Monthly Archives: June 2011

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A Monarch’s Insanity: The Madness of George III

“It’ll be like mad King George the Third! I’ll be mad King George the Stammerer!” – Colin Firth; ‘The King’s Speech’ (2010)

Whatever the real King George VI thought about his stammer, Colin Firth was certainly right when he said that George the Sixth wasn’t the only English monarch in history who might have been thought of as ‘mad’ by his people. In fact, the crown for that award was given out over two hundred years ago, to another King George, whom this article is about; King George III.

Who Was George III?

He was born George William Fredrick on the fourth of June, 1738. He ascended to the British throne as King George III upon the death of his grandfather, the late George II, in October of 1760. By all accounts, the new monarch was a perfectly healthy and normal human-being and the first half of his reign ran relatively smoothly with no serious health complications of any kind. For George III, life was going well. He was happily married to his consort, Queen Charlotte; he had several children (fifteen in total!) and the British Empire was on the rise. During his reign, he saw the American and French Revolutions; he saw the wars they created and he saw the great battles that were fought against Napoleon. He was an avid student and was fascinated with science and technology. He gave his personal support to a struggling clock and watchmaker named John Harrison, whose invention, the marine chronometer, would go on to vastly improve accuracy of navigation at sea. He was the third ‘George’ of the Georgian-era which ran from 1714-1830.

George III was furious and devastated at the result of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), but eventually came to accept the United States as a new nation, despite his frustrations and disappointments regarding the outcome of the War. But the king’s dismay at the loss of the American Colonies was as nothing to the dismay of his friends, family and politicians when the king began to lose his mind…

The Madness of King George

George III is famous for many things, but he is most famous for the fits of “madness” that plagued his health towards the end of his life. Many kings and even queens, have gone mad over the centuries, but perhaps why George III is remembered so well in the history books, is because he lost his mind at a key point in history, with the fall of the French Monarchy and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the serious military threat that the new French leader posed to Great Britain. Because of the rumblings in Europe and danger of war with France (again!), George III’s incapacitation and a hopeful cure of this insanity, was of vital importance to the British government and the royal household.

George III’s illness started in October of 1788. Prior to this date everything had been just fine, but eventually, things began to go wrong. The king’s personal physician suspected something was up when “Farmer George” as his subjects affectionately called him, due to the monarch’s love of nature, the outdoors and of the occupation of farming, tried to plant a steak! He believed that meat grew from trees and that by planting a nice T-bone in the garden, he might perhaps grow a new breed of hotdog tree (or something like that). The royal physician thought this rather odd. He didn’t do anything about it, but it certainly made him pay closer attention to the king.

The first real sign of George’s madness happened when his servants happened upon him in the grounds of Windsor Castle…shaking hands with a tree…whom the king believed was the person of King Frederick the Great of the Prussian Empire! Apart from the fact that Frederick the Great never had bark, branches or leaves on his person…there was also the rather inconvenient fact that by 1788…Frederick the Great had been dead for two years! It was now that royal physicians really began to worry!

George III gradually grew worse. He suffered from a variety of complaints ranging from severe stomach-cramps and general abdominal pain, joint-and-muscle pain, anxiety-attacks, depression and hallucinations (which probably explains the royal tree and the steak-planting). He would have great discomfort in sleeping and suffered from seizures and fits that were so bad that his doctors were compelled to strap the king into a chair to prevent him from harming himself or others! As the year 1788 progressed into October and November, the king grew more and more unmanagable and erratic and there were talks of creating a regency if the king was unable to rule effectively.

Treating the King

Medicine in the 18th century was rudimentary at best. While physicians in the 1780s knew how to treat injuries and various illnesses with medicines of mild effectiveness, they had absolutely no understanding of mental afflictions. There was no distinction between one mental condition to another and there was no real way of knowing how to treat mental illness and certainly no way of curing it! George III’s condition was simply labelled “Madness”.

In the truest sense of the word, the king was given the full Georgian medical treatment for “Madness”, a series of procedures that were far from pleasant. It would not be until the mid-1800s that doctors finally threw out the millenia-old theory of ‘Humorism’, that the human body supposedly contained four humors or liquids: Black and Yellow Bile, Phlegm and Blood. In the 1780s however, this medical theory was still in full swing. And it was with this misguided knowledge that the doctors attempted to treat the king.

