- 5/17/2025
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00:00The morning of June 7th, you've got to imagine the two of us waking up in this field, it's
00:19quiet.
00:20We didn't know which way we want to go.
00:27Where is the enemy?
00:30Where is the line?
00:32And you have to guess and boy, that's what you call being scared shitless.
00:39Can you tell me about D-Day itself?
00:56Testing, testing, one, two, three, testing, testing, one, two, three, all right, run.
01:24What had they told you beforehand to expect?
01:28Expect hell.
01:29They didn't lie to us about that.
01:32It was sheer nerves, but exhilarating nerves if you know what I mean.
01:46Your task will not be an easy one.
01:49Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle-hardened.
01:53He will fight savagely.
02:20Normandy, 7th of June, 1944.
02:28Daylight was coming upon us fast.
02:32So I did a trooper alongside of me, a Polk, and I says, you better get your stuff together.
02:38It's almost daylight.
02:40And I'm looking at the sky and I said, my God, I welcome the daylight.
02:45Now we can get on the move and maybe we can warm up a bit.
02:54With all the shooting and not knowing where we were going, fear began to grip us.
03:02I know I was scared as hell.
03:03I couldn't imagine what was going on there.
03:06Those men who'd survived the beaches on D-Day would have woken up the next morning,
03:11if they'd been asleep at all, completely exhausted.
03:17Some of them had seen their friends killed on those beaches or they'd lost their commanders.
03:21They have no idea how close the enemy is.
03:24So there's this air of fear and uncertainty as they go into the next day.
03:29They quite literally had no idea what was to come.
03:40The battle ahead would last a grueling three months
03:43and it would be a turning point in the entire war.
03:46What D-Day had done was to create a foothold.
03:49But that foothold would be completely meaningless.
03:52The key strategic objective for the British and the Canadians in the Battle of Normandy
03:56was to capture Caen.
03:59It was this hub of communication, of roads, of railways.
04:03There was an airfield just nearby.
04:05So controlling Caen would allow the British to take control of the city.
04:10It would allow the British to take control of the city.
04:13It would allow the British to take control of the city.
04:16It would allow the British to take control of the city.
04:19So controlling Caen would allow the Allies to advance
04:23and ultimately push the Nazis out of France and back to Germany.
04:28But with an inevitable counter-attack coming from the Germans,
04:32the Allies had no time to waste.
04:38You'll tell me about the events following D-Day.
04:41We moved off soon after dawn.
04:44We had to move down and occupy Esquivel.
04:48This had been planned in the UK.
04:51And we studied maps and photographs.
05:07John's next objective would be advancing towards Esquivel.
05:13Esquivel is a crucial element in the taking of Caen.
05:18It was on a ridge overlooking Caen to the north-east.
05:21And taking it would be important for the Allies
05:24to keep an eye on what the Germans were doing.
05:27I think we had a couple of hours sleep, no more than that.
05:31I still can't remember whether...
05:33I think we had some grub in our pants or something.
05:36I can't quite remember.
05:38And then it was up, and we moved into Esquivel.
05:42Forces that were protecting Esquivel were of a very different order
05:46to the ones like John and Wally had been met by on D-Day itself.
06:11And the point, I still remember the point.
06:14There were eagles, and eagles, and eagles were coming at us.
06:17Each of us had to report.
06:20And our answer had to be a pitch.
06:23Werner Kautenhaus is a young corporal
06:27in the 21st Panzer Division.
06:30They were an elite division.
06:32They are better equipped, better trained
06:34than the average German division.
06:37On the morning of the 7th of June
06:39they prepare for a big counteroffensive.
06:45At this point, tens of thousands of German soldiers
06:47are on their way to the Normandy Front,
06:50tank formations heavily armed.
06:53The German soldiers have been told again and again,
06:56this is the decisive battle of the war, so you don't give up.
07:00This is a battle we will win.
07:09We drove down to the village of Esquivel.
07:39John Howard and his men were met by German tanks
07:42waiting to unleash a horrifying counterattack.
08:10We lost communication with our HQ.
08:14I thought I'd go around and find out
08:17what damage had been done to the other platoons.
08:20I went forward, put my binoculars to my eyes,
08:25and then there was a zip, and I was knocked out.
