The World at War Episode 17 - Morning (June - August 1944
Transcript
00:00October, 1940.
00:15Winston Churchill to the defeated French people.
00:18Good night, then.
00:21Sleep to gather strength for the morning, for the morning will come.
00:27Finally will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause.
00:34Vive la France!
00:38Allons, bonne nuit.
00:42Dormez bien.
00:44Rassemblez vos forces pour l'aube, car l'aube viendra.
00:50Now, at last, after nearly four years, that dawn was about to break.
00:56The invasion of the continent was at hand.
01:57Dieppe, 1942.
02:01The first major attempt to land Allied troops in France was a disaster.
02:08Almost half the assaulting force of 7,000 was lost, trying to storm the port's powerful defences.
02:18Many troops never got beyond the beaches.
02:21Hundreds of others walked straight into captivity.
02:25We learned so much from Dieppe that I think it was quite invaluable as far as the final invasion was concerned.
02:32I think everything that could go wrong went wrong with that operation,
02:36and the result of it was that, by the end, one was appallingly impressed
02:42by the dangers and the hazards of any kind of combined operation on that kind of scale.
02:49We'd never attempted to do a combined operation on that scale before, and rarely nobody knew how to do it.
02:56There are three conditions necessary for a successful invasion.
02:59First, obviously, to get ashore against no matter what opposition.
03:04Secondly, having got ashore, to stay ashore no matter what the weather conditions.
03:09And thirdly, to stop the enemy from building up his forces against you quicker than you can,
03:14otherwise he'll throw you back into the sea.
03:18Given these essentials, the two likeliest landing areas were the Pas-de-Calais,
03:23across the English Channel at its narrowest point, and Normandy to the west.
03:28The choice between them was the first task of Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan
03:32and his special Allied staff, known as Cossack, appointed in 1943 to frame the initial invasion plans.
03:40Tentative invasion planning had gone on since 1941.
03:44Cossack's choice in the end was Normandy, a 50-mile stretch of shore just east of the Cherbourg Peninsula.
03:53Normandy had several advantages over the Pas-de-Calais.
03:57Though farther from England, it was less strongly fortified.
04:02Its beaches, mostly without cliffs and with a minimum of clay and depressions,
04:07were more suited to the landing of troops and supplies and to rapid deployment inland.
04:13And it was close to Cherbourg and the Brittany port.
04:22At Quebec, in August 1943, Cossack's outline plan for invasion was approved by Churchill and Roosevelt.
04:30The cross-channel assault was now at last to become reality.
04:34Its code name, Overlord. Its target date, May 1944.
04:43The springboard for invasion would be England.
04:46Britons, displaced once by Hitler's bombs, were on the move again.
04:50This time to make way for the great invasion armies.
04:54For many, this meant upheaval, financial loss, personal problems.
04:59But the cause was momentous. The long-awaited second front.
05:14The Atlantic
05:21Already from the United States, the packed troop ships were streaming across the Atlantic.
05:44Britain
05:48By now, the number of Americans in Britain approached one and a half million.
05:52And London's streets displayed every known Allied uniform.
05:58In this great floating barracks, morale was all-important.
06:08We've had some grand trips.
06:10But it's been wonderful. I'm very thrilled to be here.
06:12I really have nothing new to report from the States.
06:14You know, the States, that's where Churchill lives.
06:21But he really travels, doesn't he?
06:23Boy, he's been around. He's been to Casablanca more than Humphrey Bogart.
06:29On a different stage, another American, General Dwight David Eisenhower,
06:33named by Roosevelt, Overlord's supreme commander.
06:38Eisenhower had commanded the Allied North African expedition in 1942.
06:43As well as generalship, he would need the finesse of a diplomat,
06:47because he was now to lead a huge, multinational force.
06:53I think you always have problems, but General Eisenhower, being the supreme Allied commander,
06:57he had this wonderful knack of getting along with people of all different nationalities.
07:03He didn't think of himself as an American.
07:05He didn't think of himself as British or French or Polish or anything.
07:11He just thought what was best for the whole Allied effort.
07:16Best known of Ike's commanders to be was General Montgomery, Victor of Alamein.
07:21Famous for his plain speaking to his troops,
07:23Monty now urged the war workers to maximum effort.
07:28Why is it that today the tide has turned and we are beating the Germans
07:38and coming towards the final climax of the war?
