The Civilian View of D-Day
The Normandy landings in France, which began on D-Day, 6 June 1944, involved the largest troop movement in history, but in this article, we focus on the view from civilians directly involved in that momentous day when the Allies sought to liberate Western Europe from occupation by Nazi Germany and end the Second World War (1939-45).
As the Allies built up their troops and resources for D-Day in the south of England, to maintain secrecy and provide areas where training exercises for the landings could be conducted, some civilians were required to temporarily move from their homes and such buildings as churches were locked and surrounded by barbed wire. Betty Tab from Slapton in Devon remembers telling her mother of the rumours about this:
My sister heard the rumour in the shop when she went to get some groceries and she said to Mum that we were all going to have to move and of course Mum says, ‘That’s nonsense talking like that. Where we going to go?’ And she says she heard in the shop. There was a meeting called then in the village hall and that confirmed that there was going to be an evacuation of the area for the American training.
My parents just couldn’t believe it. I mean, Mum just said, ‘Well, no, it’s not going to happen because it can’t. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?’ But it had to be so. So, of course, everybody had to get their thinking caps on and think, 'Well, where are we going to go?’ If you couldn’t get anything yourself the authorities would help but they did want you to try and get yourself fixed up, if possible, because, as you can imagine, there were hundreds trying to move. Thousands, I suppose, really. Quite an area it was.
Desmond O'Neill, an official cameraman for the British Army, describes his visit to a camp of troops readying themselves for the invasion:
I remember going to one unit, I think it was the South Lancashire Regiment, and taking some film of their final preparations for D-Day…they were laagered down near Roland’s Castle in Hampshire, in woods there, and I went into the camp – the whole area was actually one huge camp. Very strict all the way round.
There was certainly a very excitable, tense atmosphere amongst those chaps. They’d been training presumably for a couple of years and they knew full well that they were going to be the spearhead troops and they knew therefore that there was a good chance of them getting shot. The atmosphere there was totally different to any other unit I’d ever been to. Discipline was strict but absolutely on a hairline. A very peculiar atmosphere. I know that the casualty figures had been given to them, the presumed casualty figures.
We photographed the chaps being instructed as to what was going to happen on the morning of D-Day, where they were going in and the rest. It was all mocked up. I didn’t do very much filming apart from taking pictures of these chaps in the camp. They liked it. First of all they’d never seen a cameraman before. Secondly, it was a great divertissement. You know, 'The Mrs is going to see me back in Wigan,’ all this kind of thing. I think it was a welcome diversion.
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