Day 1 - The Longest Day

In 2014 we not only commemorate the First World War, we also commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landings during WWII, which took place on June 6, 1944.

World War II is not the far away show that the First might have been. In every family there has been a father, grandfather, uncle, great-uncle who fought. And then there is Uncle George who graces every family gathering with some impressive stories, which have been exaggerated over the years. But for every uncle George there are also people who came out of the war traumatized. After all, for an entire generation, this was the second war they experienced. My own family was scarred by WWII. My grandfather was one of the 600,000 Belgian soldiers who tried to stop the Germans when they again unsolicited violated our neutrality on their way to France. After a few days of despondent fighting, he was taken prisoner of war and spent several months together with 200,000 other Belgian soldiers in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He returned home unharmed, but he never wanted to talk about this period later… Silence can sometimes say so much.

After the surrender of Belgium, the country was occupied by Germany. Germany took over and that had its consequences. All men and women over the age of 18 could be called upon to work in Germany. That happened to my father. He also kept silent about that dark period in his life. All he said about this was that 'n a sense he felt safer in Germany than in Belgium'. He was an eternal optimist and tried to see the positive in everything.

My mother was born at the beginning of the war. Despite her young age, she still had vivid memories of the war. She especially remembered hiding in the cellar when Antwerp was bombed by the Germans at the end of the war and the food shortage. So much so that whenever there was a conflict somewhere in the world (eg the Gulf War), she would hoard out of fear that supermarket shelves would become empty.

The Second World War was even more 'worldly' than the First. Germany had managed to occupy many European countries in a short time and only the Russians could hold out. In practice there was therefore only fighting on the eastern front. England, which was able to stay out of the grasp of Germany (only underwent bombardments), promised to set up a new front together with the United States in order to be able to offer the Russians some relief. That only succeeded in 1944 because it took so long to train soldiers and get material on site.

Operation Overlord was an attempt to establish the western front in order to gain a foothold  to liberate Northern and Western Europe. Operation Overlord began on D-Day June 6, 1944 and ended on August 25, 1944 with the liberation of Paris.

A little after midnight on the night of June 5-6, 1944, the Longest Day began with airborne landings and a massive amphibious assault on the beaches of Normandy by British, Canadian and American army units.

On the occasion of the seventieth birthday, we make a short trip to Normandy. Normandy is about 600 km from home and not everyone thinks it would be wise to drive that far to actually spend just one real day there. But seventy years ago, our liberators came from far and wide, from across the Atlantic even, and I think it's only a small effort to commemorate them there.

The weather is not on our side during the drive. Heavy rain plashes down. But when we arrive in the first place we are going to visit today, it is dry and we can even have lunch on the terrace. We are in Merville which is on so-called Sword Beach, the easternmost sector of the landing beaches, and which was under British command. During the Second World War, the Germans had built a defense line along the entire coastline of the occupied territories to prevent an Allied invasion, the so-called Atlantik Wall that was no less than 2,685 kilometers long and that ran from Norway to France. It consisted of bunkers, cannons and minefields. One such German gun battery is located here in Merville. 

For the invasion to succeed, these batteries had to be eliminated. 600 English paratroopers jumped shortly after midnight but many landed in the wrong place. Only 150 men could fight for the battery. Despite this small number, the battery could be shut down with only limited losses. The battery has now been turned into a museum and in one of the bunkers where the guns were located, the battle is replayed by means of a sound and light show. 

This gives us a very realistic picture of what happened that night. We hear and see the air landing of the English, the subsequent shelling of the Germans and the invasion of the English into the bunker resulting in the surrender of the occupying forces. The landing here was a success due to the successful shutdown of the battery. The day ended with 28,845 British troops ashore but also with 630 dead. Today there is not much to see on the beaches themselves, with the exception of a memorial sign. It is hard to imagine that thousands of soldiers have landed here via landing boats under constant shelling from the mainland. After the landing bridges were lowered, the soldiers waded into the water up to their waists, the remaining 100 meters to the beach under Navy fire support.

I think it is fair to say that the first load of our overnight hotel on Omaha Beach.

We pass Juno Beach where the Canadians landed. Juno Beach was the most heavily defended stretch of beach after Omaha Beach. The German defenders had eleven heavy artillery batteries. Many mines were also laid. The preliminary bombardment the night before the invasion caused little damage, and the fighting was fierce. In the afternoon, however, the beach had been captured and the Canadian Third Division had penetrated several kilometers into the hinterland to recapture bridges. A part of the Sixth Canadian Panzer Regiment was the only one to reach the target line, but had to withdraw due to the lack of support from the infantry. By the end of the first day, Canadian troops had advanced the furthest of all Allied forces. In the evening of the next day they would connect with the British troops from Sword Beach. 21,400 soldiers went ashore, 335 were killed here.

It wouldn't stop there.