07:42I'll tell you why it is. It's because we've got far the best equipment
07:48and we've got far the best men. And women, too. Far the best.
07:58It's the battle front and the home front.
08:01If we really get down to it this year, we can get the thing almost finished.
08:06We can get it so tight that next year we just topple it over.
08:12Goodbye to you all. Thank you very much.
08:14Monty's buoyant optimism is infectious,
08:16but Britain, like America, was already working at full pressure, with or without music.
08:28The massive effort was straining towards the final overlord targets.
08:32Aircraft, 13,000. Tanks and vehicles, 17,000.
08:37Parachutes, 90,000. Bombs and shells in millions.
08:42The war is over.
08:44The war is over.
08:46The war is over.
08:48The war is over.
08:50The war is over.
08:52The war is over.
08:54The war is over.
08:56The war is over.
08:58The war is over.
09:00The war is over.
09:02The war is over.
09:04The war is over.
09:06The war is over.
09:08The war is over.
09:10The war is over.
09:12The war is over.
09:14The war is over.
09:16The war is over.
09:18The war is over.
09:20The war is over.
09:22The war is over.
09:24The war is over.
09:26And Overlord will also need 4,000 assault and landing craft.
09:30But at first, they simply weren't there.
09:32Well, the absolutely crucial thing for an invasion is to get the troops across the water.
09:37And for that, you want landing ships and landing craft.
09:39They had to be designed. They had to be built in large quantities at a time when all shipbuilding facilities were required to fight the battle of the Atlantic.
09:49By the spring of 1944, the landing craft, too, were built and ready for intensive, constantly rehearsed invasion training in tough battle conditions.
10:07Many Overlord troops would invade from the air.
10:21More than 20,000 were earmarked for the biggest airborne operation of the war so far.
10:27Some assault troops would have to scale cliffs.
10:34Training in rough channel waters could be as deadly as the real thing.
10:49Across those same waters, von Rundstedt and Rommel had divided views on how to meet the invasion.
10:57Von Rundstedt, the commander-in-chief, wanted a mobile reserve kept back to fight inland.
11:02Rommel, commander of the anti-invasion forces, wanted to repel the assault on the beaches.
11:10But Hitler's Atlantic Wall, a chain of steel and concrete fortifications planned to stretch from Denmark to the Spanish border, was incomplete.
11:19Rommel made belated efforts to fill the gaps by laying lines of formidable underwater obstacles, including millions of hidden mines.
11:38To overcome these defences, the Allies evolved various ingenious contraptions.
11:45To help tanks over sand and mud and concrete, the Swiss roll and the carpet layer.
12:03The pangendron, supposed to destroy beach obstacles, was not successful.
12:14Pluto. Pipelines under the ocean. A flexible pipeline, miles long.
12:20Pluto would minimise the hazards of transporting petrol to France by tanker.
12:27It could carry over a million tonnes of fuel daily to the continent underwater.
12:33Shore pumping stations were in a state of emergency.
12:38The French had no choice but to go to war.
12:43The French had no choice but to go to war.
12:48The French had no choice but to go to war.
12:53Shore pumping stations were innocently camouflaged.
13:02Still more remarkable was Marlbury.
13:05Two artificial harbours, each the size of Dover Harbour.
13:10All the components had to be towed across the channel.
13:14The problem of staying ashore is a very difficult one because of the weather conditions in the channel.
13:20You couldn't expect more than three or four consecutive days of weather fine enough to supply across the beaches.
13:25So obviously we thought we'd have to take a port.
13:28That's why we tried Dieppe.
13:30We found in Dieppe that we couldn't actually capture a port without using such heavy bombardment as would destroy the facilities we wanted to use.
13:38So the obvious thing was to bring our own artificial harbour with us, which we called Marlbury, and which everybody thought was absolutely crazy.
13:47Eisenhower met constantly with his commanders to coordinate strategy.
13:52His deputy, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, Admiral Ramsey, Generals Bradley and Montgomery, and Air Marshal Lee Mallory.
14:01A major preoccupation was the weather that could be expected for the start of Overlord.
14:06General Eisenhower made it clear quite early that he wanted to build up confidence not only in what we could do as forecasters, and I in particular for him personally,
14:20but he wanted to know what reliance he could put on the very words I used and the tone of voice I used.
14:29He could tell, even before I presented the forecast almost each time, what I was going to say.
14:38He used my face, I think, as a kind of hall barometer.
14:42Deception plans also occupied supreme command.
