THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

FINDON'S  LONGEST DAY — OPERATION OVERLORD — 5TH/6TH JUNE 1940

Copyright Valerie Martin 2004

Operation Overlord was on the drawing board for three years before being implemented.

By the time it culminated in D-Day on 6th June 1944, the allies had gathered together the largest unified armed invasion force the world had ever known.    In the ensuing three weeks, almost two million troops with 365,000 tanks and other sundry vehicles, were shipped over the English Channel in an attempt to end the war in Europe.   

The Americans had invented the term D-Day to indicate THE DAY (whenever that would be) when the Allies would liberate Europe.   This was unfortunate terminology for me because I was always very confused as a child, I thought it stood for Dunkirk Day — a painful memory for the British in May 1940!

By the late spring of 1944, Findon (together with the rest of Southern England) was a vast military camp.  By late May there were few places in West Sussex without a least one unit — often many more, all awaiting the signal for D-Day.  The whole area was cordoned off and a line drawn so that no unauthorised person could cross.  The county was a vast military camp comprising ammunition and supply dump and airfield.   Traffic practically ceased and even essential commodities were moved in and out with difficulty.

Some idea of the immense task accomplished in assembling the allied forces for D-Day can be gained if I tell you that more than 4,000 landing craft were required to carry 38 army divisions, each consisting of up to 20,000 soldiers with more than 3,000 tanks and sundry vehicles.

Hundreds of aircraft were needed to  protect the initial landings and prevent the enemy aircraft attacking our forces as they endeavoured to establish a stronghold in France.    1,100 transport aircraft and gliders were needed for the airborne assault.

It is little wonder that by the end of May 1944, there were few spots in West Sussex without at least one unit awaiting the signal for D-Day and the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe.

On 26TH MAY 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander General Eisenhower decided that the 5th June 1944 would be D-Day (at the last minute it was delayed because of bad weather).    The army camps in our area were sealed with every man confined to camp and forbidden to communicate in any way with the public.   Anybody who became ill was taken to a specially isolated hospital and all mail was suspended until after D-Day.    The troops were briefed on their D-Day roles and security risk kept to a minimum.

By 28TH MAY 1944 the Findon roads were crammed with long columns of military vehicles of all shapes and sizes on the move, as the marshalling of the invasion forces to their embarkation areas entered its final stage.  The atmosphere was strange to say the least. The troops' manner had changed; there was no usual banter between the local children and the soldiers.  In previous months the military had developed a good rapport with the local people, especially the children, as many of the soldiers were not much older. 

By the following morning there was not a soldier or an army vehicle to be seen.  Suddenly there were silent empty streets and green empty spaces after they had gone.  Everyone in Findon guessed why they had departed but where to was the big mystery.  There was a sense of anticipation in the village; everyone knew that something important was soon to occur.  Like the Germans, the villagers had only to wait a few days for the answer and this was Normandy.   Because of the essential secrecy at the time, few locals ever learned the identities of the many and various army units which during those critical 26 weeks of 1944 passed through Findon.

The weather can, and often does, alter the course of history.  The D-day landings in Normandy were delayed because of worries over the likelihood of storms in the English Channel. After days agonising over the weather forecast, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, uttered three decisive words in the early hours of 5TH JUNE 1944 after much painful deliberation —

"Okay, we'll go".  

The previous days had been dogged with on-off decisions because of dodgy weather and his words launched the greatest invasion armada the world had ever witnessed. 

Operation Overlord was on.  Two million troops with 365,000 vehicles had to be shipped across the Channel.  History relates that the invasion of "Fortress Europe" was a success but severe storms did indeed lash the landing beaches only days later — begging the question of what might have happened to the course of history if Einsenhower had made a different decision.

Setting sail from the south coast of England to arrive off the German occupied French Normandy coast on D-Day, 6TH JUNE 1944  consisted of a spearhead of 1,000 warships, 1,200 merchant ships, 4,200 landing craft, immense air power providing a protective umbrella and a mighty back-up of airborne forces carried in 1,078 transport aircraft and troop gliders.

No one enjoyed a full eight hours' sleep during the night of 5th/6th June 1944 in Findon.    There was the unfamiliar drone vibration of hundreds of bomber squadrons and aircraft towing gliders crammed with British and allied troops on their way to retake mainland Europe from the Germans who had invaded it in 1940.   There was no way the children of Findon were ever going to sleep, listening to the droning fleets of aircraft overhead.   D-Day had begun, it was 6th June and the Allied landing in Normandy had commenced and culminated in the defeat of the German front on French soil.   Most Findonians rolled over in their beds and went back to sleep.  The gradually lighting sky over Findon on 6th June 1944 was just full of waves of aircraft, something witnessed only once before (though in different circumstances) during the Battle of Britain back in 1941.   The difference now was that only half of them carried engines.      The rest were Hamilcar and Horsa transport gliders being towed in a two-hour long procession by swarms of droning twin-engined Handley Page Halifaxes, Stirlings and Douglas Dakotas.    The villagers did not know at the time that crammed into the gliders were the men of the 6th Airborne Division. 

D-Day had arrived in Findon and the residents had been virtually cut off from the rest of the world for weeks in order to maintain the secrecy of preparations for this assault.

Those Findonians who were early risers, tuned into the wireless and heard the German broadcast at 6.35 a.m. announcing that the invasion had begun. 

The BBC said nothing at 7 a.m. 

It was raining with low cloud.   On the 8 a.m. radio news it was reported that the Germans had broadcast that the British had dropped paratroopers in France.  It came over so calmly that it might have been reporting routine bombing.   

The first official news came at 9.30 a.m. when General Eisenhower issued Communiqué Number One, telling the French that a landing had been made by the Allies in Normandy.   John Snagg the BBC newscaster followed this with a description of the landing.   It had been wet and cloudy weather with unseasonably rough seas.

Look out of your windows and listen to the quietude around you.  You will hear and see an entirely different world to the Findonians of yesteryear when the inhabitants heard the aircraft returning over Findon — minus their gliders.

Continue if you would like to read about Uncle Bill in  One Way Trip to Normandy

This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.