Our Man in Normandy

Last weekend, the world took time out of its day to remember, and commemorate, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. As a self-confessed fan of military history, André Deutsch's editorial director Piers Murray Hill was already set to spend the weekend on the French beaches. We asked that he document his experience for us. These are a few of the photos he took over the course of an extraordinary weekend.

Utah Beach veterans meet for the first time at Pointe du Hoc on 7 June 2014 and swap stories of the subsequent break-out fighting at St Lo. They were 19 and 20 back in 1944.

Piers Murray Hill at the Hillman bunker complex behind Sword Beach. This fortified strongpoint prevented the British from taking Caen on June 6th.

Commemorative wreaths at the original Pegasus Bridge captured on D-Day, now situated in the museum's garden.

A vintage Citroën in Free French livery in the Pointe du Hoc visitors car park.

Amphibious DUKW (or 'Duck') at Port-en-Bessin, captured by British commandos on 7 June in Operation Aubery.

The forward observation officer's view of the Channel for the four 152mm guns at Longues sur Mer between Gold & Omaha Beaches. The battery failed to sink any Allied ships and was captured without a fight by the British on 7 June.

One of the Longues sur Mer gun emplacements.

Humber armoured car at Port-en-Bessin.

Thanks to Piers for his photos. We'll be hearing more of his experiences at the D-Day 70th events later in the week. You can also follow us on Twitter at @ADMilitary, where we've been posting updates from Pier's trip over the last few days.

The Longest Day

We hope it’s clear for all to see: the team here at André Deutsch are passionate about military history. This is a tremendously significant year for us, as we focus more than ever before on our military history publishing, but also prepare to commemorate some of the most important events in modern history. One of our recent labours of love has been publishing a new, definitive edition of Cornelius Ryan’s genre-defining work ‘The Longest Day’.

‘The Longest Day’ is a treasure amongst war literature, and is loved dearly by many. We wanted to treat it with the reverence it deserves, whilst also adding to the experience of reading an already unforgettable book. It was a great challenge, which is why the letter below, sent to our Editorial Director, Piers Murray Hill, by Cornelius Ryan’s daughter, Veronica, means so much to us.

Dear Mr Hill,

I cannot tell you how wonderful the new Carlton special edition of The Longest Day is and how much it means to me.  It is beautifully done and certainly a treasure not only to my family but to anyone who gets a copy. The new photos and the additions in the envelopes are just wonderful.

I was 18 when my father died.  He meant the world to me.  To this day, losing him was by far the most difficult experience of my life.  I realize that I knew so little about him because my vantage point was that of a child.  To me, he was such fun.  He was loud and gregarious, certainly the center of every party or get together at our home.  He was the kind of father who seemed to make anything happen.  When he became ill, when I was 14, he embarked on a race against time to write A Bridge Too Far.  He did not want to leave his family unprotected.  I wonder if he knew just how much he meant to people around the world whom he touched with his words.  I am proud, beyond words, to be his daughter.  While I am not particularly clever in the writing arena, I certainly developed his sense of humor and and his joie de vivre!

It was amazing to me to read my father describe this book he envisioned and the enormous passion he had for it in the letters he wrote.  He had such a strong vision and such self-confidence! His enthusiasm was indefatigable. 

It is a joy to see this special edition in print and to know that my father’s books still have such literary and historical importance.  As the anniversary approaches, I have seen several articles listing the best books about the D Day invasion and my dad’s book is still in the top five!!  I think I am truly blessed to be his daughter.

Doug McCabe has been heaven sent.  His commitment to the collection and to my father’s reputation has been solid.  There could not have been anyone more appropriate to be the curator of this collection.  I have a wonderful friendship with Doug and Valaria and they have been true and loyal friends.  He was the perfect person to write the Introduction to the Carlton edition. I am sure he went out of his way to help with this project.  His knowledge of the collection is almost uncanny and sometimes I wonder if a little of Cornelius's spirit resides in Doug’s heart!

So, dear Piers, I thank you for believing in this project.  For making another of Cornelius’s dreams come true.  For giving my children an understanding about how important and necessary their grandfather was. Especially for giving me back my father for a moment and letting me feel his warmth again. 

Respectfully, 

Victoria Ryan Bida

André Deutsch's D-Day 70th Anniversary Collector's Edition of 'The Longest Day' by Cornelius Ryan is available from our website.

Crosswords and Crossed Wires

Photo: Craig Sunter

Commuters today are more likely to be seen on their phones playing Candy Crush Saga or Flappy Bird than they are to be caught tutting over 8 Down in a crossword. But in May 1944 crosswords were the morning’s pastime for millions of Britons. Which is why MI5 became particularly concerned when their top-secret codenames kept on appearing in the Telegraph’s daily puzzle.

It started innocently enough, with a few words appearing over several months’ worth of crosswords. ‘Juno’. ‘Gold’. ‘Sword’. Though it was likely noticed that the answers were also codenames for several of the beaches earmarked for the following month’s D-day landings, it seems little heed was paid. After all, back in 1942 the town of Dieppe had appeared in the same puzzle just two days before the failed raid on the region and that occurrence had been judged an unhappy coincidence.

When, a few days later, another beach was mentioned in the crossword (‘One of the U.S. (four)’ – you can work that one out) eyebrows were raised. Four more clues followed in the days leading up to D-Day. The first was another beach, two were the codenames of the operations themselves – Overlord and Neptune, and one seemingly referred to the ‘mulberry’ harbours that the Allies planned to erect upon landing on the Normandy coast.

MI5 were dispatched to investigate, and Leonard Dawe, who set the crosswords (and was also a headteacher and a former amateur footballer who had spent the 1912 Olympics on the bench for the national team) was arrested. Despite in-depth interrogations, it was decided that Dawe had not been aware of the significance of the words he chose, and that the Daily Telegraph’s crossword probably wasn’t being used as a tool for international espionage.

