If there’s only one book to read about “D-Day”, it’s this one. Of sand and steel, published in April by Passés Composés, meticulously retraces the patient and long preparation for the Landing of June 6, 1944, the decisive stage in the fall of the Nazi day on Europe. Historian and former British army officer, Peter Caddick-Adams has explored the archives as much as the beaches, where he has collected a large number of previously unpublished testimonies from veterans.
In clear writing, teeming with illuminating details, this story, in its second part, traces the Allied assaults from Utah Beach, in the West, to Sword, in the East, via Omaha, where it takes its reader both on the square and in the German bunkers. “A landing on a defended coast is the most difficult of all military operations,” he recalls. “The attackers, that day, were at war against the Germans, but also against the wind, the tides, the weather and geology.” Interview.
L’Express: To what extent did “D-Day” change the lives of those who participated and survived it?
Peter Caddick-Adams: It was the largest military operation of the 20th century and the most dramatic event in the lives of those who participated in it. Most participants in the assault wave expected to die during the landing, but the Allies suffered incredibly few casualties. An estimated 4,414 Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen lost their lives on June 6, 1944, when a minimum of 20,000 deaths was expected.
Most Allied soldiers had never left their home city, county, province, or country before the war. The deployment to France was therefore memorable, new and exciting for them, particularly for those who grew up in an urban area, for whom the Normandy countryside was completely new.
What was decisive in the long preparation for the Landing?
Two factors particularly contributed to this success. The first was fuel. The Americans took theirs with them, were inundated with them and never ran out of them. For their part, the Germans continued to lack them, which condemned many troops to deploy in combat using the 115,000 horses registered in the service of the Wehrmacht on June 1, 1944, or by bicycle. The second key factor was the “friendly occupation” of Britain by the United States, virtually forgotten today. By May 1945, some 2,914,843 American servicemen and women had reached the British Isles by sea, and more than 100,000 more by air, with all the resources necessary to support their army of three million.
It is very difficult to prepare for the unexpected. To what extent have the allies succeeded in meeting this challenge?
The training was terribly brutal: cliff climbing, mountaineering in Scotland, amphibious assault training along the English coast, difficult daily life with poor rations, sleep deprivation tests, urban combat exercises, maneuver rehearsals with planes and artillery firing real munitions, parachute jumps and endless glider flights for the airborne forces. I found that each assault detachment lost between 5 and 50 men in training, often due to accidents with grenades, live ammunition or by drowning. There was much more loss than the day of the invasion. The success of June 6, 1944 was achieved because the training was harder than the operation. I was the first to discover this, as no historian had previously examined to this extent the records from the 12 months to June 1944 in all three armies.
Your book also exposes the lies and omissions in many accounts of D-Day survivors. How did you go about discovering them?
My background as a reservist military officer for 30 years – I served in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan – allowed me to put myself in the mindset of these warriors of 1944. I also know every inch of southern England and Normandy associated with the invasion, which I have surveyed extensively. You would be surprised at the number of historians who write without having visited the battlefields… Knowledge of the field is just as essential as oral interviews, diaries or original archives. So you have a clear idea of what is valid and what is not. I am convinced that few veterans or historians have sought to deceive their readers, but time can blur or disrupt the facts in their minds. The work of a historian is that of a detective: to disentangle the true from the false.
What role did the French play during D-Day?
It is too often neglected. There was a significant French presence during the Landings. In addition to the famous 177 members of the Kieffer commando, four groups of 8 paratroopers from the 3rd Special Air Service (SAS, British special forces) were dropped over Brittany. There was also a large French fleet offshore, including the cruisers Montcalm and Georges Leygues, the destroyers Roselys and La Combattante, and eight other frigates and corvettes.
Allied troops at sea before the Landing in June 1944 in Normandy
© / afp.com/-
Additionally, three squadrons of French fighters and two squadrons of bombers flew over Normandy. Finally, 60 French officers landed with the assault troops to serve as interpreters and liaison with the local population and the resistance fighters. “D-Day” was so ambitious that everyone needed to participate. Victory would have been less certain without the French contribution. At the same time, a second French army led by General de Lattre, with 200,000 men, was preparing to invade the south of France, for a landing in Provence on the following August 15.
Why is it so difficult to succeed in an amphibious operation like that of the Landings?
A landing on a defended coast is the most difficult of all military operations: the attackers, that day, are at war against the Germans, but also the wind, the tides, the weather and the geology. Even today, we have no control over the weather. In 1944, the Landings were postponed by 24 hours. And a violent storm nearly destroyed the invasion two weeks later.
What fundamental lessons can the Chinese, on the one hand, and the Taiwanese, on the other hand, learn from the Landings?
There is no evidence that the Chinese are preparing an amphibious operation against Taiwan, nor that they have sufficient maritime capacity for it. They have a coastal navy, in transition to an offshore navy. They have just launched their first aircraft carrier designed and manufactured in China [NDLR : leur troisième au total] and have yet to learn how to use it. Having no desire to confront an American navy which has mastered amphibious exercises, they will try to obtain as many results as possible through diplomacy and their propaganda.
Will the next major amphibious military operation necessarily be different from the Landings of June 6?
I am not sure that future amphibious assaults will differ much from those of 1944, except in the exploitation of satellites, drones and cyberwarfare, as well as the use of helicopters. Such assaults will still require a large number of ships, particularly landing ships, supported by naval gunfire from warships.
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