D Day + 1

photo: GIs train for the invasion at Slapton Sands, south coast of England, 1944. [photo courtesy U.S. Army Center of Military History]

While we're on the subject of the invasion of Normandy, it's appropriate to remember that the invasion didn't just happen. The planning and preparations literally took years. One of the biggest feats was to assemble the necessary manpower and equipment, and train the troops, to be able to pull off the largest invasion in history. And they would likely only get one chance to do it.

The British Army lost most of its equipment when it evacuated from the French beaches at Dunkirk in 1940 as Hitler's armies advanced across France. Starting around 1942, massive amounts of arms, munitions and other equipment were shipped to Britain from America. Without these supplies, the Brits would not have been able to continue the war. In addition, thousands of American and Canadian troops also arrived--a total of 1.5 million ground troops, and an additional 500,000 airmen and sailors. Thousands of men and women who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe also managed to reach Britain with the intention of fighting to free their homelands: French, Poles, Czechs, Dutch, Belgians, and Norwegians all gravitated to Britain to fight the war.

Huge bases were set up in England to house and train the invasion troops. Farm land was acquired to build airfields for British and American bomber and fighter aircraft, so that they could conduct raids into occupied Europe and Germany. A lot of the civilian population in England were required to give up their houses, farms and villages to make way for the bases. American forces were assigned to the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset on the southwest peninsula of England where there was space for them to train.

Sure, there was some friction between the locals and the tourists, but overall, it was an incredible example of people pulling together and making sacrifices for the common good. I came across this message that was posted on a church in south Devon, where the local population had to leave in order to make way for the U.S. Army:

"TO OUR ALLIES OF THE USA: This church has stood here for several hundred years. Around it has grown a community, which has lived in these houses and tilled these fields ever since there was a church. This church, this churchyard in which their loved ones lie at rest, these homes, these fields are as dear to those who have left them as are the homes and graves and fields which you, our Allies, have left behind you. They hope to return one day, as you hope to return to yours, to find them waiting to welcome them home. They entrust them to your care meanwhile, and pray that God's blessing may rest upon us all." signed, Charles, Bishop of Exeter.

[extract from "The Normandy Landings" by Derek Blizard 1993, Reed International Books, ISBN 0-600-57905-0]