business cutting out the substantial costs of showroom-based selling and offering the savings as a discount on purchases by members of the armed forces.

Thornton returned to the UK to set up Forces Cars Direct Ltd. in 2001, negotiating deals directly with car manufacturers and eventually setting up a core team of brokers.

And in a short time he had a business that changed not only his professional trajectory, but also enabled him to support the military community he admired and respected so much.

He coined the company mantra: “If you serve, you save”.

Many thousands of buyers have found it to be true.

Discount deals on wheels £100 million is a big discount: that’s the cumulative sum of all the discounts Forces Cars Direct has given buyers from mainly the military community since its launch in 2001 – not including the VAT savings by UK military purchasers overseas.

Across all the range of cars – which is pretty comprehensive – the average saving is currently running at around £4,700 per car. In some cases, depending on the brand, it can be up to 35 per cent of the normal retail price. Sales per year currently stand around 2500 vehicles.

Who qualifies?

Upto 2010 it was mainly serving military personnel and their families, MOD employees and members of the Diplomatic Service. That year, though, the government’s Strategic Defence Review announced major cuts in the Armed Forces which led Thornton to negotiate a new round of deals with car manufacturers to extend his offer to veterans and their families.

More recently it’s been extended further to include those employed in the Police, Prison, Fire and Rescue National Health Service, Teachers and some other public sector areas under the banner of Motor Source Group.

Quick Silver….

Forces Cars Direct signed the Armed Forces Covenant in 2016 and quickly picked up successive Silver Employer Recognition Scheme Awards in 2017 and 2018.

Service to the military is integral to the company’s business model, but its support extends substantially further, taking in, for example, special association agreements with SSAFA, the UK’s oldest tri-service charity, the Royal Air Force Association and the Forces Pension Society.

Additionally, Thornton’s workforce is largely made up of people with direct or familial links to the armed forces.

Opposite, top : Steve Thornton of Forces Cars Direct.

Opposite, left : “Lincoln – Birthplace of the Tank” roundabout.

and finally .......

Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Opposite, right : Avro Lancaster Bomber PA474 of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight over RAF Coningsby.

....... Best of luck!!

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d-day75 Sir Winston Churchill

the D-Day Leaders

Sir Winston Churchill The Prime Minister Now a pilot himself, he promoted the Royal Naval Air Service and funded the development of the tank – a land ship in his view – as a means of overcoming the horrors of trench warfare.

With the same objective in mind he proposed an attack on the “soft underbelly of Europe” in the Dardanelles to knock Turkey out of the war followed by a British and French expeditionary force driving north in to Germany’s back garden – the Austro-Hungarian Empire – and beyond.

Brilliant in conception, it was flawed in execution.

© Crown copyright 1943

Uncharted mines quickly sank a brace of battle ships and the Turks withstood the initial assault far better than expected, as well as the second assault two months later accompanied by amphibious landings.

Unable to push inland, the campaign turned in to a static conflict of horrific attrition, often in appalling heat fuelling killer diseases. In all 250,000 British Empire and French lives were lost.

Gallipoli cost Churchill the Admiralty and he headed out to the Western Front for some months of active service latterly as commander of the 6th Battalion the Royal Scots Fusiliers.

W

inston Churchill. Soldier, journalist, writer, historian, politician – man of adventure. Loved painting in oils, polo (in his younger years), the finest Cuban cigars, Pol Roger champagne (as well as other alcoholic beverages), Chartwell (his home overlooking the Weald in Kent), and Clementine Hozier, whom he married and, in his words, “lived happily ever after”.

But his First World War ministerial career wasn’t finished.

In 1916 with David Lloyd George now Prime Minister, he became Minister for Munitions to oversee armaments production until the end of the War. Early 1919 saw him elevated to Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Air, the latter reflecting his belief in air power as the game-changer in future warfare. As, indeed, it became in the Battle of Britain a generation later when he was Prime Minister.

Regarded by many as Britain’s most significant public figure of the 20th century, his late 19th century exploits could have taken him out of the running, particularly his involvement in the last cavalry charge in British military history at Omdurman in the Sudan.

Riding his fame as journalist and adventurer he became Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, “ratting” (as he put it) to the Liberals in 1904 partly over trade protection – and high office beckoned.

With energy and enthusiasm seldom a problem, in 1921-22 he served as Secretary of State for the Colonies addressing Irish issues and Britain’s post-war legacies in the Middle East amidst the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

President of the Board of Trade 1908; Home Secretary 1910; and First Lord of the Admiralty 1911 where, in charge of the world’s largest navy, he was intent on making it larger still as war loomed with Germany.

Above : Churchill giving his famous ‘V’ sign, May 1943.

Opposite : Churchill’s famous image taken in the Canadian House of Commons, December 1941.

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Sir wiNSTON ChUrChiLL d-day75

“We shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...”

1936 re-occupation of the Rhineland; 1938 the “Anschluss” with Austria; 1938 Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland…the German aggressor’s pace quickened…and Churchill’s warnings became ever more frequent, detailed and sonorous.

But as Lloyd George’s government ran out of steam in late 1922, so did Churchill. A surgeon removed his appendix just as the Conservatives removed themselves from the coalition government. And in the election to follow the voters of Dundee removed him from Parliament.

Recuperating, painting and writing, he was eventually back in Parliament for Epping in 1924 – once again as a Conservative having, in his own words, “re-ratted” - and five years as Chancellor of the Exchequer followed amidst global economic turbulence.

Many, including eventually himself, felt he failed to address Britain’s woes due to his unaffordable policy of returning Britain to the strictures of the gold standard, and with the Conservatives voted out in 1929 his time in high office looked as though it could be over.

But fate had other ideas.

Travelling, painting, voluminous writing (A Life of Marlborough, A History of the English Speaking Peoples…) again occupied much of his time in his 1930s’ “wilderness years”, but, increasingly, so did his warnings about the ruthless antics and ambitions of Hitler and his Third Reich – and Britain’s lack of preparedness for war.

Finally – unchecked for years – Hitler went too far, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. Britain and France demanded he withdraw; he didn’t and they declared war. One of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s first acts after announcing the news to the nation was to invite Churchill in to his war cabinet as – once again – First Lord of the Admiralty. He had come full circle.

But it was still some time yet before he achieved the pinnacle of his career. The autumn and winter of 1939/1940 saw little in the way of military clashes between Britain and France and Germany on mainland Europe, though naval action began out in the Atlantic as the Royal Navy set out to blockade Germany and Germany commenced sinking merchant shipping.

Most famously the German pocket battle ship Graf Spee was finally hunted down by the Royal Navy and its captain decided to scuttle his damaged vessel off Montevideo rather than again engage the Royal Navy.

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d-day75 Sir Winston Churchill

States, “mobilised the English language and set it into battle”.

Then came the Spring of 1940, and the military contest between Britain and Germany to secure Norwegian iron ore supplies. Britain’s failure to do so and the evacuation of its troops from Norway finally brought an end to the government of Neville Chamberlain - and Churchill assumed the mantle of wartime Prime Minister.

And there was no better, or worse, day for him to take office than May 10 1940: the day that Hitler unleashed Blitzkrieg on Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Within weeks the remains of British Expeditionary Force were being lifted off the beaches of Dunkirk in a desperate evacuation which Churchill termed “a miracle of deliverance” and a country threatened by invasion and total defeat was preparing to “fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets … ”. Or come to some accommodation with Hitler, which for Churchill, was totally out of the question.

“We shall never surrender”.

And the rest of his remarkable story? By his own admission it was – inevitably - all anti-climax . Defeated in the immediate post-war election as the nation focussed on its new future, he returned again as Prime Minister for a further four years in 1951, resigning in 1955 aged 80.

His state funeral in 1965, the first for a commoner (nonRoyal) since Gladstone, was attended by heads of state and other leaders from 112 nations, and watched on television by a European audience of 350 million.

And as his coffin travelled along the Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier aboard a Port of London Authority launch London’s dockers lowered their cranes in tribute…..

The course of the war from Dunkirk to D-Day and Churchill’s central role in this great narrative of war, features earlier in these pages, but, in essence, D-Day ultimately happened because of the entry in to the war of the United States. For this to happen, Britain had to survive. That it did so – and was ultimately victorious - can be attributed in large part to a man who, as President John F. Kennedy later said when making him an honorary citizen of the United

Born in a hurry in an anti-room during a grand ball at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, he was finally laid to rest some ninety years later amidst his ancestors a short distance away in the quiet graveyard of St. Martin’s Parish Church, Bladon.

Alan Spence

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Below : The “Big Three”: From left to right: Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill on the portico of the Russian Embassy during the Tehran Conference to discuss the European Theatre in 1943.

© Rich Careyl / Shutterstock

SPONSORED FEATURE - HOLTS MILITARY BANKING d-day75

Wherever you serve, we serve Julian McElhinney, Head of Business Development at Holts Military Banking, explains the long-accumulated experience and service the bank brings to its clients in the Armed Forces for whom personal banking circumstances can often be far from simple.

I

t was in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that the forerunner of the Holts Military Banking of today first reared its head when in 1809 William Kirkland first established himself as an Army Agent tending to the financial and procurement affairs of regiments.