The usual treatments included such procedures as bloodletting, blistering, sweating, restraints and scary cocktails and potions designed to treat the king’s various symptoms, all to no effect. Something drastic had to be done.

Enter Dr. Francis Willis.

Francis Willis was a qualified physician for the day and he was recommended as the best person in all England to treat the ailing king. A friend of Queen Charlotte mentioned that Dr. Willis had successfully cured her mother and that his methods appeared effective and creditable. Desperate to try anything, the royal physicians backed down and gave Willis free access to the king.

Willis’s treatments were both familiar and unfamiliar to the doctors of the day. He employed many of the usual methods of dealing with mental illness that other 18th Century doctors were familiar with, such as restraints and blistering, but instead of acting blindly, Willis also tried to counsel and provide therapy for his unfortunate patients. Due to the sheer hopelessness of it, perhaps, most physicians probably failed to remember that their patients were human and didn’t bother trying to communicate with people suffering from mental illnesses. Willis spent time with the king, talking him through things, trying to understand what was going on.

It was clear to Willis at least, that if the king was mad and out of control, then it was someone’s duty to bring the king back UNDER control…by force if need be. And if the royal physicians weren’t willing to do it due to their patient’s status and title, then he would. Apart from regimens of therapy, restraints, control, exercise and plenty of exposure to fresh air and regular labour, Willis also tried to make it clear to his patients that they themselves had to make an effort to fight against their demons.

Meanwhile, all the other doctors just laughed. They thought that Willis himself was probably only just slightly less mad than his patient and that his treatments couldn’t possibly work and that he was wasting his time and that he should go and do something else!…Despite the fact that Willis had significant success in treating mental illness…something that none of the royal physicians could claim…and despite the fact that Dr. Willis’s treatments did produce results. As indeed they did with the king.

By 1789, the king’s madness had subsided. The regency had not been declared and he was now able to resume his normal royal duties, aided back to health by the determined and persistent Dr. Willis who would never give up. Willis’s ability to cure the king made him a national celebrity and he made a name for himself as a pioneer of mental health treatment. For a while…things seemed alright.

But for George III, his madness was not over. Between 1789-1810, he would have another five episodes of “madness”. Unfortunately, Francis Willis died in 1807 at the respectable and ripe age of 89, but he was succeeded in his work by his two sons, Drs. John and Robert Willis. Familiar with their father’s methods, these brother physicians continued to monitor the king and treat him for his occasional reccurences of insanity for the next twenty years. As much as he probably appreciated their efforts, it’s not surprising that the king grew to hate the sight of Dr. Willis and the sight of his sons. He refused their treatments despite their effectiveness and he barred them from his presence. Despite this resistence, Queen Charlotte was insistent that the doctors ignore her husband’s ravings and to continue treating him since it was clear to her that only constant monitoring and treatment would drive away his madness, and this persistence did seem to work. Although George III was not free of his madness, with help, he was at least able to control it and it seemed that life could go on as normal.

Or so they thought.

In 1810, the king’s madness returned, and this time, it came back with a vengeance. Not even the determination and experience of the Willis brothers could save him, and George III was eventually deposed as king a year later. Wholly unable to rule despite the best efforts of the Willises and other doctors, George III was declared incurably insane and finally, in 1811, a regency was declared, with his son, the future King George IV, taking the reins of monarchy and government.

The End of George III

George’s final descent into complete madness destroyed his family. In 1811, his first son was declared Prince Regent. George’s devoted and loving wife, Queen Charlotte, was devastated by the news of her husband’s return to insanity and despite the fact that they did no good at all, she would visit her husband regularly in the room that he would eventually be taken to, in Windsor Castle. Again, George’s insanity came in waves, but try as they might, it was impossible to pull him out. He was in too deep by now. As the years went on, he eventually went blind and was lost to the world. He wasn’t even informed of his wife’s death in 1818. In the end, George III would die alone and insane at the age of 81, in 1820.

Diagnosing the King

It is widely believed the George III suffered from recurrent and eventually, permanent porphyria. In layman’s terms, porphyria is a genetic nervous disease that effects the brain and nervous system. Sufferers of Porphyria experience a range of discomforts, ranging from vomiting to stomach-pains, sensitive skin, diahrrea, purple or red urine, seizures and muscle-weakness. The most famous symptoms of porphyria, however, are severe mental disturbances. Sufferers of severe porphyria are afflicted with depression, paranoia, panic-attacks and hallucinations. It is possible that the king’s porphyria was worsened by the ingestion of arsenic, a strong poison that was a common ingredient in cosmetics and even some medicines of the 1700s.

