A powerful history of the one of the most remarkable days in British military history, told by those who were there.
6 June 1944: Allied forces cross the Channel and begin fighting their way into Nazi-occupied Europe.
"Bullets just came at you like raindrops. You could hear them whistling and passing you and hitting the ground near you but you just kept going on." —Private William Edward Lloyd, 2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment
This is the compelling story of the Normandy Landings told by the paratroopers and commandos who were first on enemy territory, the intelligence officers who planned the assault, the crewmen who piloted the landing craft to the beaches, and the ordinary soldiers who waded ashore under fire.
Codenamed Operation Overlord, D-Day was one of the biggest military operations ever attempted. Planned over three years in the greatest secrecy it involved 3.5 million soldiers, sailors and airmen from all the Allied countries, who all shared the same objective: to liberate Europe from the Nazi occupation. Almost four years to the day since the last of the disordered and defeated British Army was rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, D-Day may have only been the start of the long fight to Berlin, but it was also the beginning of the end of the long and bloody conflict.
Featuring a mass of previously unpublished material,
Forgotten Voices of D-Day
is a powerful record that tells what it was really like to be involved on that fateful day, which finally and decisively turned the tide of the Second World War.