08:40When I came round, there was blood on my head and face,
08:44and I had a hell of a headache.
08:49Somebody was looking at me,
08:51taking my helmet off to see what was wrong,
08:54and told me that I got a bullet through my helmet,
08:57and there it was, dead centre.
09:00Whether I'd passed out again or not, I don't know.
09:03But the whole of that half hour, an hour, is very hazy.
09:07They all thought you were dead.
09:09Yes, I believe them.
09:11It's only people who told me that afterwards.
09:18During that time, we were strafed by air
09:23and counterattacked very heavily by 21 Panzer.
09:37Eventually, Joel and the men alongside him
09:40were forced to withdraw when it became clear
09:43that their assault on Esquivel wasn't going to be successful,
09:47that it was just going to lead to catastrophic losses.
09:54I wound him with 121 men and came out with 52.
10:08As Johnny Meyer told you, we took a hell of a beat in there.
10:16It took me a long time to get over those casualties at Esquivel,
10:21so much so that I became very, very depressed.
10:28Esquivel was a direct confrontation
10:34with the reality of what the Battle of Normandy would really be like.
10:40It was clearly going to be brutal,
10:43and it was going to take a huge toll,
10:46not just on the health and well-being and lives
10:49of the people who were being asked to wage it,
10:52but also on their minds too.
10:54This was going to be a victory,
10:56that if it was going to be secured, would have to be ground out.
11:05Ultimately, the force that could provide the greatest firepower
11:09would win this battle.
11:11This was going to be a battle of machines,
11:14ammunition, supplies and reinforcements.
11:17So on the beaches, the activity, if anything, is increasing.
11:22So the first question,
11:24if you just tell me your name and what unit you were in.
11:27My name is Alan Price.
11:29I was with the 3275th Quartermaster Service Company.
11:32Quartermaster Service Company was an outfit
11:35that serviced all the other units,
11:38everything to make the front line click.
11:41What had they told you beforehand to expect?
11:44Expect hell.
11:46And it was true.
11:48They didn't lie to us about that.
11:54Everybody started going inland.
11:56So we stayed on the beach another two or three days
11:59cleaning the beach up.
12:01Whatever they asked us to do, we did.
12:05Picking up the dead.
12:07It's a stinking job.
12:09The lady in the arm there and the head here,
12:12blood in the water, blood all over the place.
12:16It's horrible.
12:26I had nightmares when I first came home.
12:29I had nightmares.
12:31I still don't like to talk about it.
12:39The beaches would have been littered with corpses,
12:42broken machines, ruined German defences,
12:45and it had to be cleared
12:47because the follow-on forces and follow-on supplies
12:50had to be landed on the beaches.
12:56We didn't break our butts to get the gas,
12:59the ammo and the food up to them.
13:02They'd have been up shit creek without a paddle.
13:06While the British front line was pushing towards Caen,
13:09the Americans were trying to get to Cherbourg.
13:12Cherbourg was critical to the Germans and the Allies
13:15because it was a deep-water port.
13:18And that meant a faster route to bring in supplies.
13:22But getting to Cherbourg would be tough for the Americans.
13:27They were about to face a steep learning curve
13:30in the battle ahead.
13:33Combat in Europe
13:36is actually a simple stupid procedure.
13:41You dig in from the night, get up early in the morning,
13:45walk until you started to get killed,
13:48then you have a battle during the day,
13:51sometimes you have a battle in the morning,
13:54sometimes you have a battle in the evening,
13:57sometimes you have a battle in the evening,
14:00then you have a battle during the day,
14:02sundown with Caen, you dig in.
14:05Time to go back, it's not all over yet.
14:08This is all day after day after day after day.
14:15As the Allies advanced inland towards Caen and Cherbourg,
14:19they were forced to progress through this landscape in Normandy.
14:23And this landscape was interlaced with these really dense hedgerows.
14:27Very thick, very tall, very well established.
14:30And that represents a real problem for an invading force
14:33because they can't see over them and they can't see through them
14:36and they can't move through them.
14:38And that really, really favours the defender.
14:53I want to tell you something about the hedgerows.
14:57You've heard about the hedgerows.