 
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Pen Profile: Vest Pocket Fountain Pens

Admittedly, the range of fountain pens we have around today is pretty small. They’re all roughly the same size, they all hold roughly the same amount of ink and they all have the same selection of nibs.

Back when fountain pens were new, things were a lot different.

Fountain pens were once luxury items. To own one was a big status-symbol. Most people at the turn of the last century were still using steel-nibbed dip-pens to do the majority of their writing. Schools in many countries continued using dip-pens well into the 1940s. Fountain pens were expensive things to own and the people who were lucky enough to afford one of these newfangled ‘reservoir pens’ usually only owned one pen, which they used endlessly until it broke, before they purchased another.

As fountain pens became more common and gradually, cheaper, towards the early 1900s when mass production increased output and design-improvements made fountain pens more desirable, more people started wanting them. And they wanted different styles and types of pens as well. As the fountain pen became more and more essential to everyday life, people saw the necessity for keeping one near them at all times.

This was tricky when you consider that most fountain pens made between the 1880s-1910s…didn’t come with pocket-clips, the kind that all pens have today. Such fancy and mindblowing additions to the pen as a pocket-clip wouldn’t show up until the First World War. That’s where the ringtop fountain pen comes in.

Ringtop vest-pocket pens

Without the presence of pocket-clips, it was necessary to find other ways to keep pens from running away from their owners. One of the main methods of keeping a tab on your pen was to have a ring attached to the top of the cap (something that became possible when threaded, screw-on caps were invented, that held onto the body of the pen much more securely than comparable slip-on caps of the period).

There’s a big misconception that ringtop pens are all women’s pens. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

Ringtop fountain pens were common for only a very short period of time, from the 1900s up until the end of the 1920s and they were marketed (and manufactured) for both men and women. It’s easy to tell the difference between men’s and women’s pens purely from their lengths. Women’s pens were longer (four inches or more); they were worn with a chain or a ribbon around the neck, like a necklace. Men’s ringtop pens are significantly smaller, generally being no longer than about three and a half inches.

Why?

If the history of consumer-goods has taught us anything, it’s that women’s products are almost always smaller than men’s. Women’s watches are smaller. Women’s pens are smaller. Rings and chains for women’s jewellery are usually much thinner than men’s jewellery. So why are men’s pens in the case of ringtops, smaller than women’s?

Ringtop pens for men were designed as ‘vest-pocket’ pens. They usually had the code-letter ‘V’ or ‘VP’ (for Vest/Vest-Pocket) heat-stamped or engraved into them. Pens like this were deliberately kept smaller than women’s pens because they were designed to be clipped to a man’s double albert watch-chain and worn in one of the two watch-pockets of his waistcoat (or ‘vest’). On a watch-chain along with a pocket-watch, the setup would look like this:


My vest-pocket fountain pen and pocketwatch. Pen: 1925 Wahl Art Deco vest-pocket fountain pen. Watch: 1950s Ball railroad chronometer

In the days when men still wore waistcoats (a stylistic choice I still carry on) and pocketwatches were still popular (another stylistic choice I keep alive), vest-pocket pens were a popular writing-instrument. Compact, convenient and nigh impossible to lose; even if the pen did fall out of your pocket, the chain clipped to the ring on the cap would prevent it from getting lost.

The End of Ringtop Pens

Ringtop pens for men died out by the 1930s. Pocketwatches were still being made, waistcoats were still popular and people were still combining the two, but the truth was that demand for this pen, which had become little more of a novelty by this time, was dropping fast. The arrival in the mid-1910s of pens with permanent pocket-clips meant that keeping a pen securely about your person with a ringtop cap and chain was no longer necessary. By the mid-1930s, production of both men’s and women’s ringtop pens had come to an end.

Today, ringtop pens are no-longer made as there’s no market for them. They do still exist, as curious reminders of a bygone age, if as nothing else, though. You can still buy them at pen-shows, vintage pen shops and online from pen-dealers and repairers, but unless you’re intending to wear it on a ribbon or necklace around your throat or on the end of a watch-chain, they’ll probably have to make up part of your desktop pen inventory due to the risk of them falling out of your pocket (unless you store them in a pen-pouch when you’re carrying them around).

