Here’s another picture of my grandfather, Fred Mills. Like so many young English men, Freddy spent 1942 and 1943 training to repel the German invasion everyone thought was imminent, and then preparing to invade France. On 18 June, 1944 – 12 days after D Day – Sgt Mills, along with the other men of the 5th Battalion Wiltshire Regiment, sailed from Newhaven and landed at the Mulberry harbour at Arromanches. By 10 July, the 5th Wilts had advanced southwest of Caen. There’s a hill there, Hill 112, overlooking the confluence of the Odon and Orne valleys. It was of critical strategic importance. Control of Hill 112 implied control of Normandy. Troops of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were dug-in with Tiger tanks and machine gun nests. By 6 am, Freddy and his men had advanced through the waist-high wheat sprinkled with poppies on the approach to Hill 112. It was a horrible bloody battle that would ultimately go on for weeks with Hill 112 changing hands many times. It was in this chaos – 72 years ago today – that Freddy, along with thousands of other men, died. In the first 36 hours of the battle to take Hill 112 it was reported that the Odon River was dammed with corpses. It was Madness.
Here’s an interesting video from 2004 about the battle for Hill 112 including interviews with some of the survivors… https://youtu.be/Gfv3rI6PgxY