Dan Snow's History Hit - What Really Happened on D-Day

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

I was joined by Giles Milton to learn about D-Day and find out what his research has uncovered about the untold stories of this landmark event.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Darren Snow's History Hit. 76 years ago this week, Allied forces stormed ashore on the beaches of D-Day. We obviously had a big focus on that last year on the pod, but I thought we'd replay one of the most popular podcasts we've ever broadcast, and that's Giles Milton, award-winning, best-selling author, historian, on his book about D-Day, when he went into particular detail looking at the primary sources, the oral history, on that extraordinary day, the day of days, when British, American, Canadian and Allied troops landed on the coast of Normandy, punched through Hitler's vaunted Atlantic wall, supported by the largest fleet of ships and boats ever assembled in human history. It was such an honour being there last year. It's definitely one of the highlights, one of the key memories of my career so far. We thought it'd be great to rebroadcast

this podcast with Giles Milton. He's written many, many, many wonderful books. Best-selling book in the late 90s, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Everybody read that. It sort of pushed narrative history to new heights in the UK. So we all owe him a huge debt of gratitude for sort of helping to bolster a genre which is now so full of wonderful writers with such a galaxy of different subjects. This podcast is built on the back of all that talent. So thank you very much to Giles Milton. Thank you to him also for coming on the podcast and giving us such a wonderful description of D-Day, that day, the 6th of June 1944, and telling the soldiers' story. You can watch an entire season of D-Day programming that we commissioned last year,

and we've also licensed one or two more new things this year. So go and check out the D-Day programming that we commissioned last year and we've also licensed one or two more new things this year. So go and check out the D-Day season on History Hit TV, our sister channel. You get hundreds of documentaries, you get all the back episodes of the podcast including lots of D-Day episodes when we talk to the veterans themselves which aren't available anywhere else now, only available on there. If you use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and then you get one month after that for just one euro, pound, dollar, whatever currency you're paying in. So please go and check that out.

Enjoy Giles Milton. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me on. I mean, this is the 75th anniversary of D-Day coming up. I can see why you wrote the book. Yeah, well, there is the big anniversary, but I wanted to do something a bit different because obviously there's hundreds of books on D-Day

written by the Beavers, the Hastings, the John Keegan, etc. But they all tend to tell the story from the top down, if you like, from the point of view of the commanders, the generals, those in charge. I wanted to just completely turn everything on its head and look at it from the conscripts, the teenagers, the terrified youngsters who went in on the first wave and did miraculous things, really. Before we talk about those individuals,

what have you learned from just relentlessly focusing on them from the ground up? What have you learned that you think is different to the D-Day that we've all heard about? Well, of course, it was the officers and the senior classes in the military who wrote the stories of D-Day and wrote their accounts of D-Day. So it's almost as if the youngsters who were really fighting their way up the beaches, that vital first wave, they've almost been airbrushed from history. And I wanted to go back to really the earliest interviews I could find. So I tried to go back to interviews that had been done in the late 1940s, early 1950s, where they were very detailed. They still had their memories intact. They had incredible stories of incredible things that they did. Now, I'm not just talking about the

Allied soldiers. I wanted to tell it from all sides. So I have many, many stories of incredible things that they did. Now, I'm not just talking about the Allied soldiers, I wanted to tell it from all sides. So I have many, many stories of Germans as well, young, also teenage, unwilling soldiers on the German side, and sort of build a narrative. So I have Germans inside their concrete bunkers on the beaches, and I have their story, and have the story of the young soldiers also attacking those strong points. So a very sort of dynamic and colourful narrative, if you like. You've mentioned the word unwilling a few times from these interviews. Does that come across quite strongly that basically no one was absolutely desperate to be there? I think from all the interviews I've read, 98% of the young guys there were absolutely terrified.

They didn't want to be there. And for 2%, the real sort of maybe the East End gangsters, the lawless types, it was the time of their lives. They were armed to the hilt. They could do whatever they wanted. They could kill whoever they wanted. So for those 2%, they loved it. But for the rest, it was hell on earth, I think. That's fascinating.