15:00The hedgerows were boundaries
15:04and these became barriers or emplacements where we fought one another.
15:09We would sometimes fight all day with the Germans firing down on us.
15:28I was drafted into the 352nd Division.
15:33We were put together with the SS Hitler Youth.
15:38We were all young people.
15:41We were all 17, 18-year-olds.
15:48And if you imagine, in the square hedgerow,
15:52in the square hedgerow, there too,
15:55and then we went on together.
15:58There were the hollow ways.
16:01We were buried there.
16:04Or buried in the hedgerows.
16:07And that's where we were basically trained as individual fighters and so on.
16:14If we came over with one of the hedgerows and dropped into the field
16:18with the hedgerow toward our back, we were dead.
16:21We'd say we'd be mounting an eschema.
16:24So we just were running parallel, trying to flank them.
16:28They were like mice.
16:34The Allies could not play their biggest strategy.
16:40The Allies could not play their biggest trump, their artillery there.
16:45Because it was difficult to observe where the Germans actually are.
16:49They had to pull through from field to field.
16:52And each time they had just conquered a field,
16:54the Germans were awaiting in the next field.
17:09He had the explosive rounds in his rifle.
17:12He sat on the other hedgerow and shot into the trees.
17:16When the explosive rounds came, you thought,
17:20he's already there.
17:22We took two shots from that side and from that side.
17:26And when he... we let him over the hedgerow
17:30and then we shot him together.
17:40There were about six of us, about two feet apart,
17:44heads down, squatting walk along the hedgerow.
17:49And suddenly there was this pop
17:53and the sergeant's head was blown apart,
17:57flew to the helmet and left his skull like a saucer
18:01and fell over to my arms.
18:09We had not been trained for hedgerow fighting.
18:12And I think I'd carried that watch for years.
18:15I had terrific training for the assault,
18:19self-preservation, killing the enemy,
18:22but they'd never told me about the hedgerows.
18:30The ongoing campaign through Normandy became a real slog
18:34as they were confronted with this landscape.
18:37It really slowed the Americans' advance on Cherbourg.
18:49As the Americans were pushing towards Cherbourg,
18:52British commandos were tasked with taking German strongpoints
18:56as the British advanced towards Caen.
19:08We were detailed for a job a mile and a half inland.
19:14There was an underground radar station
19:18which had about 300 or 400 German troops in it.
19:24The Dove radar station was an incredibly important position to take.
19:30It was a communications hub.
19:33It was a vast network of underground bunkers
19:37which had been sending vital intelligence
19:40back to German headquarters in Caen.
19:43The station was close to the landing beaches
19:46and Warwick and James's commando unit were sent to take it.
19:51They had hoped to capture us on the first day,
19:54but in actual fact they didn't.
19:57We only mustered about 30 men,
20:01whether we should have had something like a baron or not.
20:05So we were well below strength.
20:09The radar station was becoming a thorn in the side of the Allies
20:13that the Allies had to smash to move beyond and advance into France.
20:19When we arrived there,
20:21there must have been about 600 yards of dead, flat, open field.
20:26And you could see the wire and the bunkers
20:29and the gun emplacements on top of these concrete bunkers that they had.
20:35There was a minefield surrounding it.
20:38It was a minefield.
20:40It was a minefield.
20:42It was a minefield.
20:45There was a minefield surrounding it
20:47and we had to clear the mines before we could actually go in.
20:51It was a very dangerous situation.
20:56And entrenched underneath the radar station
20:59there were hundreds of German soldiers,
21:02so it was imperative that the Allies took it as quickly as they could.
21:06The German defences were so strong
21:09that the commandos needed to call in specialist units.
21:12We did many, many little patrols against it from different angles.
21:17It was very well booby-trapped.
21:22So we mounted this big fighting patrol
21:26and we had Bangalore torpedoes, which the engineers brought.
21:31They were like scaffolding tubes filled with high explosives.
21:35You could link them all together, you see.
21:38You'd have one big, long scaffolding pole eventually.
21:43The idea was that it would blast all the wire out of the way
21:46and destinate any mines that were underneath it.
21:59The German jet had opened up space away.
22:01As soon as the explosion had gone, we started to run.
