D-Day: when the world turned on its axis

There were other battles. There were other turning points. Stalingrad, Kursk. El Alamein, and of course, the Battle of Britain. Each was immense in its achievement, its level of sacrifice and its significance in deciding the course of the Second World War. But none stands out as starkly as the Battle for Normandy, and especially D-Day itself, June 6, 1944 – 75 years ago today.

If the Allies had been thrown back into the sea, as might have happened if the Gods of War had been in a different mood, the conflict would have dragged on for at least another year and quite possibly a lot longer.

America and Britain, their forces scattered, with a loss of life in the tens of thousands, would have been forced to retreat under heavy fire. It would have been like a combination of Dunkirk and the Dieppe Raid, but infinitely more damaging. On the Eastern Front, Stalin would have been confirmed in his view that only he could defeat the Nazis. Hitler would have reinforced his beleagured forces in Belarus and Ukraine with tank and infantry divisions released from France, making the still inevitable Soviet victory a triumph in which the West played no part. Germany and Austria, as independent states, would have been wiped off the map and the Red Army would have rolled on in the direction of France and the Channel ports.

The world would have been a completely different place.

But, as we are recalling today – possibly for the last time with the participation of men who actually took part in the invasion – Operation Overlord did not fail. Instead, it was a famous victory for the Allies, from which they never looked back. There would be setbacks – the bitter struggle to close the Falaise Gap, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge. But from June 7 onwards, there was never any doubt that the Nazis were living on borrowed time. It was just a matter of assembling the necessary military might, assigning the different tasks and pushing forwards in the direction of Berlin.

The statistics of the Longest Day are awe-inspiring. Never in the history of warfare had such a force been assembled. Never before did so much hang on the outcome.

On the night of June 5, a total of 5,333 ships and landing craft set out from the south coast of England, ferrying close to 175,000 men – British, American, Canadian, Polish and French – to five selected beaches in western Normandy, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. At the same time, some 7,750 RAF and USAF bombers and fighters took to the air, as well as a fleet of gliders carrying 22,000 airborne troops, most of whom would be dropped behind enemy lines.

The weather stayed fine, as the Met Office had predicted, though follow-up operations would be hampered by high seas just 24 hours later. The Wehrmacht, commanded by Fieldmarshals Gerd von Rundstedt and Erwin Rommel, enjoyed no such good fortune. Having been convinced that the invasion would take place in the Pas de Calais, their main defences were in the wrong place, meaning that their 80,000 troops and solitary Panzer division stationed in Normandy could not be reinforced for several days. Against that deficiency, the Germans had the Atlantic Wall, a dense network of heavy guns mounted along the coast, as well as extensive minefields, machine-gun nests and a formidable array of physical barriers, ranging from tank traps to razor wire.

Defenders always have the upper hand when the enemy is obliged to land its troops on open ground. To compound this advantage, most – though not all – of the soldiers deployed by Von Rundstedt and Rommel were hardened veterans who knew that the war was lost if they failed to do their job on Day One. They would not give ground easily and soon proved their ability, if forced to retreat, to launch swift counter-attacks.

Allied servicemen were equally motivated, but for the most part less experienced. They had been told by everyone, from King George VI to General Dwight D Eisenhower and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, that the future of Western democracy lay in their hands. They were acutely aware at the same time that thousands of them would die in the initial assault and that no invasion on this scale against a determined opponent had ever previously succeeded. They needed sound leadership as well as nerves of steel but must have felt their hearts pound in their chests as they approached the French coast.

Among the enlisted men taking part in the first assault was my Uncle Norman, from Belfast, a sergeant in 4 Commando, Royal Marines, who, having pushed his way through bodies still bobbing in the sea at Sword Beach, advanced with his unit to a position behind a German shore battery in Ouistreham, north of Caen. The battery, secured in reinforced concrete bunkers, was heavily defended and was only captured after desperate hand-to-hand fighting.

In the week that followed, my uncle was briefly assigned to be Montgomery’s driver, resulting in his being presented with a medal by the great man to mark his “right trusty” service. The French were similarly appreciative, awarding him the Croix de Guerre and, decades later, sending a representative to his funeral. He never spoke about his wartime experience, which continued until the German surrender in 1945, but his wife, my Aunt Nancy, told my sister that he would often wake up in the night screaming.

Courage of the highest order was everywhere apparent, involving men of all ranks, from Lord Lovett being piped ashore on Sword Beach by his personal piper, Bill Millin, en route to Pegasus Bridge, to the US trooper dangling by his parachute from the spire of the church in Saint Lo as all Hell broke out beneath, to the twenty-year-olds shot in the first moments of battle before they even set foot on dry land. At one point, a frustrated British officer, leading a charge under heavy fire kicked out at a group of men who he assumed were hiding in the sand instead of doing their duty. It was only when he turned one of them over with his foot that he realised they were all dead.

As it happens, allied casualties on June 6 were not of World War One proportions. “Just” 4,500 died on the day, though as many again were wounded, many losing limbs. The Germans suffered comparable losses. But thousands more would die in the battles that lay ahead as the invasion force moved inland.

It is hard to imagine such a vast and risky venture taking place today. Who would lead it and who would follow? When we think of the world as a dangerous place –­ which it is – we should acknowledge that the challenges of our time do not begin to compare with those that faced allied troops on that June 6 morning seventy-five years ago. The war cemeteries of Normandy are moving testament to the sacrifice of what Americans like to call the Greatest Generation. As we try to make sense of our own time, we should not forget theirs.