Talk me through the preparation, the build-up. On the Allied side, did these young men realise what they were training for, when it would happen, where it would happen? Well, you know, it's really interesting because groups like the commandos and the US Rangers were really highly trained and they trained on cliff climbing, they trained on the live fire exercises, they trained on the beaches. But then you get the sort of the ordinary regiments, the East Yorks, for example, the lads there, they really hadn't had much training at all. And they were the ones, a bit of the lambs to the slaughter this, they were the ones going in on the very first wave. So on Sword Beach, for example, the commandos were going in at sort of 8.40 in the morning, but they had been preceded by the East

York, the under-trained, the young guys who didn't really know what they were doing. And when you see the commanders, what happened when they came ashore and they saw this line of dead, massacred soldiers, you know, who'd been in the first wave, you realise that training counted for everything and they knew what to do. They knew how to get off the beach. They knew how to act under fire. So there was a huge difference in the preparations that different groups had gone through. I didn't realise that. So I always thought the specialists, the sappers and the combat engineers, they would have been the absolute tip of the spear. But you're saying on some beaches they weren't. That's definitely the case. And of course, you've got to remember, the other great thing is D-Day was planned to the last second, to the last detail. Everything had been planned and everything went wrong, you know.

So the idea was the infantry would arrive on the beaches. They'd be preceded by a few seconds by the amphibious tanks that were going to roll out of the sea and, you know, shoot out all the German gun emplacements. But of course, half of them sank. The tanks never got there. The planes were meant to bomb the beach and created craters that the men could jump into for cover. That didn't happen. On Omaha, for example, every single bomb missed the beach. So there were no craters on the beaches.

So when they arrived on the beaches, nothing was as they expected it to be. And nothing, certainly, they'd gone through in training. And that's even on the beaches, which supposedly went much better than, say, Omaha. Yeah, I mean, the beach that perhaps went the smoothest of all was Utah Beach, the first American landing. But even there, you know, the troops landed almost a mile from where they were meant to have landed. So they trained to take out specific targets.

They trained, you know, gun emplacements. They knew we were in farmhouses. They knew there was a strong point there, something else here. They trained to take out those specific targets. Of course, when you arrive a mile to the south of where you're meant to arrive, none of those targets were there.

So from the minute they landed, they had to improvise. Let's talk about kind of the way those landings unfolded. So take me in the chronology. They're all sitting out in the middle of the channel. They're being seasick. It's pretty grim. Do their superior officers have to send them into the beaches or turn them around and delay D-Day?

I mean, you can't just keep them bobbing out there indefinitely, can you? No, and as many people know, D-Day was originally scheduled for the 5th of June, and Utah Beach, which was the furthest geographically from England, the fleet had to set sail, and Utah Beach, which was the furthest geographically from England, the fleet had to set sail first. And Force U, which was this mighty fleet, which was the entire fleet destined for Utah Beach, was actually sent off and set sail and had to do a U-turn and return to England because it was realised the weather was so atrocious that, you know, it couldn't happen

on the 5th of June. And it was all delayed by a day. So yes, the planning, everything, this vast machine sort of unfolding. And it did get to the point where once Eisenhower had finally said, we're going, it couldn't be turned back, basically. That famous moment in Southwark House when he says, screw it, let's go. I love that. And then what happens as they're crossing the Channel? Was it famously uncomfortable and seasickness-making? I've read so many accounts of the men crossing the channel,

and it is not pleasant reading. I mean, as they left shore, they were given this sort of glutinous meat stew, which they all wolfed down. They were absolutely starving. Washed down by tea and big bricks of chocolate they were given. Well, they all regretted it pretty soon afterwards because the channel was violent that night. It was five, six, seven foot waves. Many of them were on flat bottom craft. They were already in these big landing craft, which were just slapping around all over the place. I

mean, the stories of men vomiting. They were so ill, many of them could only just lie down, stretch it out, you know. How they were meant to fight the Germans in this condition, I think many of them didn't quite know themselves. They were one night afloat then under those conditions, cold, wet, now hungry as well because they'd thrown everything up. And then they were expected to go into action at dawn on the 6th, were they? Yeah, the beach landings were staggered. It was all to do with the tide and they wanted to land at low tide. And the tide was lowest at Utah Beach, which was the most westerly beach. And basically it was Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juneau and Sword.