Kirkland quickly progressed his business and it became wellknown as a banker for Britain’s soldiers and their families during the Victorian era.

The First World War was inevitably a time of major growth for the bank’s services with the military, especially as in 1915 it acquired navy agents Woodhead & Co. of Charing Cross and picked up business from the Royal Air Force after the latter’s foundation as the world’s first independent air force in April 1918.

By the end of the war it held many thousands of accounts of military personnel and employed over 850 staff to manage them.

With the support and backing of its new owner, the Royal Bank of Scotland, from 1939 it continued to expand its business through the Second World War and beyond – appealing to new generations of service men and women.

Eventually in the 1970s it opened the Holts Centre of Excellence for Military Banking in Farnborough – in close proximity to major concentrations of all three services.

The bank’s operational mantra is “Wherever you serve, we serve”, conveying Holts aspiration to look after their clients wherever they are serving. Indeed, in some cases, that can even mean clients can meet up with a visiting representative of the bank in Gibraltar, Cyprus or elsewhere to discuss their requirements.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - hOLTS miLiTAry BANKiNG

Serving overseas is sometimes not easy when it comes to banking business, particularly if personnel are posted at short notice, but Holts believes that no member of the military should be disadvantaged by serving their country – a central tenet of the Armed Forces Covenant which it signed in 2015.

And seeks to ensure this does not happen.

Another potential issue for serving military personnel is that salaries can go up and down due to Joint Personnel Administration pay variances between different posts. That might be difficult to explain to a bank with no experience or understanding of military pay conditions. But for Holts that’s not a problem.

Mortgages can bring their own difficulties for anyone suddenly asked to work overseas. But military personnel with a Holts mortgage have automatic permission at no extra cost to let out their property thereby obviating what can sometimes be a lengthy bureaucratic process with mortgages from institutions with no specialist knowledge of military service requirements.

“The bank’s operational mantra is “Wherever you serve, we serve”, conveying Holts aspiration to look after their clients wherever they are serving.”

Circumstances these days demand higher levels of due diligence by banks when opening accounts, agreeing loans or arranging mortgages for a client.

Generally, anyone seeking the above would experience difficulties and delays if they do not have a UK-address.

However, Holts gets around this with its military clients – who might, for example, be on the high seas for months on end - by accepting BFBO addresses as if they were UK addresses.

Additionally, Holts assists such clients with electoral role registration – without their credit scores may suffer.

For those who enrol in to the UK’s armed forces overseas – from say Commonwealth nations – it can also arrange newto-the-UK accounts.

Holts has developed this understanding experientially through the years, especially by its willingness to open its own ranks to ex-military personnel.

As an Army Reservist myself I feel a great sense of privilege and pride to work for a bank which takes its responsibilities towards the UK armed forces so seriously – from the provision of specialist banking services based on simplicity and fairness to wider support.

Indeed, Holts is, itself, a member of the UK military community both in fact and spirit – encouraging its staff to take part in Remembrance and Armed Forces Day events, pledging support for military displays and events and supporting reservists – something for which I am personally grateful.

THE aRmEd FORCES COvENaNT On 15 September 2015, the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Holts became a signatory of the UK’s Armed Forces Covenant, formally recording its preexisting commitments to the Armed Forces and pledging ever-stronger support.

The bank believes that all organisations which do not appear on the 3000-plus list of signatories should give serious consideration to covenanting their support.

aBOuT THE auTHOR Lieutenant Colonel Julian McElhinney is the most senior reservist employed by Holts.

Commissioned in to the Black Watch in 1997, he served in Northern Ireland, the Balkans and Iraq. In 2007 he took up his commission in the Army Reserves where he has occupied a series of senior positions, most recently as Commanding Officer of the 6th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.

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SPONSORED FEATURE - HOLTS MILITARY BANKING d-day75

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d-day75 GENErAL dwiGhT d. EiSENhOwEr

THE d-day LEadERS

GENERaL dWiGHT d. EiSENHOWER SUPrEmE ALLiEd COmmANdEr

A

lthough General Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower had never experienced combat, he was deemed by President Roosevelt as the man for the job of Supreme Allied Commander.

And Winston Churchill supported the appointment, something that Eisenhower never forgot even during some of the worst arguments they were to have in the planning and execution of D-Day – and in the battles that followed.

Born in Denison, Texas in 1890, he graduated without distinction from the US Military Academy in 1915, but as a commissioned officer his organisational abilities had been noted by his superiors for the first time.

This gained him command of a tank training centre after the US entered the First World War in 1917. The following year he was ordered to take tank units to France, but the Armistice was signed before they were due to set sail.

© crown copyright 1944

He rose through the ranks of the US Army in the 1920s, stationed in the Panama Canal Zone and graduating in 1926 as a major at the Army’s Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, coming first in his class of 275.

A post in France followed and in 1928 he again came first in his class at the Army War College.

In 1933, he was appointed aide to the Chief of Staff of the Army General Douglas MacArthur and accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines when the government there invited him to be their military advisor.

It was a portent of things to come. Not an easy man to deal with, his experience with MacArthur was remembered during the Second World War when his name came up as a possible Supreme Commander – most immediately and inevitably of a close group of military leaders, US and British, which didn’t lack its big characters.

Returning to the US as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1939, he became increasingly involved in President Roosevelt’s plans to make America’s military more prepared for war should it occur.

More promotions followed as his organisational and administrative skills shone through, and when America entered the Second World War Eisenhower was appointed

by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall to the War Plans Division in Washington where he began work on plans for an Allied invasion of the European Continent.

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commanders at a conference in London in January 1944.

Left to right: Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

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“Eisenhower’s success as Supreme Allied Commander owed much to his powers of personal diplomacy and emotional intelligence.”

By late June 1942 Eisenhower was established in US headquarters in London as head of all US operations in Europe.

America’s initial involvement, however, did not come in Europe, but French North Africa – Operation Torch, which Eisenhower, now a Lieutenant General, successfully ran with a unified command comprising US, British and Canadian forces - another pointer towards his role in D-Day. After further success in Tunisia he directed the invasion of Sicily and the Italian mainland from North Africa before returning to England towards the close of the year to take up his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force and take charge of the biggest military operation in history.

Putting his great planning, organisational and strategic capabilities to one side, Eisenhower’s success as Supreme Allied Commander owed much to his powers of personal diplomacy and emotional intelligence.

That Eisenhower was a tough man to deal with is welldocumented. He had to be. But he was capable of major disagreements with Churchill, Montgomery, US Generals Patton and Bradley, Leader of the Free French Charles de Gaulle and others whilst retaining respect, functional relationships and a sense of common purpose. And therein lay the essence of his great leadership – even without combat experience!

After the war he held the positions of US Army Chief of Staff and NATO’s first Supreme Commander - before riding his fame and popularity all the way to the White House as the 34th President of the United States.

He died in 1969 and is buried not amidst the hallowed rolling hills of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, but in a family plot in Abilene, Kansas.

Alan Spence

He had an intuitive understanding of his commanders and an instinctive ability – most of the time – to sensitively resolve conflict with and between them without undermining their self-respect or blunting their commitment.

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Top : Eisenhower speaks with men of the 502nd parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division, on June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion..

Opposite : shaeF commanders at a conference in London in January 1944.

d-day75 Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder

the D-Day Leaders

Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder Deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force His activities between the Wars were no less formative. Middle and Far Eastern tours were mixed with training roles that brought him into essential contact with the fundamentals of innovation and generating effective tactical fighting power.

© Crown copyright 1942

He did not attend the RAF’s new Staff College, but instead developed his “all-arms” mind further at the Royal Navy’s College, Greenwich, then in its 50th year of existence.

In 1928, he also attended The Imperial Defence College (now renamed the Royal College of Defence Studies) very soon after its founding, capitalising on Winston Churchill’s vision of the importance of inclusivity in higher command, “promoting greater understanding between senior military officers, diplomats, civil servants and officials”.

A

rthur William Tedder was one month shy of his 54th birthday on D-Day, the epitome of the man who could meet the hour in that pivotal moment in history. Constantly refining the lessons, every appointment in his career had honed an intellect fit for higher command.

Visit one of Scotland’s fine distilleries, Glengoyne, and share the atmosphere that was the unexpected birthplace of a future leader in 1890. By 1913, he was an infantry officer in the Dorsetshire Regiment; ironically, an injury saw him transfer to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps.

Imagine the strategic thoughts and relationships he took away as a flight commander and pilot with 25 Squadron, an airborne participant and witness to the grim ‘industrial war’ of the Somme: in just 4 months of 1916, three million were killed, one million injured, with nearly 60,000 British soldiers lost on the first day alone…

Significantly, during the last year of the First World War, Tedder led a School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping based in Egypt before returning to command a squadron of new strategic bombers specifically designed to reach Berlin.

This was the holy grail for the early pioneers of Air Power: to attack the heart of the enemy without the need for brave men to go ‘over the top’ day after bloody day. The war ended before such enticing capabilities could be tested in combat.

The early 1940s and Mediterranean operations in 1943 cemented his conviction that centrally-masterminded, Joint, Combined and Multinational campaigning was the prerequisite for success.

