XX0011 – The British in the D-Day

The British on D-Day, 6 June 1944

Of the five landing beaches in Normandy, two were British — Gold and Sword — and one was Canadian, Juno. The British and Canadian share of the assault is often reduced in popular accounts to a footnote after Omaha, but on 6 June 1944 it was roughly half the landing force, and it carried the operation’s most demanding objectives inland.

Before the Beaches

The first Allied troops to land in Normandy were British: gliders of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry touched down beside the Caen canal bridge at 00:16, sixteen minutes into 6 June, and took it in ten minutes. The 6th Airborne Division secured the eastern flank of the whole invasion area, destroying the Merville battery and blowing the bridges over the Dives to prevent German counterattack from the east.

Gold and Sword

The seaborne landings began at 07:25, an hour later than the American beaches because of tidal differences. Both British beaches were taken with casualties far lighter than at Omaha, in part because the assault was preceded by the specialised armour of the 79th Armoured Division — the swimming tanks, flails and bunker-busting vehicles known collectively as Hobart’s Funnies, which the American command had largely declined.

Caen

The objective for D-Day was Caen. It was not taken on 6 June, nor for another six weeks, and the failure has been argued over ever since. The German armoured reserve in the west was concentrated on that sector, which meant the British and Canadian armies fought a grinding attritional battle around Caen while the American breakout developed to the south — a division of effort that was either a deliberate design or a rationalisation after the fact, depending on the historian.

Giuseppe Rava’s Original Work

Giuseppe Rava reconstructs the British infantryman of 6 June from surviving equipment and photographs: the 1937 pattern webbing, the Mk III helmet introduced for the invasion, the Lee-Enfield, the assault jerkin and the inflatable lifebelt worn over it on the run-in.

This is a limited edition fine art print, hand-signed by the artist, produced in SRA3 format on fine art paper. Ships worldwide.