The Battle of Normandy
Russell Chamberlin introduces the commemorations to the anniversary of the start of Operation Overlord, sixty years ago this month.
The Battle of Normandy, which marked the opening of the final phase of the Second World War, began at seventeen minutes past midnight on June 6th, British time. Or 23.17 on June 5th, French time. Whichever clock was used, at seventeen minutes past the hour Major John Howard brought his enormous Horsa glider to a landing 47 metres from a bridge over the river Orne midway between the coast and the city of Caen. At eighteen and nineteen minutes past the hour two more gliders swooped in silently, landing a few metres away from Howard. On board each glider were twenty-eight men and two pilots. The commando attacked the bridge, initiating D-Day.
Eighty days later, on August 21st, in what became known to the Allies as the Falaise Gap and to the Germans as the Todesgang, the Death Road, a distraught French priest, the Abbé Launay, pleaded with the German commander to surrender and bring the slaughter to an end. The Germans surrendered, the Gap was closed and so ended the Battle of Normandy.
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