Interestingly, in 1947, Tedder would say “Air Power is the dominant factor in this modern world” and yet he maintained the greatest respect for his Naval and Army colleagues and their own vital roles. Co-operation not competition was his mantra.

In 1944, with immense pressure from the Russians, sustaining huge losses in fierce fighting in the East, the clock had been ticking loudly for a comprehensive assault from the West.

General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, needed an extraordinary 4-star to be his head-bashing, deal-making, quietly-incommand ‘Number 2’ and powerful Deputy. Tedder was his choice.

One American soldier, one British airman, who trusted each other completely, having shared many campaigns together,

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Above : Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder on the Italian coast in December 1943. Later that month he returned to Britain to take up his appointment as Deputy Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.

Opposite : General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder address the World shortly after the German mission had signed the instrument of unconditional surrender on 7 May 1945.

One American soldier, one British airman, who trusted each other completely, having shared many campaigns together.

and who were both convinced the D-Day lodgement and break-out would fail without the wholehearted use of all Air, Land and Maritime resources working as one.

to move. And yet it was still vital to attack broadly in order to mask D-Day’s precise locations.

And a crucial component would be the strategic bomber forces whose hitherto independent raison d’être, zealously driven on by their own legendary leaders, ‘Bomber’ Harris and ‘Tooey’ Spaatz, had been to attack deep into Germany itself.

As a result, the Germans thought Calais, not Normandy, was the primary allied beach-head. This all came at a cost.

According to historian Carlo D’Este, the Allies lost 2,000 aircraft and 12,000 airmen killed in action between the 1st April and 5th June, 1944. By August, those losses more than doubled.

Only a man with Tedder’s pedigree, who had lived and breathed Air Power’s evolution, could manage these key relationships, build an Air Campaign for before and after D-day, analyse results daily, and flex effort in order to maximise enemy disruption, confusion and immobility.

Without that sacrifice, without immense courage at sea and on land, and without Arthur Tedder’s profound understanding for integrating the effects of all the fighting services, D-Day would have been disastrous rather than decisive in the final road to the war’s conclusion.

Nothing was a given. It required the compelling combined authority of Eisenhower and Tedder to outflank a capable and committed enemy who had been in France for four years, and were now led by Field Marshals of the calibre of von Rundstedt and Rommel. The Allied Armada and landing forces were extraordinarily vulnerable hence Luftwaffe capability had to be continually attacked whilst Coastal Command ensured an equally marked effect on German naval forces.

Air Vice Marshal (Rtd) Michael Harwood

On land, the key was to destroy transportation links such that German reinforcements faced constant chaos and an inability - 91 -

AbouT THe AuTHoR Air Vice Marshal (Rtd) Michael Harwood’s RAF career spanned numerous experiences from a Hawk training instructor to his final posting as Head of British Defence Staff and Defence Attache Washington and the United Nations.

d-day75 admiral sir bertram ramsey

the D-Day Leaders

Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay Allied Naval Commander and designer of Operation Neptune Previously, in 1940, Ramsay had successfully led the evacuation of over 300,000 British and Allied troops from Dunkirk. The evacuation was regarded by many as a miracle that saved the majority of Britain’s troops from death at the hands of the Nazis, following their ‘lightning war’ or Blitzkreig on France. While Churchill was forced to admit that ‘wars are not won by evacuations’, Ramsay’s plans saved enough troops to keep Allied forces in the war, and to keep Britain well defended against German forces.

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o carry the Allied Expeditionary Force to the Continent, to establish it there in a secure bridgehead and to build it up and maintain it at a rate which will outmatch that of the enemy. Let no-one underestimate the magnitude of this task”.

The task was Operation Neptune, the maritime element of Operation Overlord. The Allied Naval Commander responsible for its design was Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay.

Admiral Ramsay had already retired from the Royal Navy in 1938, having accumulated 40 years of service. However, his value as a naval planner was such that he was asked to return just one year later, by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill.

Ramsay’s ultimate task would be to plan the cross-Channel maritime assault that would transport Allied Expeditionary Forces to France in a bid to liberate Europe. It was to be a massive undertaking: the scale of Operation Neptune was unprecedented.

Ramsay gained significant experience from Dunkirk, and learned fundamental lessons that he could put into practice for Operation Neptune. With such experience under his belt, it is little surprise that both Winston Churchill and Ramsay’s Command Team endowed him with their trust. As one member of his team declared, ‘we trusted him, and he trusted us. We knew what we had to do; we gave him our total loyalty.’

Admiral Ramsay released his final orders for Operation Neptune in April 1944: there were more than 1000 pages of print choreographing the movement of over 1200 warships.

The naval force would be led by more than 200 mine hunters, and would include frigates, destroyers, cruisers and motor boats.

There were debates to be had over landing at low tide versus high tide; the order in which landing craft should arrive; the distance between vessels and the speed at which they should operate. The detailed planning took over a year and could have continued indefinitely if the strategic situation had not dictated execution of the plan in June 1944.

D-Day was the commencement and most intensive part of Operation Neptune, but Ramsay’s plans did not stop there.

Ramsay was a meticulous planner with significant experience, but even he recognised the challenge ahead. “I am under no delusions as to the risks involved in this most difficult of all operations”.

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Above : Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay at his London Headquarters in October 1943.

Opposite : The Prime Minister Winston Churchill studies reports of the action that day with Vice Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Flag Officer Comanding Dover, on 28 August 1940.

© crown copyright 1940

Ramsay’s ultimate task would be to plan the cross-Channel maritime assault that would transport Allied Expeditionary Forces to France in a bid to liberate Europe.

The operation was completed on D+24, by which date 570 Liberty Ships, 180 troop transports, 788 coasters and 2719 landing craft had delivered their cargo, and established a bridgehead – a point from which Expeditionary Forces could amass with supporting stores to project further into France.

Fundamental to this task were the Mulberry Harbours, for which Ramsay was also responsible for transporting. The harbours consisted of floating steel structures, concrete caissons and floating pier heads, all transported by tug and laid at sea close to the beach heads.

The Mulberry Harbours provided temporary deep-water ports that larger ships could access until Le Havre and Cherbourg could be liberated for use. If you live on the south coast of England today, you do not have to look far to find remnants of Mulberry Harbours still in existence.

Killed in a plane crash in 1945, Ramsay had no time to write or publish his memoirs; no time to publicly record his own place in history. Today, even the smallest of achievements can be recorded and celebrated instantly through social media: in 1944, stories of the man who successfully planned the first stages of European liberation are very difficult to locate. All that we have is Ramsay’s diary collection, held within the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Fittingly, I write from a Royal Navy frigate deployed as part of a NATO task group, where I am experiencing the complexities of co-ordinating six warships on routine operations. I have immense respect for the Admiral who, 75 years ago, successfully planned for over 1200 warships to cross the Channel in the face of significant enemy resistance.

Lieutenant Commander Kate Muir

Operation Neptune was only the start of Operation Overlord, but it was certainly pivotal to its success. In spite of this, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay remains the ‘Forgotten Man’ of D-Day. Most people do not name him when asked to list the main architects of Operation Overlord.

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AbouT THe AuTHoR Lieutenant Commander Kate Muir is the Second in Command of HMS WESTMINSTER, currently deployed on operations with Allied Forces.

d-day75 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

the D-Day Leaders

Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG, GCB, DSO, PL, DL Commander- in-Chief Allied Ground Forces When meeting Churchill for the first time over lunch after the Dunkirk evacuation he didn’t hold back, delivering a withering analysis of the British Expeditionary Force’s failure and telling the Prime Minister that the Army needed younger, fitter commanders, and anyone over the age of 60 should be removed immediately from their duties. Churchill by then was 66 himself…

Irked by Monty’s arrogance, he nevertheless listened in the full knowledge that war for Montgomery was not an abstraction.

He had fought bravely in France and Belgium at the beginning of the First World War, receiving a DSO for gallant leadership during a British counter-offensive at Baillieu near the Belgian border. His citation read he “turned the enemy out of their trenches with the bayonet” and was shot through the lung and in the knee.

He was so badly injured that his grave had already been dug, but he recovered to take on important training roles back in Britain before returning to participate in the Battle of Arras in Spring 1917 and Passchendaele towards the end of the year, eventually finishing the war with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

B

ernard Montgomery was born in Kennington, London in 1887, but following his father’s appointment as Bishop of Tasmania, his formative childhood years were spent in the then British colony with familial affection in short supply.

He wilfully reacted against the harsh discipline of his mother, developing an early strain in him of the anti-authoritarianism and independence of spirit (insubordination?) which, whilst it didn’t serve him too well in his early years - “I was a dreadful little boy” he once said– increasingly enabled him to uncompromisingly impart his views, ideas and strategies at the highest level, albeit with ruthless clarity and a total lack of sensitivity.

It was a mixed blessing and probably slowed his professional progress at times. But with Churchill he and the country got lucky.

“He had fought bravely in France and Belgium at the beginning of the First World War, receiving a DSO for gallant leadership during a British counter-offensive at Baillieu near the Belgian border.”