 
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D-Day and the Battle of Normandy

With the anniversary of D-Day coming up, this article is written to commemorate the original and most famous of all D-Days…the sixth of June, 1944.

The Second World War is famous for a lot of reasons. It was the most expensive war, it was the costliest war in human lives, it had the weirdest national leaders at the helm at the time (a paraplegic Yank, a chainsmoking, paintbrush-brandishing MP, a mustachioed Russian lunatic and a crazy Austrian guy with a toothbrush moustache and half his sexual equipment hanging around beneath him)…but the Second World War also holds the record of being the war with the biggest ever seaborne invasion. No, not the Battle of Dunkirk…that was the biggest seaborne evacuation; but the Battle of Normandy, specifically, the naval landings on the beaches of France.

The Allied attempt to liberate northern France and to start the process of beating back the Germans and driving them out of lands which were not their own  was codenamed “Operation Overlord”. However, the actual beach-landings were given the codename “Operation Neptune”. It was during Operation Neptune that all those famous photographs were taken…like this one:

Seaborne Invasions

In warfare, invasions by sea have always been the most difficult to pull off. Airborne invasions involve planes strafing and bombing the target-area and then sending in paratroopers. Land-invasions are done using infantry and tanks, possibly with air-support. In both instances, getting onto dry, solid ground is pretty easy. Either you’re already there…or you soon will be.

Seaborne invasions, however, have always been tricky. A soldier sloshing through the surf with his uniform, his rifle, his ammunition, his helmet, his kit, his boots and other necessities was liable to be bogged down in the soft, shifting sand beneath the waves. This makes him a sitting duck for any defending soldiers, who can stick out their rifles and shoot him. Added to this is the problem that to get the attacking soldiers near to the beach, you need small boats. Small boats that are fast, light and which can go right up to the sand without running aground. Prior to the Second World War…no such boats existed! From the time of Napoleon right up to WWI, warships were forced to use regular wooden ship’s rowboats to ferry their troops ashore. This was slow, dangerous and catastrophic. Because these boats couldn’t go right up onto the beach, soldiers had to jump over the sides of the boats and wade through water that could be up to their waists, to get to the sand! This wasted time and made the men easy targets for enemy soldiers on land.

Operations Covered in This Article

In my mind, and probably in the minds of thousands of others…It is a great mistake to call the invasion of Normandy a single battle or operation. It sure as hell was not. The Invasion of Normandy was a concerted effort by thousands of people doing dozens of tiny little things and a few big things to pull off the most audacious and ridiculous and fantastic beach-assault in history. Covered in this article will be the following ‘Operations’ that made up the various elements of the Normandy Invasion.

Operation Overlord – The Battle of Normandy.
Operation Neptune – The Storming of the Beaches (more famously known as “D-Day”)
Operation Mulberry – The creation of a floating harbour off the coast of France.
Operation Cobra – The breakout from the beachhead to commence the liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Specialised Invasion Equipment

Folks fighting the Second World War realised pretty quickly that if they intended to win the war by an invasion of Europe by sea, they would need a lot of specialised fighting equipment with which to do it. What kinds of mechanical curiosities did people whip up to put an axe to the axis back in the 1940s?

Higgins Boats

The Higgins boat…which is the more people-friendly name of the water-craft also known as the “LCVP” (Landing Craft: Vehicles & Personnel), was one of the most famous and vital inventions of the Second World War, without which, the large-scale naval invasions such as those in Italy and France, would not have been possible.

The Higgins Boat was invented by an American chap named Andrew Higgins. The problem at the time was that since conventional boats needed keels to slice through the water, they were not able to get right up onto the beach during naval assaults: The keel would dig into the sand and strand the boat out in the surf, unable to move inland any further. To combat this, Higgins created a flat-bottomed boat which he based on the boats then used in navigating swamps and marshes in the United States. Having a flat bottom meant that his craft could go right up onto the beach and not get bogged in the surf.


Although referred to as ‘Higgins boats’ in this article for reasons of simplicity, they went by a variety of names. One of them was the ‘LCVP’ (Landing Craft: Vehicles & Personnel)

The other feature of the Higgins boat was its famous ramp-front. Another problem of the time was getting soldiers out of their boats as quickly as possible. Because of their high sides, it was hard for soldiers to get out of regular row-boats quickly enough, and this meant that they could be killed easily by enemy gunfire. Having a boat with a ramp that dropped down meant that soldiers could run right off the boat, onto the beach and find cover. The ramp also allowed vehicles such as Jeeps, small, wheeled artillery pieces and small tanks, to be driven right off the boats and onto the beach.