14:46Among the most elaborate were fake preparations for an attack on Norway to be launched from Scotland,
14:52and, more credibly, for a main assault on the Pas-de-Calais from the south-east ports.
14:57Also crucial was the bombing plan to cut German communications to the invasion areas. Interdiction.
15:05What one had to do was to interfere with the communication.
15:09And again, I think this is a lesson learned from Dieppe, that we hadn't realised at Dieppe how absolutely essential it was to have an absolutely overwhelming weight of firepower, both from the air and from the land.
15:24The result of this was, and I think this caused a good deal of difficulties at high level,
15:30was that a Marshal Harris, who still thought that he could win the war on his own,
15:37had to be persuaded to use his heavy bombers to attack the German road and rail communications.
15:45And I think he resisted very strongly, because he thought it was really a diversion from the whole point of the war.
15:51But he was made to do it, and it was done enormously effectively.
16:04Spring 1944 saw widespread air attacks on road and rail targets and on airfields.
16:11At the same time, all over the south of England, camps were springing up, ready for the tens of thousands of invasion troops.
16:22The staging areas for Overlord were spread the length of England's south coast, round the ports of Falmouth, Dartmouth, Weymouth, Portsmouth.
16:34All was now prepared for the great move south.
16:38The lines were cleared for invasion traffic.
17:03Music
17:27Amid the rash of military notices, one tell-tale sign stood up.
17:33Music
18:03Music
18:13A vast concentration reached its channel rendezvous.
18:17Some wit claimed that only the barrage balloons floating overhead kept Britain from sinking.
18:22Music
18:30Late May 1944. The assault troops were sealed within their marshalling areas, ready to go.
18:37Now, a pause.
18:40Fear feeds on delay, of course, and we didn't really know just when we were going.
18:46I shot crap, played cards, lost all our money. Some people won money, I lost all mine.
18:52Didn't do me any good. I had no place to spend it when I got on the beach.
18:57Rations, currency, ammunition, kit, packing and repacking, checking equipment.
19:05The exact invasion date was not yet revealed, and most men still did not know the beaches they were going to attack.
19:12Only officers and NCOs had been told the precise landing areas.
19:17A hundred miles across the channel in Normandy, these landing areas comprised five beaches.
19:23From west to east, Utah and Omaha waited for the Americans.
19:28Gold, Juno and Sword for the British and Canadians.
19:32But all now depended on the weather.
19:36On the evening of that Wednesday, the 31st of May, even then I advised General Eisenhower
19:43that conditions for the oncoming weekend, especially over Sunday night and Monday morning,
19:48the crucial times for Overlord, were going to be stormy.
19:52But we went on with the meetings.
19:56I had to go before General Eisenhower and his commanders, who met for nothing else twice a day
20:01during those fateful days, 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June.
20:08On the 3rd of June, despite Supreme Command's concern about the weather, embarkation went ahead.
20:14The troops knew nothing of a possible hitch, though some men thought it was just another exercise.
20:23When we first went aboard ship, we had no knowledge of the actual day.
20:26We had been aboard ships so many times, you see, that for about six months we were just constantly on and off ships.
20:37In the ports and harbors of England's Channel Coast, the vast and complex process of loading and embarkation went on.
20:44But in the Channel, the worsening weather now faced the Supreme Commander with a grave crisis.
20:51It was a time of dreadful tension.
20:53We all knew that there could be only one day's deferment.
20:57If there had to be another day, then all the landing craft would need to return to base
21:02so that it couldn't be done on a second day's postponement.
21:06It would have to be deferred for a whole fortnight until the next tides were right.
21:11And at that time, our charts were so black in the Atlantic
21:16that there didn't seem to be any prospect of getting this operation going at all.
21:23We didn't know how long it was going to be postponed.
21:26Because the weather looked so bad, we wondered if it would ever clear up
21:30and whether the whole thing would be called off and we would be taken back off the ship.
21:39Troops primed for action.
21:42An armada ready to sail.
21:45And then, anticlimax.
21:48We were then told that the invasion had been put back for at least 24 hours.
21:54Of course, this increased our apprehension
21:58and we used to have these long conversations with each other
22:02about the kind of things that might happen, whether we'd ever get off the beach alive.
22:09Routine continued under a cloud of uncertainty.
22:13All the troops could do was wait.
22:15All the troops could do was wait.