Moreover, as he sat at lunch with Monty that day Churchill was also aware of Montgomery’s very recent deeds as commander of the Third Infantry Division which had distinguished itself in the roll back to Dunkirk arriving in

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“It was Brooke who pushed for Montgomery to be put in charge of the Eighth Army – the Desert Rats – to rid North Africa of Hitler’s star General Irwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps”

time to cover the BEF’s exposed left flank following the surrender of the Belgian Army. He got his Division home more or less intact, retaining the respect of his troops.

With America still a long way from entering the war and fears of Hitler’s next intentions, Montgomery was given a series of commands, the purpose of which was essentially bolstering the defensive position of the southern counties of Britain.

His reputation for demanding high levels of physical fitness amongst is troops and continuous training was combined with an ever-increasing adeptness at building trusting relationships with his men through personally explaining to as many as possible what his plans were and, above all, the reason for them.

Often making impromptu visits to troops, he simply told them to break ranks and gather round. It was not something that many of them were used to…and they respected him for it.

Good for troop morale, his reputation for detailed planning and surrounding himself with officers who were wholeheartedly committed and able continued to rise – and importantly so with the Chief of Imperial General Staff Sir Alan Brooke who was in no small way responsible for providing Montgomery with the opportunities to succeed at the highest level.

Top : Montgomery in a grant tank in north africa, november 1942.

Opposite: general sir Bernard Montgomery with his Miles Messenger aircraft in the background.

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d-day75 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery

It was Brooke who pushed for Montgomery to be put in charge of the Eighth Army – the Desert Rats – to rid North Africa of Hitler’s star General Irwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps and, ultimately, it was Brooke who shoe-horned him into leading the 21st Army Group for D-Day, putting him in charge of all ground forces for Operation Overlord.

He had not been Churchill‘s or Eisenhower’s automatic first choice, partly as both of them had had their difficult experiences with Monty – as he was by then popularly known not only amongst the troops, but also the general public.

Churchill even ordered church bells to be rung around Britain for the first time since the war began when the news came through of his great victory against Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt.

His record of success – North Africa, Sicily and on up the toe of Italy with the Eighth Army – went before him, as did his reputation for the welfare of his troops, and back in Britain in the months before D-Day his popularity with the public and troops alike continued to grow – albeit relationships with superiors, including Eisenhower himself, were often far from easy.

D-Day, the break-out from Normandy against fierce German resistance, the crossing of the Rhine ….and onwards ultimately to Lüneberg Heath in Northern Germany in the Spring of 1945 where on 4 May he received the unconditional surrender of all enemy forces in North-West Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. The overall formal surrender took place shortly afterwards in Eisenhower’s Headquarters in Rheims, France and 8 May was officially confirmed as Victory in Europe – VE Day. Accolades and higher commands followed. He became 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946, succeeded his loyal supporter Brooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff and became Eisenhower’s deputy in establishing the European forces of the newly-created NATO - a position he continued to hold under Eisenhower’s successors until his retirement in 1958 at the age of 70.

He died in 1976 at the age of 88 and is buried in Holy Cross Churchyard, Binsted, Hampshire.

Alan Spence

Below: Montgomery was awarded the Order of Victory on June 5, 1945.

Dwight Eisenhower, Georgy Zhukov and Sir Arthur Tedder were also present.

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d-day75 Leigh-Mallory

the D-Day Leaders

Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory

Air Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force

In the run-up to his appointment to the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, Leigh-Mallory had become closely involved in evolving plans for what would become Operation Overlord, attending, for example, Exercise Rattle in Largs in North Ayrshire in 1942, an event focussed on combined operations amphibious warfare.

In November 1943 he was appointed Air Commander-inChief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force and became responsible for the management of the evolving air plan for Overlord.

However, Leigh-Mallory’s tenure was not to be without controversy. In the build-up to the invasion, a vital issue was control of the strategic bomber forces in the UK.

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orn in 1893, Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory was educated at Haileybury School and the University of Cambridge, volunteering for service in the British Army in 1914.

He was wounded in June 1915, and returned to the Army in the Royal Flying Corps, subsequently playing a vital role in the development of tank and aircraft co-operation as commander of No.8 Squadron.

Staying in the post-war RAF, he steadily rose through the ranks, attending RAF Staff College during the 1920s and commanding the School of Army Co-Operation, once again working closely with the British Army.

In 1930, he became a member of the Directing Staff at the British Army Staff College at Camberley, attending the Geneva Disarmament Conference, and subsequently went to the Imperial Defence College.

In 1937, he was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) on No. 12 Group Fighter Command in which capacity he became involved during the Battle of Britain in 1940 in the so-called ‘Big Wings’ controversy with the AOC No. 11 Group, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Keith Park on different tactical approaches to combatting the Luftwaffe over England.

Leigh-Mallory believed it was operationally necessary for him to control all air forces - a view not shared by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur (Bomber) Harris, head of RAF Bomber Command, and US Army Air Force General Carl “Toey” Spaatz, head of the US’s Strategic Air Forces in Europe.

Eventually, a compromise was reached with Deputy Supreme Commander Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder providing oversight of the strategic bomber forces while they were assigned to Overlord.

Linked to this was the question of how to employ the bomber forces. Leigh-Mallory’s staff developed the so-called Transportation Plan aimed at crippling German logistics ahead of D-Day, while Harris and Spaatz concentrated on targets in Germany - in Spaatz’s case his prime objective became oil facilities.

Ultimately, though, Leigh-Mallory’s plan contributed significantly to the success of Overlord.

A vital aspect of the problems facing Leigh-Mallory was his relationship with his fellow air commanders. Many, such as

Leigh-Mallory became AOC No. 11 Group in late-1940 and then head of RAF Fighter Command in late-1942.

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Above : Leigh-Mallory at No. 11 Group Headquarters, Uxbridge, Middlesex, March 1942.

Opposite : Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory at a squadron briefing in France sometime in September 1944.

“In November 1943 he was appointed Air Commander-inChief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force and became responsible for the management of the evolving air plan for Overlord.”

On 14 November 1944, he and his wife Doris died when the aircraft carrying them to his new command crashed near Grenoble in the French Alps.

Leigh-Mallory’s command of the AEAF was not without controversy, but it was not an easy situation for him personally.

Tedder and Spaatz, had served in the Mediterranean and there was a view that Tedder should have had Leigh-Mallory’s role.

The tension inherent in the overall Allied command construct continued to be a critical problem, even after the success of the Normandy landings.

Indeed, while Montgomery had described Leigh-Mallory as ‘gutless’ for his refusal to support Operation Wild Oats, an unrealised airborne assault on German defensive positions around Caen in Normandy, he nevertheless eventually described the latter as the only one willing to support the ground forces.

Leigh-Mallory was well aware of the challenges he faced.

During the Normandy Campaign, he kept a daily diary that has survived in the files at The National Archives at Kew. It is an enlightening document. For example, on 27 June 1944, he recorded his challenge of managing the air aspects of a multinational coalition force when he noted that the ‘Americans don’t like being under the command of an Englishman, and that is a fact which I have to face.’

Some historians have struggled with assessments of the effectiveness of his contribution to the Normandy Campaign with New Zealander Vincent Orange, for example, believing Leigh-Mallory’s appointment was unwise.

Conversely, in a 1998 RUSI Journal article, Air Commodore N.J. Day described Leigh-Mallory as a ‘Scorned Champion’.

Perhaps, though, his contribution can best be summarised by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower who, in his 1945 report on the campaign in Europe, recorded of both Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey, Allied Naval Commander, who also died in an air crash in 1945, that: “The war service, the devotion to duty, and the sacrifice of these two outstanding men typify the irreplaceable cost of the campaign represented in the lives of thousands of officers and enlisted men and members of the women’s services, of the American, British, and French Forces”.

Dr. Ross Mahoney PhD MPhil BA PGCE

Eventually, the decision was taken to disband AEAF, and while Leigh-Mallory was at one point considered for the post of Air Member for Personnel on the Air Council, he was eventually appointed Air C-in-C in South-East Asia.

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About the Author Dr. Ross Mahoney PhD MPhil BA PGCE is an historian and defence specialist, focusing on air power, and former resident historian at the Royal Air Force Museum.

© MoD/Crown copyright 1940

d-day75 WOMEN AND D-DAY

Women and D-Day Emily Eastman highlights the massive contribution women made to Britain’s war effort both at home and overseas and how this was reflected in the outcome of D-Day, the Battle of Normandy and ultimate victory.

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he success of D-Day and ultimate victory in the Second World War was based on the cumulative efforts, commitment and collaboration of all military services, myriads of national and local bodies, thousands of civilian organisations and millions of individuals. And amidst all of these different aspects of British wartime society women made a momentous contribution to the conflict’s final outcome.

The Land Army was formed in June 1939 before war broke out and many women continued to join up, often living deep in the countryside miles from home working in the fields, driving tractors and assisting with the all-important wartime harvests.