So pretty much how they spread out along the Normandy coastline. And yes, some were already in these big landing crafts. Others were on motherships and they had to clamber down netting into these small flat-bottomed landing craft and then they'd be ferried to shore. But ferry journey to shore was often two, three hours

because the big ships were anchored a long way offshore. So a hell of a run-in when you're feeling terrible, you haven't slept, you've thrown up all night, and you're about to do battle with the Nazis. You know, not a great way to start. Are you able to make a judgment about how many of these people had been in combat before? Many of them had never fired a weapon in anger.

And in fact, this was a source of great anguish. I came across many diaries, people wondering, would I be able to kill someone when it came to it? And many of them went, actually. There are numerous accounts of soldiers hiding in hedgerows when they saw their first German patrol going past. They couldn't bring themselves just to shoot. As I say, it was a minority who'd had combat experience, which made all the

difference. Those who'd fought in Sicily, who'd been in Italy, they really knew what they were doing and they led the way. Right, so they're approaching the beach. The aircraft are meant to have hit the beach just before the infantry landed, but that didn't quite work. Now, and what use was the naval gun fire support? Likewise, the naval gun almost entirely missed the beaches. They killed a lot of cows on the clifftops. On most beaches, they really didn't do what they were supposed to do. There were also these rocket projectile ships, which were meant to fire at the beaches just before the Allied soldiers landed. But again, many of them missed. I mean, in some cases, they did have some effect., but generally troops found themselves coming ashore

under incredibly heavy, sustained and very well targeted German gunfire. How did they get off the beach? Why don't we hear more about that? I mean, we hear about it on Omaha when everything absolutely did go wrong that could go wrong. Why don't we hear this on the other beaches? This was what was interesting for me because I realised that it was the success or failure of those first opening minutes of D-Day was really dependent on these young lads, some of them storming individual German strong points and taking them out. Because if you took out one beach strong point,

you effectively rendered sort of 500 metres of beach safe. So I was focused on these stories. It fascinated me. People who often had never fought before, suddenly they just went beyond themselves, you know. They went up, they'd race up and they'd shove their Sten gun through the embrasure of this strong point and shoot everyone inside, you know. Incredible bravery. And I think many of them didn't know what they were doing. They just did it. The adrenaline just pumped them up so much that they ran up the beaches and did it. And really, this is how the beaches were cleared, one by one, by just brutal fighting, basically.

The strong points were knocked out. Hi, everyone. More from Giles Milton II. Just a reminder that if you go over to historyhit.tv, the world's best digital history channel, if you enter the code POD3 when you sign up, that's P-O-D-3, you will get that channel for just one pound, euro or dollar for the first three months of your membership. Become a subscriber for next to nothing.

Watch a vast array of Second World War material if that's what you're interested in, but also lots of other bits of history as well. Here's Giles. So the German defences were strong but brittle. If you penetrated that shell, they were in big problems. They could then be outflanked and all sorts. Yes. And we often forget, I think, that many of the German soldiers were also teenage, unwilling teenage conscripts who were absolutely terrified as well. And I've got lots of accounts of them in the book. A lot of them didn't want to fight. They would rather be prisoners of war, frankly. And what must never be forgotten is that huge numbers of them were these Ost Battalion.

They were Poles, they were Russians, they were Ukrainians, they were Kazakhs and Mongols, all of whom had sort of ended up fighting for the German army. A lot of them didn't seem to know why. Now, their loyalty, you know, when under heavy and sustained fire from the Allies was always going to be in question. And for example, I came across one strong point on Omaha Beach where it was entirely manned by Ostropen with one German officer. And after about half an hour of fighting, they'd had enough. And the German officer was exhorting them to carry on fighting and there was the sound of a bullet

and they basically put a bullet through the back of his head and then they all gave themselves up. So that did happen as well. You know, it's not like all of the Germans wanted to fight to the death. So if the Waffen-SS had been manning the Atlantic Wall, D-Day would be a different story. It would have been a very different story. And, you know, Rommel, Field Marshal Rommel, who was in charge of defending the whole Normandy coastline, he said right from the beginning that if the Allies aren't defeated in the first few hours, he said, we've lost the war. He really

knew what was at stake. But although he commanded the beach battalions, he didn't have command of the two crucial SS Panzer divisions. And they were under Hitler's authority. And Hitler was fast asleep when the landings took place. And he didn't allow them to go into battle until much later that day. And so the Germans really missed a good six, seven hours when they could have really hit the Allies very, very hard when they were seasick, they were vomiting all over the place, they were completely unfit for fighting. That's when the SS should have come in

