80th Anniversary of D Day

World War II started in 1939. The Nazis had invaded and taken over many countries in Europe. By 1944, the allies, including Britain, America, Canada were ready to push them back and try save the invaded countries.

The Allies would attack from the south coast of England. But, the Germans had built something called the Atlantic Wall. It ran all along the coast of Europe for over 1,500 miles. Imagine a very long castle wall, on top of cliffs and along beaches, with many large guns and lots of soldiers. The German soldiers could look down at the beaches and across the sea.

So, the Allies tricked the Nazis into thinking the attack would happen at Calais, on the French coast. But it didn’t. It was actually planned for the beaches of Normandy, still on the French coast, but much further away.

About 156,000 Allied soldiers and over 1,200 battle ships took part. In total, there were nearly 7,000 ships of all different sizes and 12,000 planes.

The invasion was massive.

All of the ships, planes and soldiers were heading to 5 beaches and they were given special code names.

The American beaches were called Utah and Omaha, after places in America.

The British and Canadian beaches were named after fish. They were called Gold (as in Goldfish), Sword (as in Swordfish) and Jelly (as in Jellyfish). But the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill thought that was not a very not good name, so Jellyfish was changed and named after a soldier’s wife, Juno.

So, the British beaches became known as Gold and Sword, with the Canadians attacking Juno.

Do you remember I said the actual day could have been any day? It was originally going to be on June 5^th, but the weather was bad, so it was delayed until June 6^th.

The attack started in the morning, with mighty battleships firing large guns at the coastline and trying to destroy as much of the Atlantic Wall as possible. Planes attacked from the sky. Men jumped out of planes with parachutes to land behind the Atlantic Wall and try to capture bridges and important roads.       

Then came the most important moment. Small boats, called landing craft, went towards the beaches carrying soldiers. They had flat bottoms so they could power out of the water onto the sand. The soldiers then ran out of the landing craft towards the cliffs and the Atlantic Wall. They were very, very brave.

Slowly, very slowly, the Allies broke through the Atlantic Wall and made their way away from the beaches. The Canadians got the furthest. Then the British. The Americans had a very tough time but did manage the break through.

It was close though. If the Germans had known exactly where the Allies were going to land, the invasion may have been stopped. That’s why it was kept a secret. That is why spies worked very hard to make the Germans believe Calais was where the attack would happen.

D-Day was a success and it changed history. The Allies attacked from one side of Europe. Russia attacked from the other. On the 8th May 1945 Nazi Germany was defeated.