Women volunteered for all forms of work, but from 1941 they were called up to perform essential tasks, such as air raid and fire wardens, bus and lorry drivers, mechanics and the armaments factories – echoing their massive role during the First World War. Initially, call-up was limited to single women between 20 and 30, but by 1943 the majority of both single and married women were directly involve in some form of war work. And in many cases that would be on top of the daily wartime household routine of running homes on reduced budgets, rationed supplies and the strictures of black-out measures – and, of course, the emotional concerns of loved ones away from home, many fighting abroad.

Right : A group of Air Transport Auxiliary women pilots photographed in their flying kit at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, on 10 January 1940.

The picture shows Commandant Pauline Gower (near left) who was committed to seeing women succeed in aviation and established the Women’s Air Transport Auxiliary, becoming its first Commandant in 1939. Tragically she died in 1947 giving birth to her twin sons.

Also pictured are, (left to right): Miss M Cunnison (partly obscured), Mrs Winifred Crossley, The Hon. Mrs Fairweather, Miss Mona Friedlander, Miss Joan Hughes, Mrs G Paterson and Miss Rosemary Rees.

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wOmEN ANd d-dAy d-day75

“Women pilots were also key to ferrying aircraft between airfields – in doing so Amy Johnson, the intrepid record-breaking long-distance flyer, lost her life in 1941.”

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d-day75 WOMEN AND D-DAY

Left : A WAAF armourer, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, belting up ammunition for a Lancaster, February 1944.

© MoD/Crown copyright 1944

Below : Women working at Bletchley Park, 1943.

“Women volunteered for all forms of work, but from 1941 they were called up to perform essential tasks, such as air raid and fire wardens, bus and lorry drivers, mechanics and the armaments factories – echoing their massive role during the First World War.” Ultimately there were around 650,000 women in the Armed Forces – including the Women’s Royal Auxiliary Air Force (WRAF), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the latter listing amongst its many members Junior Commander Elizabeth Windsor.

The 39 female agents were from different countries, classes and backgrounds, but a common link between them was usually their command of the French language. One such SOE operative was Violette Szabo, immortalised in the film “Carve Her Name With Pride”.

Women were essential to the armed forces, plotting shipping and air movements, taking up medical roles for the staggering number of casualties at home and in medic stations in Normandy following the D-Day landings, and helping to provision and run ships.

Operating under constant threat from the secret police, these women evaded the Gestapo, parachuted into warzones, sent radio communications from secret safe houses, supported the French resistance, led various resistance fighters, disrupted, sabotaged and eroded Nazi forces and infrastructure, and carried out countless other extraordinary acts of bravery and courage that helped the Allied forces eventually win the war.

Women pilots were also key to ferrying aircraft between airfields – in doing so Amy Johnson, the intrepid recordbreaking long-distance flyer, lost her life in 1941.

In the 19th Century mansion at Bletchley Park, the top-secret centre for British, and subsequently Allied, code breaking, around 75 per cent of the total workforce were women.

Initially wary of hiring women, intelligence chiefs had little choice when confronted with an urgent need for staff and the absence of many men.

Among those who joined was Joan Clarke – a pioneering cryptanalyst who decoded navy ciphers. Her work, like that of others, often resulted in immediate military action and contributed directly to Allied successes.

Clarke was later awarded an MBE for her wartime service and features in the film, The Imitation Game, but the work of other female code breakers at Bletchley, including Margaret Rock, Mavis Lever and Ruth Briggs remains far less known, and in some cases unrecorded.

Some lost their lives; others suffered torture and solitary confinement in prisons and concentration camps – including at Ravensbrück, the Nazis’ only all-female concentration camp, where 130,000 female prisoners passed through the gates.

While the Second World War accelerated the progress of women in the forces and wider society, the pace slowed as the war concluded and many women found they were unwelcome in their wartime roles once men were de-mobbed.

But they proved that women can not only work like men, but they can fight like them too. Their actions, during the war remain an enduring inspiration on the long road, still travelled, towards equality.

Female special agents also formed part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), founded in 1940 and mandated

by Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze”.

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About the Author Emily Eastman is a freelance writer on women in war

WOMEN AND D-DAY d-day75

“As the hundreds of selected journalists sat poised with binoculars in the channel, far from the action, Gellhorn went ashore at Omaha Beach disguised as a stretcher bearer, following the minesweepers and recovering the wounded.”

Left : Martha Gellhorn working as a war correspondent and below, with her husband Ernest Hemingway.

One Woman’s War……

When almost 160,000 men stormed the beaches of Normandy on 6 June, 1944, they made history. But the men were not alone – stowed away in their midst was one woman – Martha Gellhorn. Emily Eastman tells her story.

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artha Gellhorn was an American war correspondent for Collier’s Weekly who had been refused official permission to join the forces in operation Overlord, the codename for the D-Day Landings.

Women were not allowed to serve in combat (and wouldn’t be until 50 years later, in 1994) and although each news outlet could send one journalist, Collier’s had selected the renowned Ernest Hemingway, who not only didn’t work for the magazine, but was also Gellhorn’s husband.

Hemingway had offered his byline to the publication, an act that added weight to their already sinking marriage – when Gellhorn was sent to London as the war in Europe escalated, Hemingway sent a cable asking, “Are you a war correspondent or wife in my bed?” They were to divorce two years after the Normandy invasion.

As Hemingway boarded an attack transport on 5 June 1944, Gellhorn managed to stowaway on a hospital ship by showing an expired press badge and telling officials she was there to interview nurses.

Waved on board, she locked herself in the toilet and remained there until the ship departed for Normandy, sick with nerves and the motion of the waves.

As the hundreds of selected journalists sat poised with binoculars in the channel, far from the action, Gellhorn went ashore at Omaha Beach disguised as a stretcher bearer, following the minesweepers and recovering the wounded.

Back on the hospital ship, she tended to and comforted the men as bombs rained down and chaos reigned onshore.

Gellhorn’s first-hand account of D-Day is amongst the most evocative and compelling telling of events. It was published in Collier’s Weekly in August 1944, but Hemingway’s article received top billing.

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d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - ARMED FORCES DAY 2019

armed forces day 2019

Wiltshire says Thank You to the UK’s Armed Forces

Baroness Scott of Bybrook OBE, Leader Wiltshire Council The county of Wiltshire and the city of Salisbury are honoured and proud to host Armed Forces Day 2019, marking a 120-year-old partnership with the Armed Forces - which is set to become ever-closer in the years ahead.

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t sends a powerful message across the United Kingdom and throughout the world that the ancient city of Salisbury, with its rich cultural heritage, is striding confidently forward, offering a warm hand of welcome to many thousands of visitors seeking to pay tribute to Britain’s magnificent

Armed Forces.

This exciting event of pageantry, celebration and entertainment also provides the opportunity for the people of Salisbury and the wider Wiltshire community, to thank the military – and, of course, all the emergency services - for all they do across the county.

Men and women of our Armed Forces have left Wiltshire for over a century heading for wars and conflicts to defend our freedom and national interests and help preserve our way of life - from the battle fields of two World Wars to more recent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This year, of course, we mark the 75th Anniversary of D-Day and the Normandy Landings which opened the door to the liberation of Europe. Many of those involved in that historychanging event developed their military skills in this area.

As the Wiltshire military community moves forward as a united family amidst current and future challenges we dedicate Armed Forces Day 2019 to the memory of millions of brave and courageous men and women who have served this country and the Free World – and to those who continue to do so today.

Wiltshire’s military history has made it the beating heart of the British Army and, in all, it is home to 14,000 members of the Armed Forces, which will grow substantially in the near future with the return of more troops to the UK from Germany, in addition to troops moving within the UK. Indeed, the Ministry of Defence is Wiltshire’s biggest employer and the Armed Forces make a significant contribution to the Wiltshire economy.

Most of those who have passed through the ranks of the British Army, and other services, will have had at least some experience of Salisbury Plain and the locality and all it offers to help produce the best Armed Forces in the world.

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©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

A signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant, Wiltshire was presented with the MOD’s Employer Recognition Gold Award in 2017 for demonstrating outstanding support for the serving military and their families and veterans.

© Alexey Fedorenko / Shutterstock

armed forces day 2019

MILITARY BUSINESS ©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

The Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces are the biggest employers in Wiltshire and together constitute the single most powerful pillar of the county’s economy.

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ilitary-related custom and business underpin all aspects of the retail and consumer sector. Their presence also has a fundamentally important magnetic attraction for service industries, as well as hi-tech corporates, such as Qinetiq, Europe’s largest science and technology organisation, Avon Rubber, SciSys and Chemring Countermeasures.

Since the creation of Wiltshire’s Military Civilian Integration Partnership in 2006 – the first of its kind in the country public sector planning and delivery has worked increasingly closely with the Armed Forces, especially given Army rebasing from Germany.

It comprises a range of key areas including military housing and other facilities, transport and other infrastructure and the health and education sectors.

The Army Basing Programme will see another 4000 army personnel and around 3,000 of their dependents relocate to the Salisbury Plain Area.

This will mean the number of army personnel rising to around 16,000 - about 20 per cent of the Regular Army – and 2,000 Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel residing in Wiltshire.