and really perhaps could have completely transformed the fate of D-Day. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. history hits. There are new episodes every week. So we've got the infantry going ashore, pretty unsupported by the sounds of it, from air power and naval gunfire support, despite a few obvious successes, and you can go visit them today where there's a big hole in the concrete. They're a lot more exposed than I'd understood, so thank you, that's fascinating. What about this, What about the armour that we hear about, the funnies, the amphibious tanks? How effective were they? Yeah, the funnies are a very interesting story. These are the floating Shermans, the armoured bulldozers, all sorts of specialist equipment, which was to come ashore in the wake of the infantry and basically clear the beaches of all the debris and detritus

and everything. But the seas were so much rougher than anyone had anticipated that vast numbers of them sank at sea with horrific consequences because if you were in an amphibious tank and the canvas flotation shield ripped, the thing went down. There was an escape hatch at the top, but of course the tank would flip over and go down upside down. So you were trapped inside. You had no chance of getting out. And so on one bit of Omaha, for example, I think something like 30 tanks were sent in and 28 of them sank. On the British beaches,

they had a higher success rate and it certainly enabled these tanks on Juno, on Sword and on Gold, they really provided invaluable support for the Allied infantry pouring ashore. OK, so we need to think about these infantrymen, often quite an experience going in, facing very, very significant opposition, well-sighted machine gunners, but with some support from the tank. So that's the sort of trump card, is it? They weren't getting much help from the air or from the ships. Well, there was some aerial support and some naval support, but they had to be very, very careful because they risked bombing and killing their own men, as happened later in the ships? Well, there was some aerial support and some naval support, but they had to be very, very careful because they risked bombing and killing their own men, as happened later in the day on Omaha as disaster unfolded.

They brought in the naval gunfire, but they actually succeeded in killing an awful lot of American soldiers in friendly fire incidents. So let's keep on the British beaches just for the moment. How long is that period of intense, Saving Private Ryan-esque fighting in the shallows and fighting their way up the beach? Well, about an hour and a half of the first wave slaughter where the East Yorks go in and they are really pinned down on the beach. It's a massacre. The tails of the commandos coming in and seeing the tide just turning, turning with these slimy, shot-to-pieces bodies,

quite revolting, dismembered corpses, heads lying all over the place. Really, really nasty stuff. So the first sort of hour and a half were very, very intense, brutal, bloody gunfight on the beach, basically. Even on the quote-unquote more successful British beaches? Absolutely. Both on Sword and Gold, similar story. And Juno,

the Canadian beach, between the two of those, also very significant losses on the beach itself. And let's now move on to Omaha. Let's rehearse some of the things that went wrong on Omaha. Well, we begin with the aerial bombardment missing the beach and the naval bombardment likewise. No craters on the beach for any of the soldiers to jump into. They get there. Every inch of Omaha has been covered by German machine gun nests, by bunkers, by strong points. And, you know, they're landing at low tide. So they have to cover, you know, several hundred metres of beach where they're completely exposed. Why were they landing at low tide? Because the beaches of Normandy had been littered with obstacles, with mines. Rommel had planted over six million mines on the beaches of Normandy.

So the Allied planners, although it was a high-risk strategy, they thought it was better to land at low tide and avoid those lethal mines, the landing craft getting caught on them, blowing up, etc. But it meant that the soldiers had to cross, you know, several hundred metres under fire with almost no shelter at all. And then, of course, on Omaha, once you'd reached the sea wall, this sort of protective wall, which the Germans had built to stop tanks getting ashore, then you had to climb the cliffs and bluffs behind Omaha. The cliffs are almost sheer there. And this was going to be, you know, a very, very difficult task for the best of fighters. But when you've been seasick all night, you've just survived this hellish run across the beach. Then you have to

knock out all the machine gun posts on the cliffs and built into the cliffs. It was a really, really tough assignment. You've been steeped in this now for months and months, years, but I remember reading accounts of the second wave at Omaha, watching the first wave obliterated. And landing craft would hit sandbanks, wouldn't they? So they'd think, oh, here we are, we've gone aground, ramp would go down, then they'd all pile out into deep water beyond the sandbank and drown, weighed down by their equipment. And the account of the second wave watching that,