It was only forty years later that the truth came out for everyone to see when Ronald French, a former pupil of Dawe’s, came clean. French told of how his school, headed by Dawe, had been evacuated to Surrey during World War Two, and placed besides a large military camp. At the same time as the young schoolboys were picking up the various code-words soldiers in the camp were using, Dawe was encouraging the boys to fill in blank crossword puzzles as a school activity. A pollution of Dawe’s own crosswords, once examined with such context, seems inevitable.

The story of Leonard Dawe's suspicious crosswords features in both André Deutsch's new collector's edition of 'The Longest Day', and John Halpern's fascinating book 'The Centenary of the Crossword'. You can buy them both at the links above.

We Will Blog On The Beaches

This week the world looks to the beaches of Normandy to remember the courageous invasion undertaken by the Allies seventy-years ago. D-Day marked, for many, the beginning of the end. But just four years earlier the situation had been very different, and the average Briton was expecting a very different outcome from the war. When Churchill spoke to the House of Commons seventy-four years ago today, he likely had no idea just how important – and accurate – his now iconic speech would be.

June 1940 saw Britain at what could be described as its lowest point of the war. A humiliating retreat from Dunkirk in May preyed heavily on the public’s minds, America was still an essentially neutral force and Churchill found himself in the unenviable position of having to tell his fellow countrymen that a Nazi invasion was entirely possible.

Few speeches in history are as repeated and remembered as the one given by Churchill in response to this dire situation. The evocative words of Churchill have echoed down the halls of history departments ever since. “We will fight in France,” he said, “We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.”

“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”

An island was invigorated by Churchill’s words, and as the war waged onwards his words became something of a checklist for British forces. But not in the way many had feared. Now we approach the anniversary of D-Day, and we can look back and see the Allied forces fighting, as we were told, on the beaches and landing grounds. Only they weren’t those of England. These were French beaches under Nazi rule, and Allied landing grounds reclaimed from those who had taken them. Churchill might have feared the worst that day, but he brought out the best.

You can read more about Churchill in Christopher Catherwood's book 'Churchill: the Treasures, available here.

Mulberries and Gooseberries

Courtesy of US National Archives

There’s a long-standing tradition amongst Britons abroad – we are renowned for bringing with us the commodities we can’t do without but won’t have readily available. These days this might amount to a jar of Marmite, or a box of PG Tips. In 1944, the necessary commodity we took with us to France was an entire harbour. Two, in fact.

As soon as the Allies had decided to invade Normandy they were aware that they had a problem. The operation’s first two weeks alone would see some six hundred thousand troops and around ninety thousand vehicles land upon French shores, but every major port was heavily defended by German troops. It soon became apparent that the only way to accommodate so large an invasion would be to bring the ports we needed with us.

With codenames likely to get your stomach rumbling, the Allies started by sending ‘Corn Cobs’ to meet the troops landing on Normandy shores. These were block ships – large, mainly concrete boats that had been built with the sole purpose of being sunk (or ‘scuttled’).  The effect of this mass sinking was to create a number of five artificial bays, sheltered from the choppy waters of the Channel.

And it was in these bays, codenamed ‘Gooseberries’, that two ‘Mulberry’ harbours were built. Incredible structures – pontoons, piers and bridges – were dragged slowly across from England and constructed off the shores of Omaha and Gold Beaches. Within days of the D-Day invasion, fully constructed ports allowed hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers access to Normandy. Though one of the two ports would be destroyed in a storm two weeks later, Mulberry B lasted for months beyond its original intended period of usage. The audacious floating ports were the gateway to France for over two and a half million men.

The Double

Montgomery and Clifton James. Would you have been fooled?

This Friday marks the 70^th anniversary of the biggest amphibious invasion in history. It’s easy to forget that the Normandy landings now remembered as ‘D-Day’ were actually part of an operation that ran for a great deal of time on either side of Tuesday the 6^th of June, 1944. Over the coming days, the André Deutsch blog will look back at some of the many operations that prepared the way for the Allied invasion of France. Today, we pay tribute to Operation Copperhead. From Thursday onwards, André Deutsch's Editorial Director, Piers Murray Hill will be acting as our man in Normandy. He'll be reporting on the events unfolding in France over the anniversary weekend.

Operation Copperhead was one of a number of initiatives that fell under the wider umbrella of Operation Bodyguard - a series of deceptions undertaken by the Allies in order to draw attention and forces away from the Normandy coast ahead of the 'D-Day' invasion.

In many ways, the Allied forces’ plan for Operation Copperhead would feel more at home in an American sit-com than the front lines of World War II. A British soldier and semi-professional actor, M. E. Clifton James, was found to have more than a passing resemblance to Field Marshal Montgomery and the decision was made to send James off to Algeria in order that he might convince the Germans of a forthcoming invasion from the south. It was hoped that the supposed ‘presence’ of Montgomery, who in reality was planning for the forthcoming invasion on the Normandy coast, would lead the Axis to focus forces on the south of France.

Ultimately, Copperhead was one of several intelligence plans that didn’t have any significant sort of an impact upon the Normandy invasion. Nevertheless, it likely piled further misdirection upon that which Operation Bodyguard’s more successful confusion missions had already created. Over time, it brought Clifton James some level of celebrity, and his memoir of his time as faux field marshal lead to a British film adaptation, 'I Was Monty's Double', in 1958. Cinematic plotting demanded an extra element of terror – a fictional assassination plot against our hero, but for a real element of truth being stranger than fiction, they might have chosen to point out that the actor playing the joint lead roles was, in fact, M. E. Clifton James himself, fourteen years after the events depicted and turning a spritely sixty years old during filming.