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d-day75 SPONSOrEd FEATUrE - ArmEd FOrCES dAy 2019

aRmEd FORCES day 2019

WiLTSHiRE’S CRuCiaL CONTRiBuTiON TO d-day As the nation and the world marks the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, Wiltshire is proud of the crucial role it played in the run-up to this history-changing event.

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undreds of thousands of troops trained on Salisbury Plain in preparation for D-Day – not just British, but American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Polish, Free French and others. In addition to troops, there were thousands of members of other services honing their different skills to take on Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.

Weapons were tested and combat tactics and plans refined.

Battle conditions were simulated with live firing to give troops at least some idea of what they could face.

Meanwhile, over at RAF Old Sarum near Salisbury, the base acted as the funnel point for the majority of the RAF’s land transport vehicles and service units required to cross the channel to establish airstrips and maintain aircraft after the troop landings.

D-Day’s top brass were no strangers to the locality – amongst them Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower and Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery - “Monty” who commanded all land forces on D-Day.

Churchill himself was inclined to make his presence felt, particularly given that Wilton House near Salisbury was Head Quarters of Southern Command and the place where much D-Day planning took place.

Purportedly Churchill and Eisenhower also finessed plans more informally over lunch or dinner at the Haunch of Venison in the centre of Salisbury.

WiLTSHiRE TakES GOLd

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s a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant Wiltshire Council received a coveted Gold Award for its staunch support for the military under the Government’s Employer Recognition Scheme in 2017– the highest possible accolade.

Council Leader Baroness Scott of Bybrook OBE received the award on behalf of Wiltshire Council in the presence of HRH Duke of Sussex and then Secretary of State for Defence Sir Michael Fallon.

“In Wiltshire we welcome those who serve and have served and value their expertise and skills”, said Baroness Scott.

Above : council Leader Baroness scott of Bybrook oBe receives the award on behalf of wiltshire council.

A key element in winning Gold was the Council’s policy of giving Reservists and Cadets an additional two weeks leave each year to help balance their professional and military commitments.

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©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

armed forces day 2019

Salisbury Plain

The UK’s Largest Military Training Ground

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alisbury Plain, a 300-square-mile chalk plateau situated mainly in the borders of Wiltshire, got its first taste of organised modern-day military manoeuvres in 1898 shortly after the Government had acquired tracks of land in the area precisely for this purpose.

Live firing is practised on the Plain most days of the year by not only UK Armed Forces but also those from friendly nations overseas seeking to benefit from the opportunities the Plain offers for simulating real warfare.

There are a number of military camps and barracks on the Plain, including at Larkhill, Bulford, Tidworth and Warminster.

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©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

As the need for a larger training area expanded with the demands of two world wars, so did the Government’s ownership of land in the area. Today this accounts for roughly half of Salisbury Plain making it the largest military training area in the United Kingdom – a substantial portion of which is permanently cut off from the public for safety and security reasons, and other areas restricted.

d-day75 SPONSORED FEATURE - ARMED FORCES DAY 2019

armed forces day 2019

Countdown is on!

come and enjoy Armed Forces Day National Event 2019 in Salisbury and show your support

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elebrating our troops and saying thank you to them, and their families, for all they do to protect us and keep our country safe is a key focus of Armed Forces Day National Event in Salisbury this year.

Saturday 29 June is Armed Forces Day nationally and will be marked in Salisbury with a military parade through the city centre expected to be watched by thousands of people.

The Hudson’s Field line-up includes an air show, military displays and activities, BBC Wiltshire stage, children’s and community activities, plus free live entertainment every day and a firework finale on Saturday evening.

Sunday focuses on veterans and young people with a commemoration and drumhead service, supported by the Royal British Legion, with the Bishop of Salisbury and padres leading the service. There will also be the opportunity to help create a beautiful human poppy in the main arena.

The event is supported by platinum sponsors KBR Aspire Defence and Lovell and the official main charity partner SSAFA. Armed Forces Day is an opportunity to show support for the men and women who make up the Armed Forces community from current serving troops to service families,

veterans and cadets. Armed Forces Day nationally takes place on the last Saturday in June, this year it is on 29 June with the national event being held in Salisbury. Celebrations begin on Monday 24 June when the Armed Forces Day flag is raised on buildings and landmarks across the country. Showing support for the Armed Forces provides a much-valued morale boost for troops and their families.

For more information about Armed Forces Day National Event 2019 visit www.wiltshire.gov.uk/salisbury-afd or follow us @SalisburyAFD on social media

And on to Scarborough....

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rmed Forces Day 2020 will be another very special event in Scarborough, a town with its own long history of involvement with the Armed Forces – not to mention its frontline experience during the First World War when the harbour and Old Town were shelled by Germany’s Grand Fleet. The 2020 celebrations and tributes will be especially poignant given that they occur amidst the 75th Anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day.

Good luck Scarborough!

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d-day75 D-Day AT THE MOVIES

D-Day landings at the Box Office D-Day couldn’t have offered movie makers better opportunities for big action classics or intense human dramas with the Normandy Landings framing or driving stories of bravery, fear, courage, love, passion, deception and loss. And over the years they seem to have taken full advantage.

He‘s also got strategic objections to the invasion, but by this time D-Day has assumed a momentum all of its own and Churchill’s influence on policy is declining as America moves centre stage in the war against Hitler.

Many of the biggest stars of their era have had their D-Day in the movies including: • Richard Todd, Robert Taylor and Dana Wynter in D-Day the Sixth of June (1956)

Richard Todd not only chalks up two appearances in the above films, but his involvement in The Longest Day had a special personal significance for him. As Captain Todd of The 6th Airbourne Division he was one of the first to parachute into France on the night of June 5th/6th, making his way to Pegasus Bridge on the Orne River where he met up with Major John Howard who had led a glider landing to secure bridges in the area.

• John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Paul Anka, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton, Kenneth Moore, Richard Todd (again) in The Longest Day (1962) • Lee Marvin in The Big Red One (1980) • Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Tom Sizemore in Saving Private Ryan (1998) • Damian Lewis and David Schwimmer in Band of Brothers (2001). This epic TV mini-series also had Tom Hanks as Executive Producer

© Crown copyright 1944

• Brian Cox in Churchill (2017)

There are others, and undoubtedly there will be more. Of those mentioned, Saving Private Ryan’s opening scenes are considered by many – including some who were there – to be the most viscerally realistic representation of the carnage on the beaches.

By contrast The Longest Day is much more visually anodyne.

That said, it gives a strong feel of the sheer, breathless enormity of the operation from the ports and airstrips of southern England to the desperate struggle, amidst mayhem and slaughter, to gain a foothold on Normandy’s beaches and cliffs, and control the land beyond.

Churchill, on the other hand, is more about stuff of the head – Churchill’s head. Brian Cox plays Britain’s wartime leader suffused with guilt about his role in the catastrophe of the Gallipoli landings in the First World War, and wracked with fear about a possible repetition of similar slaughter on Normandy’s beaches.

Together they and their men repulsed German counter attacks, and Pegasus Bridge was held – the first bit of France to be liberated.

Sixteen years later, and now an internationally acclaimed film star (with, amongst other famous roles, Dam Busters’ Leader Wing Commander Guy Gibson to his name), he portrayed Howard himself in the same historic action in The Longest Day. Whilst alongside him another actor played the role of Captain Todd.

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Above : Pegasus Bridge in 1944. Horsa gliders from the invasion appear in the background..

D-Day AT THE MOVIES d-day75

Top : John Wayne in The Longest Day, 1962.

Above : Richard Burton in The Longest Day, 1962.

Right : Richard Todd who appeared in both D-Day the Sixth of June , 1956 and The Longest Day, 1962.

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d-day75 Ssafa d-day archive

D-Day - a family legacy Seventy-five years on from the historic events of D-Day, Sir Andrew Gregory, Chief Executive at SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity and Master Gunner, St James’s Park, remembers the roles played by his parents.

M

y mother, Alison Egerton, joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), commonly called the Wrens, on her 18th birthday on December 4, 1940. Having been shelled from across the Channel while serving in Dover,

by June 1944 she was a Third Officer and working in the Operations Room of Southwick House, General Eisenhower’s D-Day headquarters just north of Portsmouth.

Meanwhile my father, Dick Gregory, had joined the Royal Artillery in 1936 at the age of 20 and, after an initial spell in India, went on to fight against the Italians in Abyssinia in Africa.

He then returned to the UK to prepare for the Allied invasion of France. By then a captain in 7th Field Regiment RA who were supporting 185 Brigade, part of 3rd British Division, he was a Forward Observation Officer, attached to 2nd Battalion The Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

The original Operation Overlord plan was to invade on the morning of June 5, 1944, but a terrible storm swept in overnight jeopardising the entire operation, so the landings were delayed 24 hours.

The troops had already been on board the landing craft for some time and Dad said it was unbelievably miserable with most being seasick. He said everybody just wanted to get to the beaches so we could get on with it – and get off these awful boats!

Thus, on the morning of June 6, 1944, as thousands of British, US and Canadian troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, my mother was moving markers on the map board in Southwick House that showed the progress of the invasion fleet – with one of those markers carrying my father, though they didn’t know each other then!