22:04As soon as it started to fire, it was flashing all over the place.
22:10After several days of patrolling the station,
22:13they were finally able to mount an attack strong enough to reach the bunkers.
22:19Eventually the time comes when the powers that be say,
22:22right, enough's enough, take them out.
22:25We were given a couple of Churchill tanks.
22:28They trundled up over the wire and blew up any anti-personnel mines
22:32and we followed behind.
22:41And that was the most curious attack I've ever known in my life.
22:45We all wandered in at the back of these tanks and spread out
22:49and occupied the various positions that the Germans had built there.
22:54And we did that in broad daylight.
22:58The Germans were all on the ground.
23:08Eventually they all came out. There were about 300 of them.
23:20They surrendered then and packed it up all together.
23:25So we had a very relaxing day after that.
23:28We were allowed to wash and clean up and generally relax completely, you know.
23:38I remember the officer in charge of this underground radar station.
23:43I don't know whether he was SS or not, but he was tall, he was arrogant
23:48and he had a lovely leather jacket.
23:51Arrogant and he had a lovely leather raincoat, overcoat, which I liked.
24:00So I asked my sergeant major if I could have it.
24:04And he went over to this bloke and said, take it off, which he did.
24:10And the sergeant major gave it to me and I used it for months as a ground sheet
24:14in my foxholes, various places.
24:18Lovely coat.
24:21On the edges of the Allied invasion zone, pockets of German strongholds had resisted capture.
24:26One of the largest was the Merville gun battery
24:29and it was repeatedly attacked by the Allied troops.
24:33As an officer, I knew I was responsible for my people.
24:38And I took that very seriously.
24:41That's from my upbringing.
24:43I was a soldier.
24:45Reimund was an interesting character because he was politically an opponent to the Nazis,
24:50but still he is an officer serving for the Germans,
24:53knowing that this is probably not the right cause he's fighting for,
24:57but still he felt a loyalty towards his men.
25:16Before the Nazis invaded Austria, my father and the future head of the Gau
25:27always argued because my father said, Hitler is a criminal.
25:33There will be war.
25:35It didn't take long before he came to Dachau, to the KZ Dachau.
25:41And when he came back, I was already enlisted in the military.
25:56One day, the young man in my company
26:02suddenly started singing melancholic songs
26:08and tears came to his eyes.
26:12Then I said, Arnold, what's wrong with you?
26:15Just like a boy.
26:17Then he said, yes, I have such nice parents
26:22and I love your sister so much.
26:26Then I said, yes, you will see her again.
26:30He said, I have such a feeling that I will never see her again.
26:39Then I said, Arnold, you know what?
26:43You stay here tonight.
26:45You go to the bunker and don't let her look at you anymore.
26:49You clean up tonight and you'll be safe.
26:52We'll pick you up at night.
27:08And after the call, there was only a telephone connection.
27:14No Arnold.
27:22But I'm still in Arnold's bunker.
27:26He looked out, there was a sea slit.
27:29He looked out.
27:32At that moment, a grenade had to go right through the sea slit.
27:37And from his eyes downwards, his head was gone.
27:53I went to his heart.
27:55He was also crying.
27:58And then I sat down and wrote to his parents.
28:02That was my sister's letter.
28:08After struggling, trying to progress towards Cannes,
28:12it became really clear to British forces
28:15that actually capturing Cannes was not going to be straightforward at all
28:21as any route towards it was increasingly well reinforced
28:26by the British forces.
28:28They were going to capture it.
28:30They were going to capture it.
28:32They were going to capture it.
28:34It was increasingly well reinforced by Germans in the area.
28:40Getting to the city itself became nigh on impossible.
28:44And for that very reason, the Allies turned to increasingly applying air power,
28:49bombing Cannes, in order to break the German defence.
28:53Nobody quite expected that extent of bombing
28:58over Cannes and over Normandy in those days.
29:04Bombing is, you know, inaccurate at the best of times.
29:10All around are the homes and the neighbourhoods
29:13and the workplaces of French civilians.
29:17The city was subject to this bombardment
29:19with huge consequences for the civilian population.
29:24But it was considered to be so necessary
29:27to target the German tanks, servicemen, resources in the area
29:33that it was a price worth paying.