Higgins was quick to see the necessity for his new invention. Production of them started in 1941! Higgins boats were not fast (12kt), not pretty and certainly not comfortable (with the flat bottom, the Higgins boat bellyflopped across the waves with all the grace of a seal), but it was important! The war would not have been won without it, and Normandy would’ve been a disaster.

D-D Tanks

Duplex Drive tanks (shortened to ‘DD Tanks’ or jokingly…Donald Duck tanks) were the Allies’ solution to getting tanks and the necessary firepower and speed that they brought with them…onto the beaches of Normandy as fast as possible.

DD tanks were invented in the early 1940s. The Allies knew that it would be asking too much if they kindly asked the Wehrmarcht if they might, pretty-please, park a few of their tanks on the shores of France for them to use when they came ashore and blasted through their defenses. Instead, they needed to find a way to get their own tanks to France. The problem was, to get tanks onto land, the Allies would need a harbour. But to get a harbour, they first had to capture it. And to capture it, they needed tanks, but to get tanks, they needed a harbour and…you get the idea.

To get tanks ashore without a harbour, the Allies decided to create a floating tank (hence the alternate name ‘Donald Duck tank’). The tanks floated thanks to inflatable screens which were placed around them, and were propelled thanks to rather weak (though effective) outboard motors. The inflatable and collapsable screens, used to give the tanks the necessary boyancy so that they could float ashore, were made of waterproofed canvas. The tanks were offloaded from warships and were then sailed towards the beaches. Once the tanks reached the beaches, the inflatable screens were deflated. They collasped around the sides of the tank, giving the tank-crews the ability to just drive ahead and blast the hell out of the enemy.

“Ducks”

Officially called the ‘DUKW’ (utility vehicle with all-wheel drive designed in 1942), the ‘Duck’ as it was affectionately called, was one of the most important machines invented for the Invasion of Normandy. Based off of an ordinary truck which had its body removed from its chassis to be replaced by a watertight, boat-shaped hull, the ‘Duck’ was an amphibious delivery vehicle, able to power itself through the water and drive out of the surf onto the beach. These floating pickup-trucks were essential to the Nornandy invasion in that they were able to ferry cargo from ships docked at sea, to land-forces fighting on the beaches and then go straight back out into the water again. Twenty-one thousand ‘Ducks’ were manufactured during the War.

Hobart’s Funnies

The Allies had been planning to charge into Normandy for years…and the Axis knew that the Allies were going to come charging in. The only thing was, the Axis didn’t know where the Allies would come ashore. Because of this, the Axis barricaded, reinforced, booby-trapped and built up every single square yard of sand which made up the French coastline, to impede the Allied advance. To break through the multiple layers of defences, from sea-mines to hedgehogs to barbed wire, machine-gun nests, defensive bunkers, sea-walls and barbed wire, the Allies knew that they needed tanks. But not just any kinds of tanks. They needed tanks that could do a variety of tasks – Tanks that could blow holes in stuff, tanks that could clear minefields, tanks that could cross trenches and ditches, tanks that could clear away the rubble of the stuff that other tanks blew up!

The number of tanks that were developed were phenomenal. And the Allies had to know how to operate every single one of them. The man responsible for gathering the armour and firepower, and whose duty it was to train the tank-crews who would use them, was Sir Percy Hobart. Hobart was a military engineer and an armoured-warfare expert, the perfect man to teach the Brits how to use their newest playthings. Because the tanks were just so weird, soldiers named the tanks after the man who taught them how to use them, and they became collectively known as “Hobart’s Funnies”.

The number of tanks that the British Army developed was phenomenal. Here’s a few of the more famous tanks and what they could do…

The Crocodile.


The Crocodile. The trailer behind the tank carried the 400gal of fuel that allowed this beast to breathe fire!

Awesome name, huh? The Crocodile was modified so that instead of a central, main gun (like what most tanks have), it had a massive, fire-belching flamethrower on the front! How cool is that!? Fed from a tank that held four hundred gallons of petrol, the Crocodile could shoot flames a hundred and twenty yards! Although somewhat inaccurate and hard to aim, the Crocodile scared the daylights out of the Krauts and was excellent at roasting the enemy alive inside the confined spaces of German machine-gun bunkers.