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Ssafa d-day archive d-day75

“I am very proud of my parents’ service to this Nation and I know they were delighted when I joined my father’s Regiment, The Royal Regiment of Artillery.”

185 Brigade was the second brigade from 3rd Division to land on Sword Beach at around 10am and after 8 Brigade, the assault brigade; the Brigade was tasked to secure Caen that evening.

2 Warwicks were ordered to advance south and along the east side of the River Orne. Having got south of Pegasus Bridge – Benouville, and just short of Blainville, at about 10.30pm my father’s Comet tank took a direct hit from an 88mm antitank weapon.

Lance Bombardier Boddy was killed and my father and Lance Bombardier Wicks were both wounded. My father was evacuated that night; as he said, he spent less than a day in France and two years being patched back up again.

My mother, Third Officer Egerton, was to spend rather longer on French soil. Working on the staff of Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who had overseen the evacuation of Dunkirk and was now the overall Overlord maritime commander, she landed in France on September 6, 1944, spending the rest of the war just outside Paris.

When Winston Churchill arrived in Paris just after VE Day, he saw her and two other Wrens with a White Ensign and gave them a thumbs up! She finished her service in Minden, Germany, based in the requisitioned Melita coffee factory, before being demobilised in December 1945.

For my mother, the war was an opportunity to get out of rural Dorset and do something very different; she admitted her varied service was exciting.

I am very proud of my parents’ service to this Nation and I know they were delighted when I joined my father’s Regiment, The Royal Regiment of Artillery.

They would be very proud both of my military service, and also of the fact that I am now part of SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity.

SSAFA was there then for service men and women, veterans and their families just as we are here today; I take great comfort in that as I remember them and seek to sustain their legacies, as well as SSAFA’s ability to assist those needing some help.

Andrew Gregory

My father was 28 when he was wounded. Despite constant pain from shrapnel in his leg, he never complained through to his death in 2010 aged 93. He talked little about the war, as was the case for so many who had been involved in the fighting.

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Opposite : Alison Egerton and Dick Gregory in their service uniforms.

Above : The D-day map at Southwick House on which the progress of the Operation was plotted.

d-day75 Ssafa d-day archive

D-DAY Recollections

Commander John Farrow From HMS Glasgow, Commander John Farrow RN Engineering Officer was a first-hand witness to the biggest amphibious invasion in military history – and fifty years later set down his thoughts and feelings in a remarkable letter to his son Malcolm. His granddaughter, Alice Farrow, who works as Head of PR at SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity, explains

H

MS Glasgow, a cruiser with eight six-inch guns, was first commissioned in September 1937, and started the Second World War in the Home Fleet before seeing action in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and with Arctic convoys to Russia.

On 23 May 1944 it dropped anchor in Belfast Lough joining a host of other naval vessels, many of which were American, soon to leave for the Cornish Coast to take up position ahead of D-Day. Crossing the Channel with the D-Day Armada Glasgow concentrated her fire on Omaha Beach ahead of the American landings.

Continuing to provide support to the expanding Normandy bridgehead, she was bombarding the strategically important port of Cherbourg when hit by German shore batteries on 25 June 1944, and returned to Tyneside for repairs which lasted through to May 1945.

Commander John Farrow joined Glasgow’s company a short time before D-Day and returned safely with her to Tyneside.

Fifty years later he set out his is reflections on D-Day in a letter to his son, Malcolm, himself a former Captain in the Royal Navy It is wonderful to have the opportunity to publish my grandfather’s remarkable letter of reflections and thoughts as he witnessed first-hand the largest amphibious invasion in history. He retired from the Navy as Captain John Farrow OBE RN and lived until days before his 90th birthday after 60 years of marriage to my grandmother Oona Farrow.

The letter is produced opposite in its entirety and exactly as he set it down.

Right, top : Commander John Farrow with his son Malcolm.

Right, bottom : HMS Glasgow.

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SSAFA d-dAy ArChivE d-day75

Fatfield Washington, Tyne and Wear 12/4/94

Dearest Malc Many thanks for your letter and enclosure re D Day - most interesting, I of course will keep it carefully for you. I was a little surprised to see so little reference to the RN’s effort - a veritable armada of ships - in the paper, while appreciating it was the Army who had the hellish job of landing on the beaches. The courage of our men who went in front towards the beaches, under water water, to clear the mine fields at the water’s edge, has always left me breathless with admiration.

I was in HMS Glasgow, and as far as I can recall things were as follows:We assembled with numerous other naval ships somewhere in Ireland - I think it was in the Belfast area, and proceeded in company to the channel from there. I was Commander (E), and so responsible for all the machinery functioning properly, and my Captain had made it clear that he might have to call for a burst of full power at almost any time as we approached the French coast, and so we were almost watch on/stop on below. We spent most of our time, with others, bombarding the so called OMAHA beach and were hit by a shore battery although the upper deck was damaged it did not prevent our guns being able to continue until we were withdrawn, much later we came up the Tyne for repairs.

I recall going on deck during a slight lull in our firing, and seeing the army passing by in hundreds of landing craft, all tensed up, bayonets fixed, for their turn to land on the beaches, a sight I’ll never forget.

We were so busy with our own jobs that I can hardly recall anything else, but I remember the sight of the artificial Mulberry Harbour was unbelievable. How they got all those huge caissons and old warships there from all our ports was incredible and a wonderful piece of organisation. The captain of one of the US Navy ships gave our captain and me a high speed run around the area in his boat, an extraordinary trip, only took a few minutes at about 40 knots !!

Our captain had a small French boy on the bridge with him, how he got there I don’t know, but he knew the part of the French coast we were attacking backwards and told the captain the Germans had a forward observation post in the tower of the church just near our position, so sadly we had to destroy the church with our gunfire and the RAF came over and destroyed the cliff it was on too !!!

All I can recall of the actual DD landing moment (as we lay off the French coast in front of us) really was a cheer that went up from our ship’s company when they heard our soldiers were advancing on shore.

What strange days those were! My Senior Engineer (i/c fire parties) got the DSC for putting out the upper deck fire caused by the explosion when we were hit (see earlier in this letter) I was of course below then in the centre engine room with direct line to the captain on the bridge.

At one stage we had come back to Portsmouth and taken an Army HQ from Portsmouth over to the beaches, and the tug that brought them to us at Portsmouth at night was crewed by retired Admirals !! (I heard the bowman of the tug told to “Cast off forward” and the reply I’ve never forgotten was “Aye aye Sir James”).

Hope some of this is of interest, it’s all so long ago I wish I could remember more clearly, 50 years is a long time.

Best love , Dad

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d-day75 Ssafa d-day archive

D-DAY Recollections

Donald William Mackay - D-Day mine-sweepinG Donald William Mackay served in the Royal Navy throughout the Second World War, and participated in the Normandy Landings. His daughter, Sheila Parmee, a caseworker with SSAFA’s Cambridgeshire Branch for over seven years and former MOD welfare clerk, introduces excerpts from her late father’s diary.

O

n D-Day my father was a Leading Telegrapher on board the minesweeper HMS Gozo and found himself right at the heart of the operation.

I know Dad was always grateful for being alive, and the fact that he came through the war more or less unscathed.

He only had a bent finger from when he was thrown out of his hammock by a torpedo attack. He always talked about the day he was de-mobbed, walking out of the dockyard and just throwing his hat in the air!

He was a wireless operator in the war and he worked for the Post Office for the rest of his career. He had started with them before the war and they kept his job open, so he worked in London and then transferred to Peterborough where I grew up.

Just after he retired Dad was asked to join the Normandy Veterans Association and it was only really after that – when he was no longer at work – that he perhaps had a bit more time to reflect. I think being with the other veterans they all began to realise just what they had done.

One day he said, ‘I’ve got a little job I’d like you to do’ and he asked me to type the diary up for him. He had never really talked about the war a lot, though he did like to talk about the good times; how much money he lost playing cards, how they had to look presentable on shore leave, and he would still use Navy expressions.

The one thing he did say that made a very big impact was one Remembrance Day. He wasn’t well enough to attend the parade and said, ‘I’m afraid some of my memories are not very nice’.

He talked then of the bodies floating past in the water, but he never ever spoke like that again. I think there were things that he kept locked away.

We lost Dad in November 2000 so sadly he never saw the interest that his diary generated but it is wonderful for us as a family to have the diary to remember him by.

Right : HMS Gozo.

Below : The crew of HMS Gozo.

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SSAFA d-dAy ArChivE d-day75

Excerpts (printed as original text) from the D-Day Diary of Donald William MacKay: telegrapher on minesweeper HMS Gozo.

“I woke up about two thirty, and went up on to the bridge, to get some of my daily fresh air. The sight that met my eyes was one I shall never forget. Everywhere I turned my eyes there were ships.

“They were formed in a perfect formation in two giant columns, how many abreast I do not know, but they stretched out to the horizon on one side and right away inshore on the other. As you looked ahead it was the same, and looking aft, there were still ships as far as the eye could see.

“The weather had not been at all ideal for such an operation during the past few days, and now it seemed to be worse. There was a fairly stiff south westerly breeze blowing, which was making the Channel quite choppy, and the “white horses” were very prominent.