29:36Je suis resté au Bon Sauveur
29:39avant de garder ceux qui débarquaient des ambulances
29:41pour les emmener ce qu'on appelait triage.
29:45Andre je suis resté au Bon Sauveur
29:47avant de garder ceux qui débarquaient des ambulances
29:49pour les emmener à ce qu'on appelait triage.
29:52Andre had been working secretly with the Resistance for a very long time
29:56and when the bombing started on 11 June 1944,
29:59Andre had been working secretly with the Resistance for a very long time
30:04and when the bombings started to come,
30:07he went with his sister to the hospital,
30:09you know, helping anyone he could.
30:34We were going to be hit,
30:35and all we heard was that there was a hospital
30:36that was improvising in there.
30:40The operating beds were already covered in blood.
30:43Let's take these beds.
30:46We put them in the blood bags that were already there,
30:50and we collected the blood from the operations.
30:53To dye them completely red,
30:57my sister and I spread out
30:59so many religious vegetable gardens in the back
31:02to spread it out on the green frames,
31:05thinking it would reflect better.
31:07I was going to spread it out on the fourth side of the cross,
31:11the fourth sheet.
31:12A plane pierced the clouds
31:14and we thought it was going to hit us,
31:17and this plane went back up.
31:20We understood that they had seen it,
31:22and inside, this glass was protected.
31:33The Germans threw as many of their forces
31:35as they could into defending Cannes,
31:37because they knew that was the gateway into France.
31:40They had to hold it,
31:41but it came at the expense of the defence of Cherbourg.
31:44The advantage of that for the Allies
31:47was that the American forces could advance with greater ease.
31:57We were marching to a village.
31:59Everywhere you looked, you could see homes were damaged,
32:01destroyed, blown up.
32:03It was a horrible sight to see.
32:12And I thought to myself,
32:14what the hell have we done
32:15to these people over here in their houses?
32:17My God!
32:18Don't forget the French were supposed to be our friends
32:21and all that.
32:24Then I thought to myself,
32:25this is the price that they have to pay for their freedom.
32:28They have to sacrifice their lives, their homes.
32:32It's a horrible thing.
32:49After a grinding and bloody four-day battle,
32:52the Americans finally managed to take the port of Cherbourg.
32:58But they discovered that the German garrison,
33:01who had been in retreat, had destroyed the port installations.
33:05Now, this meant that they couldn't use it
33:07for those all-important supplies.
33:10They turned south towards the town of Saint-Lô
33:14and relied more than ever on supplies being brought up to them
33:18from the landing beaches by road.
33:22We were up at Saint-Lô.
33:2423rd Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division
33:27got annihilated up there,
33:29and we had to go up there and clean all them bodies up.
33:33And we had a few fellas killed, some wounded.
33:37Every time somebody go up a hill,
33:39somebody's not coming back.
33:41Every time you go into detail, somebody's not coming back.
33:45Allen was running supplies up to the front line,
33:48part of the Quartermaster Battalion,
33:50which was a predominantly black unit.
33:54The army was segregated.
33:57Blacks served in separate units
34:00and were subjected to the exact same kind of racism
34:04they experienced in the United States.
34:07Allen was coming from a country where
34:10blacks in the South couldn't drink out of the same water fountain as white people.
34:15You couldn't share the same bathrooms.
34:17You couldn't go to the same schools.
34:19When we was in England,
34:21seven of us went over to try to get in the paratroopers.
34:25I asked him, I said, what you want?
34:28I said, we understand you're looking for paratroopers.
34:31He said, you see anybody in this room your color?
34:34Me?
34:37He said, you see anybody in this room your color?
34:40We said, no. He said, get the hell out.
34:42They wouldn't accept us.
34:44I said, what are you going to do?
34:46It's a hell of a thing.
34:48You wanted to fight.
34:49Yeah, we wanted to fight.
34:50What the hell did we go to the service for?
34:52To fight?
34:56It was very, very hard to be a black soldier in the U.S. Army.
35:02You were almost always put in roles that were subservient to white people.
35:07They weren't allowed to fight with dignity on the front lines.