22:45Being excited and gay
22:51Might have done such much more
22:56Lost in dreams without you
23:02Don't get around love anymore
23:06Don't get around love
23:10Anymore
23:17As the hours passed, it seemed that only a miracle could get Overlord going.
23:23Then, mercifully, almost unbelievable happened about midday on that Sunday.
23:30We spotted that there might be an interlude between two depressions.
23:36By the evening, my own confidence in the forecast for this quieter period
23:44had so increased from further reports that had come in
23:48that I convinced General Eisenhower and his commanders
23:52that it would indeed arrive later on Monday
23:56after the storm of Sunday night and Monday morning.
23:59It would indeed arrive later on Monday
24:02and continue through Tuesday and probably into Wednesday.
24:06The next morning, early on the 5th of June,
24:10they met again to confirm this decision.
24:14And when I could tell them that we were even more confident
24:17than we had been the previous night
24:19that the fine or improved quieter interlude would indeed come along,
24:25the joy on the faces of the Supreme Commander and his commanders
24:30after the deep gloom of the preceding days was a marvel to behold.
24:37I remember it very well. 4.15 a.m. on the morning of the 5th of June.
24:44I wasn't at the meeting, but I drove in there.
24:47And he came out, and he really looked so serious as he got in the car.
24:52And he said, D-Day is on. Nothing can stop us now.
25:00It was an historic decision.
25:03Overlord's further postponement might have meant total cancellation.
25:09The troop commander read a message from General Eisenhower,
25:13you know, Godspeed and all that sort of stuff.
25:16We read this great message from Monty about good hunting in the fields of Europe
25:21and all this rubbish, and naturally, being a soldier,
25:24we thought what a load of old cods it was.
25:28Never had Channel Water seen such a mighty force.
25:31Heading for France were some 6,500 vessels of all types,
25:35marshalled and escorted by the Allied navies.
25:39Glider fleets were waiting, wearing their D-Day markings.
25:44The 1st Division would go in by glider and parachute,
25:47dropping behind the invasion beaches.
25:50Their losses were expected to be as high as seven out of every ten men,
25:54as Eisenhower well knew.
25:57They all had their blackened faces,
25:59because they were going to jump Nazi-occupied Europe in a very short time.
26:02And you kept thinking, I wonder how many are going to come back.
26:05Later then, General Eisenhower, he said,
26:07you know, Kay, it is very hard to look a soldier in the face,
26:11knowing you might be sending him to his death.
26:19In the last hours of the 5th of June,
26:22the airborne troops set out for France.
26:26Butterflies in your stomach, and you're wondering what you're doing here.
26:29Why am I here? Why did I volunteer? Am I crazy?
26:32Everything is going through your mind, and you're worried.
26:35You know it's coming up soon.
26:42I was afraid. I was 19, and I was afraid.
26:46Many men were afraid that night.
26:49They were storming Hitler's haunted Festung Europa,
26:53fortress Europe.
26:56Across the water, the Germans waited,
26:59not knowing when or where the blow would fall.
27:07D-Day.
27:09Ahead, the Normandy beaches.
27:11After four years, this was the road back.
27:16It was a fantastic sight to see so many ships
27:20of all shapes and sizes, and all going one way.
27:28Quite a few boys wrote letters and gave it to friends
27:31so that they'd take them home or see that their parents got them.
27:34That was their farewell letter.
27:39The sea was rough, and they put their gas capes over them to keep dry,
27:43and it made them sick because they didn't get enough fresh air.
27:47I had several men get seasick, and they upchucked,
27:51and they had to use their helmets to catch it in,
27:54and we threw them over the side, and they were washed out
27:57and given back to the men.
27:59One felt absolutely dreadful physically,
28:02and just wishing to God that the whole thing would be over,
28:05or at least that we could get on to dry land.
28:17At 5.30, the armada was off the French coast.
28:21After a massive air assault, a devastating naval bombardment.
28:37As far as your eye could see, you were surrounded with draft of some sort,
28:43and it was just sending out shell after shell out of its turrets.
28:50The Germans were surprised and stupefied,
28:53but some batteries soon recovered.
29:03It was far just more than sickness.
29:05The men loaded their pants and everything else.
29:08I had rarely seen that before.
29:10I know the men were sick. Many of them were very sick.
29:24By this time, the waves were pitching.
29:26They cramped up and down, I would say, six or seven feet.
29:31A lot of the boys got caught in the nets,
29:34but we had quite a time getting them loose.