it's some of the most emotive sources I think I've ever come across, actually, in history. Yeah, no, it's fascinating when you go back to the original sources and also to see what people have written about it and actually the reality of what happened. Because, for example, most American books on D-Day, first of all, they treat it as an almost entirely American affair. Omaha Beach becomes an entirely American beach, which it wasn't at all, because the very first boat in the very first wave

was actually commanded by a British Royal Navy commander. And he left an account, a fascinating account, of what actually happened. It wasn't immediately like Saving Private Ryan. A lot of people remember that scene on the beach where the troops are gunned down immediately. In fact, the Germans, the German defenders, they bided their time. They were very, very clever. So on that very first boat of the very first wave, the men came in. They got ashore, led by this chap, Taylor Fellers. They got ashore. They got onto the beach. There was no gunfire. And Jimmy Green, the Royal Navy man, he sent a message back to the mothership saying,

all's well. It's almost too good to be true he turned around went back out to sea and then the hell started and Taylor fellas and his men were just shot to pieces. I know for some reason that there's no accurate accounting for US casualties on Omaha perhaps you could help explain to me why but what do we think the casualty rates would have been in the first few hours of landing on that beach? It's really, really difficult, actually, because just to get casualty figures for D-Day itself is very, very difficult. You're looking at several thousand between Omaha and Utah, but overwhelmingly on Omaha. In fact, Utah, the casualties for the practice run, the infamous

Operation Tiger, I think there was something like 700, 800 casualties for that, run, the infamous Operation Tiger, I think there was something like 700, 800 casualties for that, whereas on the beach itself, there were only something like 150 on the day. So it's extraordinary that the practice run cost almost four times as many lives as the actual invasion on Utah itself. So we're talking several thousand people killed and wounded on the Mahabit. Absolutely, yes. Comparable, therefore, with the first day of a First World War battle. Yeah, and I have to say that Allied planners thought it was going to be even worse, and they thought that the story of Omaha could quite possibly be replicated on all the beaches as well.

So they were prepared to take far higher casualties. And there are numerous accounts, I mean, some of the officers on the ships that night before the lads went ashore gave the worst possible sort of speeches, telling them they're expendable and, you know, only one out of four could expect to come back. And a lot of the men were really left deeply depressed and disillusioned by this sort of eve-of-battle pep talk

that they were given. It ain't Henry V. But talk to me about Utah. So what went right on Utah? How come it was such a remarkable, fairly bloodless success? Well, Utah was rather brilliant that they landed in the wrong place because they landed where there weren't many German defenders, in fact. So they got ashore pretty easily.

They moved inland. And Utah was a very important beach in this respect. The American Airborne had landed inland on the Cotentin Peninsula. The role of the soldiers landing on Utah Beach was to link up with the Airborne and then create one great force. The problem was that Rommel had had all the land, the marshland, just inland from the beach. He'd flooded it.

So there were only four causeways that led across this flooded land. So it was essential for the men landing on Utah to capture these causeways. If they captured them, they could move inland, you know, like an arrow, basically, meet up with the airborne. And this is exactly what happened. So it really was a masterful landing and it went extremely well. We can't, on this British-based but internationally aware podcast not talk about Pegasus Bridge.

So on the other flank, we've given the Americans their due on the west flank there. What about the British airborne landings on so-called Pegasus Bridge? Yeah, a fascinating story. One of the most sort of iconic moments if you're a Brit for D-Day. So this was shortly after midnight. John Howard and a small team of men. I say men, you look at the photos of them, they look about 16. It's quite extraordinary. They were sent in with one absolutely vital goal. They had to capture two bridges, Ranville Bridge and Beneville Bridge, which later became known as Pegasus Bridge.

These bridges were essential to the entire unfolding of D-Day, because if they were not captured, the German SS Panzer divisions could sweep across them and drive the Allies back into the sea. So it was vital they were taken. And even more importantly, it was vital they were held for the better part of the day. In fact, until noon, when the commandos, led by Lord Lovett, were going to come to their rescue and rescue John Howard and his beleaguered group of men who would have captured these bridges. And the operation went successfully? It was absolutely brilliant, a terrifying thing to do.