35:12And they liked to keep you far away from anything where glory could happen,
35:17where you could be a hero, where you were doing something honorable.
35:23We was in the black army and they were the white army.
35:27We were second class citizens.
35:29We did all the dirty work.
35:31And I admired the fellows up there that were being popped.
35:34And we supplied them.
35:35And we got popped at going up to take supplies to them.
35:38See, that's what hurt me.
35:40And when you go up there at shower time, some of them didn't want to feed you.
35:44And after you brought them food and ammo and gas and water
35:49and all that other stuff you bring up to them, and they don't want to feed you.
35:52That's what I got ticked off at.
35:56Still makes you angry when you talk about it.
35:58That's the way they would start to think.
36:00They were superior to anything other than white.
36:03They were superior, so that's the way they would start.
36:18As collective allied forces attempt to press German defenses out of Caen,
36:23the war became one of attacks and counterattacks.
36:27Progress was very slow and casualty rates were incredibly high.
36:37James and the commandos were stuck trying to hold the eastern edge of the allied territory
36:42whilst losing men at an appalling rate.
36:50It was very hard going because they never stopped firing us.
36:54Somebody was always shooting us.
36:56And you've got to lie concealed all through the day.
37:00You can't drink or eat properly.
37:03Your movement is the thing that's going to give you away.
37:17I proposed it to a corporal.
37:20When I said I didn't want to be a corporal and I didn't want any responsibility,
37:24I said, I don't want to do that.
37:26They said, well, you're already doing it.
37:29Looking after other people became a thing with me more than looking after myself.
37:44There was always the feeling there that the more of these things we do,
37:48the more of the troop will disappear.
37:51And, you know, it would be a tale that would come eventually.
37:55My men were in a pretty poor state.
37:59Some of the men, actually, were on the breaking point.
38:03They were ready to refuse without taking us from rest.
38:08It's a very hard thing to tell men, you know,
38:11to ask a man to go over there and do this and do that,
38:14knowing that he's likely to be killed.
38:17And really, you know, you're sending him to his death.
38:22Did you see the enemy as a human being or just as a target?
38:28At that moment, you say, man, he's just as human as I am.
38:33But when you see that the enemy is aiming at you
38:39and the bullets are flying left and right away from you,
38:43you can't do anything else.
38:45Because he wants to shoot you too.
38:48Either him or me, one of the two.
38:52There's no other way.
39:09We had been joined by some of these British commandos
39:13and our own rangers and paratroopers.
39:16I thought I was crazy. They were absolutely crazy.
39:19I witnessed a number of what I would call instances of butchery,
39:24where we did capture a German or two
39:27and witnessed the throat-cutting and disembowelment.
39:34We were crazy.
39:36It was kind of creepy because I considered myself a good soldier
39:41and the next few hours I was robbed.
39:44But I was out of madness.
39:56One of the things which really marks out the Normandy campaign
39:59from D-Day onwards is the level of brutality.
40:05Both sides have been told that these people
40:07are kind of an existential threat to them.
40:10So there's two sides that are like coiled springs
40:13and when they come face to face, they absolutely go at each other.
40:21This is extraordinarily bloody and brutal.
40:24It becomes particularly brutal when you've got formations
40:28fighting against each other which consider themselves to be elite.
40:33So particularly when you see SS troops
40:36fighting against US paratroopers,
40:40you see quite a lot of atrocities happening on both sides.
40:49I asked what about my corporal from our company
40:52and somebody related a story that they found his body.
40:56The Germans, they burneted and mutilated his body.
41:01They cut his testicle and his penis off
41:04and they stuffed it in his mouth.
41:09We found GI corpses, cotton trees and brent.
41:14Brent alive.
41:24The danger for the Allies is that the longer that this campaign was going on
41:28and the more attritional it was becoming,
41:31morale was starting to drift lower and lower and lower.
41:35But one thing that the Allies did have very much going in their favour
41:39was ongoing air superiority.
41:45If the Allies could cut off the German supply chains,
41:48they'd have a much better chance of winning the battle.
41:55So they destroyed railways, they destroyed roads,
42:00ammunition stumps, tanks,
42:03convoys that they saw moving.
42:06Anything to hold the Germans up.
