Normandy's martyrdom in exchange for France's freedom

Normandy's martyrdom in exchange for France's freedom

		The Overlord planners had predicted that the liberation of Normandy would take three weeks. In the event, it took four times as long. The Allies encountered endless setbacks and suffered more than 200,000 casualties in battle, including 37,000 dead. In the course of the fighting, the Germans, for their part, lost a large proportion of their available forces in the West ‑ nearly 400,000 prisoners, wounded or dead, as well as most of their equipment and tanks. They kept up their resistance for three months, drawing on every last ounce of strength before totally collapsing. Consequently, the liberation of France was as swift and straightforward as that of Normandy had been long, arduous and costly. The Allies entered Paris on August 25^th and Patton reached the outskirts of Verdun on the 31^st.
Villagers place flowers on the body of a GI who gave his life for their freedom

Nearly 20,000 civilians met with their deaths. Caen, Lisieux, Coutances, Saint-Lô, Vire and many other towns were reduced to rubble, while peaceful villages were razed to the ground.
Economic activities suffered massive disruption, while artistic and cultural treasures were lost forever.
Normandy would bear the scars left by the war for a very long time to come.

Its martyrdom was the price that had to be paid for the freedom of the nation. Nobody should forget this today, just as nobody should forget that the sacrifice of a region and its inhabitants was matched by that of the young men from across the Atlantic or the Channel who now lie forever beneath the Norman soil they came to liberate.

Normandy's martyrdom in exchange for France's freedom H4_p12_USarmy_02

20,000 people of Normandy paid for their country's freedom with their lives

The Navy's role in the Landings

		In the case of an amphibious assault such as Operation Neptune (the codename for the landings on the Normandy beaches), the navy obviously had a vital role to play. The Allied armada which crossed the Channel in the night of June 5^th-6^th comprised no fewer than 4,300 ships of all shapes and sizes (not counting the 2,600 barges carried by the large transport ships and lowered onto the waves close to the shore). It was made up mostly of British and American ships, though there were also Norwegian, Dutch, Polish, Danish, Greek and Free French vessels. This vast fleet was placed under the command of the British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. It was subdivided into the Western Task Force under Rear-Admiral Kirk, who was in charge of landings in the American sector (Naval Forces “U” for Utah Beach and “O” for Omaha), and the Eastern Task Force under Rear-Admiral Vian, who was in charge of operations in the Anglo-Canadian sector (Naval Forces “G” for Gold Beach, “J” for Juno and “S” for Sword). Each force, composed of several hundred transport ships, auxiliary vessels and escort ships, was accompanied by a naval bombardment squadron of between fifteen and twenty warships (battleships, cruisers and destroyers).
Landing barges are lowered onto the sea.

These ships were to open fire on the German defences forty-five minutes before H-Hour, taking over from the aerial bombardments that had been carried out overnight and at dawn. During the battle, they were to provide continuous covering fire, silencing most of the coastal batteries of the Atlantic Wall and giving valuable tactical support to the infantry, sometimes getting them out of tricky situations, as at Omaha.
		The USS Arkansas opens fire on the coast of Normandy. (IWM)

		For their part, the troop ships carried 130,000 men and more than 20,000 vehicles of all kinds, including tanks and lorries, across the Channel to the Normandy coast in the course of June 6^th. A few dozen decrepit merchant and warships, such as the French battleship Courbet, were scuttled in a long line in front of the Landing Beaches to form breakwaters.
The navy successfully landed thousands of men and machines.

In all, some 150,000 seamen belonging to the war fleets and the merchant navy took part in the landing operations – a force equal to the number of troops sent into battle on land on June 6^th 1944.

Normandy's martyrdom in exchange for France's freedom H3_p9_USA_06

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