The men were glided in. When you normally land in a glider, you sort of circle around, rather gently come down, float sort of circle around, rather gently come down, float down to earth and then land gently. But they couldn't do that because the Germans obviously were on the ground looking into the sky for anything that might come down. So the men in these gliders, the pilots would, as they came over towards the bridges, they tip the nose into this sort of sickening dive and they went almost vertically down to earth. And then they suddenly steered

the plane out of the dive and landed the plane. Amazingly, they landed the gliders right next to the bridges. It was quite extraordinary. They crash landed. They were almost all knocked unconscious. Two of the pilots on the first glider were thrown through the windscreen, through the cockpit window, basically. The first two British soldiers to land in Normandy were completely unconscious when they landed. In the second glider, I rather love the pilot. They landed, the plane got ground to a halt, and then they turned around to the men and they said,

now piss off and do what you're paid to do. And then they get the first British casualty as they take the bridge there. So you have changed my understanding of D-Day, which is, thank you very much. It sounds to me like it was tougher, more, because we're often told that D-Day was this great example of industrial war, where nothing was left to chance, every I was dotted, every T was crossed. But it does sound

that as with ever, I don't know why I'm surprised, as any time you head to a battlefield, it was contingent, there was luck involved, and it was a close-run thing. Yeah, and so much was dependent on technology. This was going to be a really technological invasion, and it really relied or depended on wireless communications. But of course, again, everything went wrong. Half the wireless operators were shot on the beach. Those that did survive, they found their wireless equipment was waterlogged. This meant they couldn't send messages to the planes flying overhead

that were meant to drop bombs onto their targets. They couldn't radio the ships. They couldn't let anyone know what was happening. So poor old Eisenhower sitting, you know, in England had absolutely no idea what was taking place. He spent most of the day reading cowboy novels. There was simply nothing to do. It was a tougher and more brutal fight than I think we've been led to believe. Yes. I went to Bletchley Park the other day and they claimed that Eisenhower found the intelligence from the decrypted German radio traffic more useful in working out what was going on than any reports he was getting back from his own side. That's brilliant.

There's one very important postscript to the story of Pegasus Bridge, which I think is worth telling, is that the traditional story, and this was filmed in Hollywood in the longest day, is that there was a race to the bridge, the commandos, they all wanted to be first to the bridge. And, of course, famously, Lord Lovett arrived with his bagpiper playing, you know, and he strode onto the bridge and shook hands with John Howard and said, sorry, old boy, we're two and a half minutes late.

And then he said, you know, today we're making history. Well, unfortunately, Lord Lovett, although, you know, he was a brilliant commander and loved by his men, but the story didn't actually unfold like that at all. You know, he, of course, wrote his memoirs. He wrote the definitive account. And also he was hired as historical consultant for the longest day, so he told his version of events.

But he wasn't first to the bridge. That honour went to a North London bruiser called Stan Scotty Scott, who had a small band of tough nuts, basically. They raced to the bridge in a welter of gunfire and shooting everything they came across. And they were first to the bridge long before Lord Lovett got there. And as Stan Scotty Scott said, there was none of the bagpipes or any of that crap.

In fact, they came across a lone airborne soldier with a shattered leg who just said, where the effing hell have you lot been? And that story, Stan Scott and his mates were really aggrieved for the rest of their lives that they were some of the many that had been airbrushed from history on D-Day. And I suppose it's the stories of men like them that I really wanted to record. So again, not the Lord Lovetts of this world, but those guys who achieved so much on the day itself.

I would not want to spend the rest of my life with Stan Scotty Scott being aggrieved with me. I mean, I'm not going to sleep well at night. Well, when you see a photo of him and his flattened nose, you can see he'd been in too many pub brawls. He was extremely aggressive. And yeah, you wouldn't want to be a German soldier on the receiving end of Stan Scotty Scott. Well, thank you so much. The book is out now.

It is called? D-Day, The Soldier's Story. And that's exactly what it is. Good luck with it. Let's please come back on the pod next year for the 75th. And let's have another chat. I'd love to. Thank you very much for having me on. I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness

free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness free of my heart I feel the happiness

free of my heart Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying and I hate it when other podcasts do this but now I'm doing it and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes

wherever you get your podcasts and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps and basically boosts up the chart which is good and then more people listen which is nice. So if you could do that i'd be very grateful i understand if you

want to subscribe to my tv channel i understand if you're not by my calendar but this is free come on do me a favor thanks