42:09Well, over time, that started to really take a toll on the Germans
42:13because they weren't able to reinforce as quickly
42:16as they otherwise would have been.
42:21And so aerial bombardment really helped the Allies.
42:30We were marching through a village that was heavily damaged.
42:35It was like a nightmare. It was really horrible.
42:39There were dead Germans lying all over the place.
42:44The front part of the house was still standing.
42:47All that remained was a window and a door.
42:50I saw a rosemary clinging to the wall.
42:53And I said to myself,
42:56And I said to myself,
43:02And to me, it seemed like it was in direct defiance
43:05to all the horrors a man could create.
43:08And there it stood.
43:13I went over to the wall and I picked about three of them off the vine.
43:19And we marched through the village.
43:21No-one spoke.
43:26Everything was quiet.
43:28You could smell the death of the day.
43:31You could smell it. You felt it.
43:36You felt all the death that had happened that day.
43:40I don't know why I told you this.
43:42I just want you to know, I want you to know that it wasn't too easy.
43:49There was a body in this road.
43:52There was a body in this road.
43:54So that's not the first body we've seen.
43:57And I noticed the head was gone.
44:00It was just the torso left.
44:02And there was a big hole in the ribcage.
44:07I couldn't believe it was a human being.
44:12What got me all upset was that some of the G.I.s as they marched,
44:15they were eating the kid rashes.
44:17They were throwing the rubbers and cans inside his body.
44:23My decency was stunned.
44:26I couldn't believe, even if we were at war, that we'd have such disrespect
44:30for the remains of a human body.
44:32I just couldn't believe it.
44:36I was wondering, why? Why did they do this?
44:39Well, the only reason I could think of was that they felt
44:44that a soldier's life is something to be wasted, to be discarded like a trash.
44:51Your body means nothing after you're dead.
44:53The only one you're alive.
44:56Took the roses that I had and I dropped them in the cavity of the body
45:01and I just kept going.
45:04It was something I'll never forget.
45:15By July, the Allies had been battling in Normandy for weeks.
45:23They needed a final push.
45:31And like the other forbidden act,
45:33they had to make a final push.
45:35They had to make a final push.
45:37They had to make a final push.
45:40Then I saw all the Allied planes take off.
45:43They didn't fly high either.
45:45From Züschaus, there was a heavy flak.
45:52And then the bombs went off.
45:55The sun was shining.
45:57At first, they all fell out.
45:59They looked up at the sun.
46:01Then they got faster.
46:02Of course, you couldn't see them anymore.
46:04Then they ran like a hare.
46:10It was decided that the only way to really free Caen of the Germans
46:16was to absolutely obliterate the city.
46:20It's a huge mass of smoke.
46:22You think it's fire, but it's actually dust.
46:26I had the impression it was a kind of hallucination.
46:29It was terrifying.
46:36It was a huge mass of smoke.
46:38You think it's fire, but it's actually dust.
46:41I had the impression it was a kind of hallucination.
46:44It was terrifying.
46:50Carpet bombing was a strategy during the war.
46:53And here you see in Caen that strategy happening.
46:59But no one in Normandy had experienced anything on this scale before.
47:05Thousands of tons of bombs hit the city.
47:11It's horrifying.
47:13The sound is deafening.
47:15People are running.
47:18Time would have stopped for André.
47:20He was drawn into a moment of urgency,
47:24responding to immediate needs of those around him.
47:47He was transported to the EBC.
47:49And there was one of his surgeons there
47:52who said,
47:54if they don't take me to the EBC,
47:56I won't have the courage to operate on him.
47:59And another said,
48:01I can't see the sound either.
48:03He couldn't physically.
48:06The imprint after this bombing campaign
48:10would be so heavy on the civilians in Caen
48:14and on the town as a whole,
48:16it would last for not years, but decades.
48:19It would traumatize generations of families
48:23who would live with this memory
48:26of grayness, of darkness,
48:29of fear.
48:31Live with this memory of grayness,
48:35of rubble, of death for years to come.
48:40The attack on Caen was considered to be
48:42one of the heaviest air attacks in the Second World War.
48:46The Germans were overpowered,
48:48and when the Allies moved in,
48:50the Germans were either killed, captured, or they fled.