29:36Their legs got caught in there.
29:40Smoke, smoke.
29:42I heard a lot of shells coming over us.
29:44Awesome. Black smoke.
29:46Just like a volcano from afar, the one we'd see in the movies.
30:11The run-in to the beaches.
30:136.30 for the Americans, 7.30 for the British and Canadians.
30:17After all the waiting, the training, the toughening, this was it.
30:25We were the first attacker. We were the initial wave.
30:29There's always great losses in an initial wave.
30:32So each of us had been given at least 30 minutes to live on the beach.
30:417.30 for the British and Canadians.
30:52Protected by total air supremacy,
30:54the first assault waves raced and scrambled for the five-invasion beaches.
30:59The soldiers were so glad to get off the landing craft
31:02to escape the seasickness
31:04that they were just ready to go anywhere by that time.
31:11The men of the five assault divisions,
31:14those first hours of D-Day,
31:16were hours of death, fear, courage.
31:20Of plans gone wrong.
31:22Of rapid improvisation.
31:27We expected a clear beach
31:29with an indication as to exactly how we should proceed.
31:32We were even told the military police would be there to greet us.
31:35It became quite obvious that the beach was in a considerable state of chaos.
31:39On the run in, the craft ran into underwater obstacles and into mines.
31:43One of them went over a mine
31:45and the front half of the craft with the personnel in it
31:48literally went straight up in the air.
31:50The sea was quite a different colour when that craft blew up.
31:59Some units landed in the wrong area.
32:01Some met unexpectedly light resistance.
32:04Others were cut down almost on the shoreline.
32:08The Americans got the worst of it.
32:12I didn't think I would make it.
32:14I didn't think there was any way that you could get across that beach and survive.
32:18I really thought it was my last day.
32:29The first man, a sergeant,
32:31raised up to see how far we had to go to reach land
32:35and fell back dead.
32:40We had been told that the Air Force was going to come in with the heavy bombers
32:44and they were going to cradle the beaches for us
32:46to give us a place to hide.
32:48And this did not take place.
32:55It was bloody awful.
32:57Every time I got up I thought that it was just pure terror
32:59that was making my knees buckle
33:01until I finally hit the shale
33:03and I realized that I had about 100 pounds of sand in those pockets.
33:14I remember distinctly taking my trench knife
33:16and pressing it in people's backs to see if they were alive.
33:19If they were alive I'd kick them or say, let's go.
33:21Later on it dawned on me after I checked two or three
33:23that some of them were alive but they wouldn't turn around.
33:25Just absolute terror.
33:34On the three British and Canadian beaches, our position varied.
33:39On Gold, while one unit was hammering at a strong point for eight hours,
33:44another was off the beach in 40 minutes.
33:47On Juno, the Canadians suffered heavy losses but advanced.
33:52On Sword, the fighting was bloody but brief.
33:56Many defenders emerged from their bunkers to surrender.
34:01And on Utah, by the end of the day, the Americans were doing well.
34:05They had taken prisoners, established a firm foothold,
34:08driven five miles inland.
34:14But on Omaha, the Americans ran into difficulties.
34:17Rough seas, strong defenses,
34:20and a newly arrived German fighting division.
34:26From where I was, it seemed a failure.
34:30At that time, there were just so many people on the beach there
34:33that you could literally walk on the bodies one end or the other,
34:36either the dead or the wounded.
34:39I saw people laying out there with their no head
34:42and some with arms blown off,
34:44and some of my friends were pretty sick.
34:51At Omaha, it had taken the whole day with grievous losses
34:54to gain a beachhead a mile deep.
34:56It was the most heart-rending experience that I ever had.
35:00I hope I never have another one like it.
35:03Look back and see the remains of a crack battalion
35:07strewn over the beach,
35:09men floating in the water face up.
35:14Perhaps it was better that we were green,
35:16because if I'd have known then what I know now,
35:19I'd have probably got on that boat and went back to England.
35:23A day of continuous thinking, thoughts of home.
35:29A day of prayer.
35:31And without a doubt, the longest day of my life.
35:41You feel that you're...
35:43Well, I don't know.
35:45I don't know how to put it.
35:47I don't know how to put it.
35:49You feel that you're...
35:51Well, you've accomplished something
35:53that you didn't think you would probably end up
35:56being around after it was done.
35:58I think we were proud, in some way, that we'd done it
36:02and that the army we'd been in for so long
36:06and with all sorts of experiences of how they could bungle things
36:12had actually managed this invasion.