“It was not so bad for us, having spent the best part of the few months previous, continually at sea. The troops on the barges must have been having a rough time, as they were pitching rather badly. Well I could imagine how they were feeling.

“We were creeping ahead slowly through the centre of this armada, to take up our position at the head of one of the columns…….It was now getting very near to the time for us, to do the job that we had come out to do.

“At 04.00 my watch ended and I went straight up onto the bridge. Le Havre was a mass of flames. The RAF were over in great strength and blasting the whole of that strip of coastline out of existence.’

“I will admit quite frankly I would not have liked to have changed places with any one of those men about to be landed on the shores of France. They also presented a very fine sight, try to picture in your mind, about three thousand landing barges facing the beaches on a fifty-mile front, as that was what I saw at 06.30 that morning’.

“Wireless silence had been in force until just before then, and that meant things were very quiet, with hardly any signals to read or decode. Now that was all swept aside. It was like an asylum in that office for about a quarter of an hour, we soon mastered the situation though.

“The speed at which signals were received, decoded and passed to the bridge was amazing.

I could hardly believe it myself. The signals ranged from ships in need of assistance to positions of minefields, but the ones we were waiting for, and I might add, everyone was expecting, did not come, enemy reports.

“At least we expected an attack from the air, but although we waited they never came, and we were left in peace from enemy planes and ships, to carry on with our job of making the channel wider”.

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d-day75 Ssafa d-day archive

D-DAY Recollections

Alfred Smith - From Dunkirk to D-Day Alfred Smith, who died in 2018 aged 99, was from Essex and served in the Royal Army Service Corps during World War II. He was evacuated from Dunkirk and went on to take part in the D-Day landings before being hospitalised by a shrapnel injury. Towards the end of his life he was a regular member at SSAFA’s Southend Veterans Club – during which time he spoke about his war service.

W

e were told to cover all the electrical wiring underneath our lorries, but I had no idea what was going on.

A few days later I was landing at Gold Beach in Normandy two days after D-Day. “When I drove off the ship and down the ramp the lorry actually went under the water, only briefly but that was obviously the reason for covering all the wiring.

“I had a few lucky escapes during the War. We used to drive in darkness with no lights and we would sleep in the cab of the lorry. One night we decided to lie down under the lorries just to stretch out and our whole window screen was shattered so we were lucky not to have been in the cab.

“My luck ran out eventually though. After D-Day I got right through to the German border where I got hit in the back by some shrapnel. I was in hospital in Brussels and for six or seven months I couldn’t stand or walk. I was eventually taken from Brussels to Swindon by air and then to Stratford Upon Avon.

“I was the only service person there so they made a real fuss of me! Afterwards I was downgraded and sent up to Tenby to a POW camp for Germans and Italians. I took people out to the forest every morning to cut down trees.

“After the war I carried on driving as a taxi driver and then I became a driving instructor and I did that for 40 years”.

Alfred’s Medals included: French and German Star, the Battle of Britain, the Defence Medal, War Medal 1939-45, Legion D’Honneur.

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©UK MOD Crown Copyright 1945

d-day75 SPECIAL FEATURE - MILITARY RE-SETTLEMENT

“De-mob” was never like this…

The heroes of D-Day and the Battle for Normandy – and many other places – were demobilised with a train ticket and a new suit. Seventy-five years on the Armed Forces attach as much importance to helping those who move to new, fulfilling careers as they do to attracting them into one in the first place. Alan Spence talks with Tim Cairns, Head of Transition at the Career Transition Partnership (CTP), the government’s official provider of military re-settlement for over 20 years.

W

hen Ernest Bevin, as Minister of Labour and a crucial member of Churchill’s War Cabinet, sat down with officials in 1944 to work out plans for an eventual orderly de-mobilisation of around five million men and women from the armed forces, transitioning back in to civilian life or “civvy street” bore little resemblance to what happens today – thankfully for all concerned, and society as a whole.

The plans, to state the obvious, were of course contingent on Allied victory, but it was nevertheless important to demonstrate that the government already had plans in place.

To start with they helped underpin growing confidence in final victory, but also sought to allay fears that it might be as chaotic as after the First World War when delay and confusion led to demonstrations and strikes in the ranks.

Details of the envisaged process were first released as early as September 1944, three months after D-Day. Given that the war still had eight months to run in Europe and almost a year in the Far East, this might seem a bit early….

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Above : British servicemen home for demobilisation leave Dover docks for the railway station.

SPECIAL FEATURE - MILITARY RE-SETTLEMENT d-day75

Then he pauses for a moment. “I wouldn’t have minded getting involved though…I like a challenge!”

Cairns, a former naval officer for almost 20 years specialising in air traffic control, air operations and training and development, took over as Head of Transition at CTP in 2015 managing a team of over 60 based at ten centres across the UK and in Germany.

©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

CTP’s mission is to deliver career transition services to over 14,000 personnel who leave the Armed Forces each year. He is proud of the achievements of CTP which has been operating for just over 20 years, successfully transitioning over quarter of a million military personnel.

Indeed, the success of the operation has been such that it has created substantial interest around the world – including from Norway, Canada, Japan and Australia.

And most importantly of all it gave serving personnel some idea of how and when they would be transitioned – demobbed in those days once hostilities ceased.

“It’s difficult to imagine dealing with a transition programme of that scale”, reflects Tim Cairns, Head of Transition at the Career Transition Partnership, the Ministry of Defence’s official provider of resettlement – a public sector-private sector partnership between the government and Right Management, the talent and career management arm of the global ManpowerGroup.

“CTP’s mission is to deliver career transition services to over 14,000 personnel who leave the Armed Forces each year.”

“We follow up everybody who leaves “, he says, adding that “93% of those seeking work have jobs after six months”.

CTP caters for all ranks and it doesn’t matter how long they’ve served. It might be someone from the lower ranks of the Royal Navy, Army or Royal Air Force who has decided to leave the Service after a relatively short career or a senior officer who has served for 30 years.

“We’ve even assisted a former Chief of the Defence Staff to transition in to a civilian career”, he says, but declines to provide a name!

Transitioning military personnel is, by definition, a people business and team members have to take account of the individual needs of each and every Service leaver. “One of our absolute strengths is our people, and their dedication, skill and commitment to what we do”, Cairns says.

“What a challenge for them – and what a challenge for all those tasked with organising de-mobilisation”. And as he points out, of course, demob was about how to get people back to civilian life and “not about how they could skill-up and get work once they got there.”

“The principle of the Armed Forces post-Service duty of care was not part of its abiding ethos then as it is now…

“And, of course, you have to ask yourself the practical question about how it could have been applied to so many people over such a short period of time, particularly with the country so short of funds and other resources”.

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©UK MOD Crown Copyright 2019

“At that time, millions were returning with dreams and ideas of getting on in a new post-war life and career. Many would have been young with little, or perhaps no previous experience of work in civilian life”.

d-day75 SPECIAL FEATURE - MILITARY RE-SETTLEMENT

BACK ON CIVVY STREET

The transition to civvy street was managed much better after the end of the Second World War, but the military services’ parting gestures were, in retrospect, still on the austere side. As the heroes of D-Day and many other battles etched into the lexicon of Britain’s military history turned in their uniforms, they received a new suit and a train ticket home.

Initial briefing on resettlement entitlement is provided by the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force. CTP then takes over as a second tier operation providing career change and self marketing workshops, 1:1 career advice and guidance, signposting to sources of help and advice, at CTP centres and via the CTP web site.

Then come the job opportunities generated by the CTP Employer Engagement team who work with organizations across many sectors who seek Service leavers. Thousands of vacancies are displayed on CTP’s RightJob website annually, and many introductions are facilitated through large CTP employment fairs where scores of employers literally set out their stalls to attract Service leavers who attend such events in their hundreds.

“... employers’ interest in exmilitary personnel has never been so high and indeed is continuing to rise.”

It undoubtedly isn’t a particularly easy process, but Service men and women have at least one big factor in their favour – high demand from employers seeking great talent.

The Services and CTP all stress to personnel planning to leave the Armed Forces that they should commence their resettlement as soon as possible to develop and discuss career options and what is required to pursue them.

Also, before they approach the job market, they often need training and support in writing an effective CV, networking, interview techniques and approaches – foundation job seeking skills which some may not have used for many years – perhaps not at all.

“There’s certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that employers’ interest in ex-military personnel has never been so high and indeed is continuing to rise”, he says. They recognise the additional ‘soft skills’ Service personnel have in addition to technical experience such as reliability, discipline, teamwork, adaptability and willingness to learn, which are all highly sought after – in addition to the priceless real life skills which come with time spent in the forces.

The second element in the process is vocational training, whereby CTP offers over sixty different courses to enable Service leavers to gain new skills and qualifications, or to civilianize existing ones, to prepare for civilian careers. “It’s important that Service leavers take control of the process as early as possible so they acquire an increasing sense of independence and confidence in what they have to offer ”, says Cairns. “Transitioning is a whole-life change, not simply moving to a new job”, he says.

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Tim Cairns is Head of Transition at the Career Transition Partnership, the Ministry of Defence’s official provider of resettlement.