EARLY ON the morning of 6 June 1944 the greatest armada mankind had ever put together landed on the coast of Normandy.

Four years earlier the British had been chased off the mainland of Europe and had since watched helplessly as Hitler consolidated his empire between the Channel and the Vistula and then extended it eastward towards the Caucasus. They had been able to hold their own in North Africa against Germany's ally Italy, but saw no prospect of re-entering the Continent unless the Third Reich collapsed as a result of British bombing, blockade and subversion; a pretty remote possibility. Only with the entry of the United States into the war in December 1941 did such a re-entry become possible, and the Americans had both the resources and the determination to carry it out. The British, who had a livelier sense of the difficulties involved and the professional expertise of their adversaries, insisted on delaying the operation until the odds were overwhelmingly favourable. By 1944 this had been achieved. Two thirds of the German armed forces were now pinned down fighting a losing battle on the Russian front. ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’ against German U-boats had been won, making it possible for American troops to pour uninterruptedly into the British Isles. The German Air Force had been bled almost to death defending its cities against Allied bombers, and Allied aircraft commanded the skies over north-west France. Operation OVERLORD was the climax towards which the entire allied war effort had been building since 1941.

The Allied forces landed on the French coast between the Seine estuary and the Cotentin peninsula. In the west the First US Army landed on either side of the Vire estuary, with the task of cutting off the Cotentin peninsula and capturing the port of Cherbourg. The British Second Army landed further east, between Arromanches and the mouth of the Orne at Ouistreham. On the extreme left of the British Army was the Third Division, whose white triangle arm flash indicated the spearhead role it would play in the invasion. Landing with the first wave was a young gunner officer who was later to write the history of the Division and so lay the foundations of a notable career as a professional historian: Lieutenant Norman Scarfe, R.A.