36:16Ah, we feel very happy, very happy.
36:21Ah, the best day of life.
36:23I think so.
36:25La plus grande joie. How do you say in English?
36:28The biggest joy in our life.
36:32And we admired those courageous soldiers.
36:36They came from so far away to liberate us.
36:39And we gave to them everything we could give them.
36:44Cider, also.
36:46Calvados, also.
36:49And our friendship.
36:55And it was very emotional.
37:01And we feel we became free.
37:06By midnight, 130,000 troops had got ashore.
37:10Footholds had been gained on all five beaches.
37:13Casualties, 9,000.
37:20D plus one saw the first laying of the Mulberry harbours.
37:24The early build-up of supplies was vital for the success of Overlord.
37:29It was essential to pour in the reinforcements of men and material
37:32faster than the enemy.
37:34And pour in they did.
37:44By D plus seven, miles of vehicles were ashore,
37:48stretching inland from the beaches, bumper to bumper.
37:51At some points, traffic jams extended 15 miles.
37:57At this critical phase, Mulberry's two harbours,
38:00Arromanches, for the British,
38:02Saint-Laurent, for the Americans,
38:04were the only ports available to the Allies.
38:08And the four days before the 18th of June,
38:11the average daily landings were troops nearly 35,000,
38:15vehicles 5,000, stores 25,000 tons.
38:23If a single device invented for Overlord produced results,
38:27it was Mulberry.
38:33Only the insistence of Eisenhower and the King himself
38:36had stopped Churchill from coming over on D-Day.
38:39Now, within days of the landing,
38:41he was there to see how things were going.
38:43The top commanders were aware
38:45that the Overlord timetable was falling behind.
38:48They were anxious now about phase two of the operation,
38:51the Battle of the Bridgehead.
39:10The Allies were fighting bitterly for space
39:13to deploy the mass of men and materials assembling behind them.
39:17It was a slow, dogged advance
39:19against an enemy who had recovered strongly.
39:30The close-hedged Bocage countryside
39:32was difficult for the Allied tanks.
39:35At the 10th of June,
39:38the Allies were opposed by only three panzer divisions.
39:42The other seven available divisions
39:44had not been released to Rommel by the German high command.
39:47Despite this, the invaders were little more than inching forward.
40:02By the 12th of June, the five beachheads had been linked
40:05to give a lodgement 60 miles long and up to 20 miles deep.
40:11The ancient town of Bayeux
40:13now welcomed the leader of the Free French, General de Gaulle,
40:17setting foot in France for the first time since 1940.
40:26The 19th of June and the unpredictable English Channel struck again.
40:31For four days, a raging storm,
40:33the worst in June for over 40 years,
40:35battered Mulberry almost to destruction.
40:38Vessels dragged anchor, vital equipment foundered.
40:42Unloading was drastically curtailed.
40:45Tonnage was down by four-fifths.
40:50Frantic efforts were made to repair the damage,
40:53for the disruption had threatened the very continuance of Overlord.
40:57Soon the traffic was rolling again.
41:01The Overlord lifeline was restored.
41:08The prime objective to supplement the Mulberry harbours
41:11was the port of Cherbourg in the American sector.
41:14By the 19th of June, the Americans had cut off the Cherbourg peninsula
41:18and were driving north towards the port.
41:21Cherbourg was strongly fortified.
41:23The Germans hoped to delay the Allies by staging a long resistance there.
41:27But by the 21st, after tough fighting,
41:30the Americans reached the port's outskirts.
41:45On the 26th, the garrison surrendered,
41:48leaving only a few strong points to be mopped up.
41:52Prisoners streamed out, among them the garrison commander.
42:04Cherbourg was the first major objective to be captured in the campaign.
42:0825,000 prisoners were taken in the Cherbourg area.
42:21Some French women were losing their German lovers.
42:31Right across the front from Cherbourg was the town of Caen.
42:35Caen was the centre for German troops moving to the beachhead.
42:39Montgomery had been attacking towards it since D-Day.
42:46Now at last, in early July, he prepared for the assault.
42:52First, the bombers went in.
42:54On the 18th of July, over 2,000 heavy and medium bombers hit Caen
42:59with nearly 8,000 tonnes of high explosive and fragmentation bombs.
43:08It was the heaviest and most concentrated air attack
43:11in support of ground forces ever attempted.