AVRE.

ARMOURED VEHICLE, ROYAL ENGINEERS. Not very interesting. Or is it? The AVRE, like all the other tanks, was modified for a specific purpose. This one fired huge mortar-rounds at anything that the Allies considered an impediment to their progress across Germany, namely roadblocks, buildings or bunkers. The AVRE fired massive, high-explosive shells from its main gun, capable of blowing the shit out of whatever it touched.

ARK.

Armoured Ramp Carrier. A special tank that carried a pair of ramps on its roof. It was designed to act as a bridge on wheels. If the army approached an obstacle such as a trench, the ARK would drive ahead, deploy its ramps and then park itself there and let other tanks drive over the top of it!

Crab

The crab…probably given that name because of the two arms that stuck out in front of it…was the British Army’s minesweeping and mine-clearing tank. It had two metal arms that stuck out in front of it with a long, metal cylinder between them. Attached to the cylinder was a series of chains. At the flip of a switch, the cylinder spun around and the chains whirled out in front, whipping up the ground as the tank drove ahead. The chains would strike and detonate any mines which were in the tank’s path, and provide a safe route for soldiers to follow behind.

German Beach-Defences

In the truest spirit of German efficiency, the Krauts were not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, wondering what the Yanks and the Limeys and the Frogs were getting up to. They knew something was going to happen. They knew that an invasion of France…ONE DAY…was going to be inevitable. To shore themselves up against this inevitablity, the Germans built an enormous collection of fortifications along the northern shores of Europe, stretching alongside the English Channel and up past the North Sea. Officially called the “Atlantic Wall”, this series of defences comprised of everything from powerful anti-tank mines, miles of barbed wire, huge pillboxes and machine-gun nests, anti-tank ditches, long-range artillery cannons (set several hundred yards back, which would fire down on the landing-beaches), mines on stakes that they drove into the sand, designed to go off if a landing-craft hit it, blowing the boat and its passengers to pieces and most famously of all…these things:

Those square-looking spikey things are synonymous with beach-warfare. They’re called Czech Hedgehogs (or simply ‘hedgehogs’) and they’re an anti-tank obstacle. Incredibly easy to make and nigh unshiftable. They’re three lengths of steel beam riveted or welded together in a rough cross-shape and then just scattered all over the beach. Cheap, simple and effective. The problem with them is that if you drove a tank into one…you couldn’t crush it, and because it had no actual base, you couldn’t topple it over and just shove it out of your way. To the troops storming the beaches of Normandy, Czech hedgehogs were a mix of frustration and lifesaver all in one. They might have been a pain in the ass for the tank-crews who couldn’t drive over them or shove them out of the way, but to the infantry they were lifesavers in disguise. Allied soldiers would hide behind them and use them for cover while they fired on German machine-gun nests with their submachine-guns and rifles. They were lucky that the hedgehogs were there, for there was precious little else on the beaches that would have given them sufficient cover from the powerful counterfire of the German MG-42 belt-fed machine-gun.

The Battle of Normandy

The Guiness Book of World Records, once a noble institution of fact and intelligence, now sadly degenerated into a compendium of useless information such as who created the world’s biggest ice-cream pyramid…says that the Battle of Normandy holds the record of being the biggest ever seaborne invasion. And it’s right. Take a look at these numbers:

Planes: 12,000.
Ships: 7,000.
Troops: 160,000.

All these men and machines took part in the initial assault on the beaches on the 6th of June, 1944. And they won! But not without a lot of problems, first.

The order of battle was pretty simple – Planes go overhead, drop off surprise-packages for the Germans, ships come, deploy tanks and men, tanks and men go ashore and blow the hell out of the Krauts, who are already too busy dealing with the surprise-parcels dropped off thanks to the RAF and the Army Air Corps. The battle started with parachute-troops being dropped behind enemy lines. Their jobs were to secure important locations such as villages, roads and airfields. They were to link up and create a barrier so that reinforcements couldn’t get to the beaches as quickly as they might. Bombers would fly over the beaches and perform saturation-bombing of the coastline. This was to knock out as many enemy bunkers as possible, but also to provide some nice hidey-holes for the Allied troops when they came ashore.