49:01And from that moment on,
49:03we only experienced defeat.
49:05We never had a chance to retreat.
49:08We already knew very quickly
49:11that we couldn't take this decision.
49:19We were also captured.
49:21We were left with six men from one company.
49:25We were left with six men from one company.
49:28The others were all gone.
49:32The opening the door at Caen
49:35opened the road towards Paris
49:38and ultimately towards victory.
49:49It puts the Allies in a position
49:52to finally liberate France
49:55and then to move on towards Germany
49:58and the liberation of all of mainland Europe.
50:25The people who came from the front
50:29were the ones you could rely on.
50:33They said, you fought well, we fought well.
50:36And above all, the Blacks.
50:39They were fine, too.
50:41The Blacks guarded us,
50:44and the others, the Whites,
50:46were only there to watch, and so on.
50:56What was the attitude of civilians towards you in Normandy?
51:00Oh, fantastic.
51:02Absolutely fantastic.
51:07Well, you can imagine, can't you,
51:09they've had four, four and a half years of captivity
51:12and they're now, for want of a better term,
51:15they're free, they're liberated,
51:18and they were delighted.
51:25Winning the Battle of Normandy
51:28was absolutely essential
51:31in order to move onwards
51:34and go on to win the Second World War.
51:38But from the Allies' perspective,
51:41D-Day was not the end of the world.
51:44It was not the end of the world.
51:47It was not the end of the world.
51:50It was not the end of the world.
51:53But from the Allies' perspective,
51:55D-Day was a massive gamble, it was a huge risk.
51:59It was a calculated risk, but it was a risk nonetheless.
52:03And had it not succeeded,
52:05it's impossible to know
52:07what the consequences would have been.
52:14This period is when you see the whole of humanity
52:18and everything that humans are capable of,
52:21from the most glorious aspects of it
52:24to its most horrendous aspects.
52:27This kind of spectrum of humanity and inhumanity,
52:31which live side by side.
52:52I often went to bed crying
52:55and didn't say anything because I didn't want to hurt anyone.
53:09Despite all the awful things that had happened to me and mine,
53:13I'm proud, very proud indeed, to be a Royal Marine.
53:22I was very proud of the company.
53:25I hope I showed it at the time.
53:32We came back to Bulford in the same rooms we were in
53:36before we left.
53:38I try to remember how many chaps we had in the company I had then.
53:43Less than half.
53:45And none of my original officers.
53:49What would you say to the guys who you lost?
53:52How would you remember those guys?
53:56One hell of an outfit.
53:59That's how I remember them.
54:01I wouldn't want to serve with a better bunch of fellas.
54:04Would you do it again if you were called up?
54:07Yeah. This is my country.
54:10Yep. This is my country.
54:13The only home I ever known. What am I going to do?
54:17You talk to most Afro-Americans, they'll tell you,
54:19I'll go back if I was called up.
54:25As we marched towards the boat,
54:28I remembered the people of Normandy.
54:30Their country was ravaged.
54:32Their lives changed forever.
54:37I remembered the dead enemy soldiers
54:40who had once been alive and young, as fearful as we.
54:44My thoughts were of all the troopers who died
54:48and we were leaving behind.
54:50Suddenly I felt that I was all alone.
54:56I realized I was returning to England without my buddies.
55:00I was the only one of 17 men who jumped with me on D-Day to return.
55:05Tears still running down my face.
55:08I turned towards the fields of Normandy.
55:11And I gave a farewell salute to all those we left
55:14in the swamps, in the fields, in the hedgerows.
55:20We had come with so many,
55:23and we are now leaving with so few.
56:41We are leaving with so few.
57:11We are leaving with so few.
57:30I think the one thing that comes out of all looking back over the years
57:34was the sheer bloody waste.
57:37It's a waste.
57:39You can put it down to any war there ever was.
57:42Small one, big one, or whatever.
57:45The sheer bloody waste.
57:49God.
57:51Experience should teach us something.
58:09For more information on marking the 80th anniversary,
58:12call 0300 303 0552
58:15or go to bbc.co.uk forward slash ddaytapes
58:20and follow the links to the Open University.
58:39www.openuniversity.edu.au
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