43:21EXPLOSIONS
43:46Caen was christened the Crucible.
43:49When it fell, the troops entered a bomb-cratered town, choked with rubble.
43:57Half of it was destroyed.
43:59Several thousand of its inhabitants killed or wounded.
44:04BOMBS EXPLODING
44:15The people of Caen, it was liberation at a grievous price.
44:21BOMBS EXPLODING
44:30Now, after seven grinding weeks, the start of the breakout.
44:34The Americans broke through at Avranches.
44:37They fanned out west and south into Brittany and east to Mortain
44:41and swept up to Argentan.
44:45From the north, the British and Canadians edged south towards Falaise
44:49in an attempt to close the neck of a bag now threatening to trap the German forces.
44:56There were very great practical difficulties
45:00in this closing of the Falaise Gap quickly.
45:03And it was difficult for the one side, British, Canadian, Polish,
45:07to appreciate the point of view of the other side, the Americans.
45:12We were coming down from the north,
45:15launched from the congested, bombed and difficult areas of the Caen sector.
45:22Secondly, the Germans facing us on that north side of the corridor
45:28they were trying to keep open for their escape
45:31were in areas where they had been fighting against us for two months or more.
45:37The Americans were coming up to meet us from the south.
45:41In more open country,
45:43and against much less prepared and organised German resistance.
45:50Falaise, one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the campaign.
45:54This was Montgomery's next target.
45:58Hundreds of rocket-firing typhoons
46:01strafed enemy communications and transport,
46:04leaving a trail of burning vehicles.
46:13On the 6th of August, the Canadians were on the outskirts of Falaise.
46:18The Germans were on the other side of the Falaise.
46:23On the 6th of August, the Canadians were on the outskirts of Falaise.
46:40They entered the town on the 16th.
46:43By now, only a narrow corridor separated the Canadian and American spearheads.
46:48By now, only a narrow corridor separated the Canadian and American spearheads.
46:51By now, only a narrow corridor separated the Canadian and American spearheads.
47:00The remnants of the German 7th Army, some 15 fighting divisions,
47:04were pressed into a tiny sack.
47:08At last, the trap closed.
47:1115,000 died. 50,000 were captured.
47:16For the Germans, Falaise was one of the worst disasters since Stalingrad.
47:27The toll of prisoners rubbed in the magnitude of the defeat,
47:31but 40,000 German troops escaped,
47:34and this caused friction between the Allies.
47:38Had the British and Canadian forces been able to move faster,
47:42we might have trapped many more Germans in the Falaise pocket.
47:46Very little of their equipment got out,
47:48but quite a number of the Germans were able to escape toward the Seine River,
47:53and this was too bad.
47:56I think perhaps the basic reason was that Britain had been in the war
48:04for much longer than we, and had taken very heavy casualties,
48:08and the Americans were fresh,
48:11and they had had practically no casualties in comparison.
48:14So while we were anxious to drive forward
48:17and were not too concerned about the casualties
48:20as long as we could get our objectives,
48:22it was natural, I think, that the British and Canadian forces
48:25did it in a more orderly, pacing way.
48:29And perhaps this was part of Monty's characteristic
48:32and one of his drawbacks.
48:34In other words, that he never did quite drive
48:37the way the American commanders did.
48:40This was part of his nature, I guess.
48:42He was a more cautious man,
48:44combined with the fact that he couldn't afford the casualties
48:47that we could take if it was necessary to take them.
48:57Falaise earned the name of the killing ground.
49:02The carnage and destruction were appalling.
49:12Eisenhower visited the battlefield and wrote,
49:15it was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time,
49:19stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.
49:32Paris.
49:51Paris.
49:53The main Allied drive was going to bypass the French capital.
49:57The Parisians, under Nazi domination for four years,
50:00sensed liberation at last.
50:02As the Germans began to pull out,
50:04the resistance forces emerged into the open to take their revenge.
50:14Remembering the oppression, indignities, humiliations,
50:18Parisians gave vent to long-stored hatred.
50:23In 1940, they had seen Paris fall without a shot.
50:27Now they made up for it in a burst of violence
50:30not seen in Paris throughout the war.
50:34Parisians had one thought.
50:36Reprisal against the enemy.
50:38The settlement of old score.
50:53EXPLOSION
50:56Morning had come.
51:22EXPLOSION
51:44EXPLOSION
51:52EXPLOSION
52:22EXPLOSION