The coastline of Normandy was divided into six specific beaches, all codenamed. In order, they were…

Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, as seen on this map:

Once the airborne troops were dropped behind enemy lines, they went about their objectives, linking up and then spreading out in groups. They secured important roads, bridges and railroad lines. They also tried to disrupt enemy movements as much as possible, attacking German troops and sabotaging German artillery-positions, which were located further inland than other Allies could reach. By blowing up the German artillery-guns, the airborne units stopped shells being rained down on the beaches, giving their fellow fighters a chance at the enemy.

Not everything went perfectly, though. Omaha Beach especially, was a mess. The D-D tanks, deployed too far out in the ocean, sank before they could reach land. The aerial-bombardment had failed to knock the German machine-gun nests out of commission and the beach was as flat as a pancake when the soldiers arrived. With no shell-craters for them to take cover in, the Americans were sitting ducks for the Germans who machine-gunned them down in their hundreds. Omaha became known as “Bloody Omaha” after the war.

The Battle of Normandy started in the pre-dawn of the morning of the 6th of June, 1944. An allied armada, a naval and aerial taskforce the size of which the world had never seen before and which it has never seen again, charged towards the French coast after crossing the English Channel from a number of British seaports.

The objectives of the battle were to destroy German coastal defences, liberate France and establish a secure beach-head for the Allies so that extra troops and supplies could be driven and shipped onto the battlegrounds. The fighting, as depicted in films such as “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan” was fierce and prolonged. The Germans knew that the moment the Allies broke through their defences, they would come steamrolling in like the neighbours from hell, destroying everything in their path.

Once the Allies had destroyed the German defences and liberated some of the coastal villages, they were able to set up bases. Since no harbour (or at least, no harbour sufficient for warships) existed in Normandy, the Allies knew they would have to build one. Floating in huge pontoons, they were able to hastily construct a manmade breakwater and piers which led out deep enough into the English Channel for ships to dock and offload their cargos. Called “Operation Mulberry”, it was one of the most essential elements of the D-Day invasion. Without a port (even if it sounded like one you might buy from IKEA), the invasion would have ground to a halt. Once the beach-head was established, without a constant stream of supplies, men, ammunition, food, fuel and firearms, the invashion would have ground to a halt. All very imporant reasons for the creation of a floating harbours. With this vital entrance to Europe secured, the Allies could now push forward in their liberation of Europe. It was one of the most crucial battles of the Second World War. It meant that now, the Germans were fighting a war on two fronts (France and Russia) and this caused the German Army to split up its resources, meaning that the Allies would be able to beat them easier.

The Air-Battle for Normandy

Normandy was many things. It wasn’t just storming the beaches. It also wasn’t just an attack by ground-forces. It wasn’t just a naval assault. It was also a huge aerial pre-emptive strike by the Allies.

Knowing that they wouldn’t succeed at Normandy without dominance of the air, the Allies spent weeks in advance attacking German-occupied France using the combined power of the United States Army Air-Force and the Royal Air Force. Their objectives were to blow up bridges, destroy railway lines, attack aircraft factories and destroy every single airworthy flying-machine within attacking-distance of Normandy. They strafed and gunned and bombed airfields left, right and center, destroying hangars and airfields, runways and as many enemy planes as they could find. They also bombed the beaches  that the landings were to take place on.

Raiding the beaches was an essential element of the air-assault on the north of France. Although the Allies knew that destroying the German machine-gun bunkers through carpet-bombing was going to be only marginally successful at best, bombing the beaches would have the advantage of giving their advancing ground-troops plenty of fox-holes in the sand in which to hide from enemy gunfire. Without this crucial attack on the beaches, the British, Canadian, American and Commonwealth troops storming the beaches would be sitting ducks for the Germans, who had mined, barricaded and wired every square inch of the Normandy coastline…at least, every square inch that wasn’t flat and smooth as a billiard table to serve as an unobstructed killing-field.

The End of the Battle

There are conflicting dates for the end of the Battle of Normandy and of Operation Overlord in general. The most accepted view is that it was the 25th of August, 1944, with the liberation of the French capital of Paris. After a battle that lasted six days, the Germans were finally overwhelmed by a mix of Free French forces, American infantry and French resistence fighters within the city and were forced to surrender. The fact that many of Paris’s historical buildings such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, the Arc D’Triomphe and the Cathedral of Notre Dame still survive today, is due wholly to the occupying Nazi governor’s decision to ignore Hitler’s famous command that Paris be razed to the ground to try and destroy Allied morale.