Jim Radford – "The Shores of Normandy" (2019)

The largest fleet the world had seen

We sailed in close array

And we set our course for Normandy

At the dawning of the day

The largest seaborne invasion in the history of the world took place on June 6, 1944 – better known as “D-Day” – when some 156,000 Allied soldiers crossed the English Channel on over 4000 transport vessels and landed on five beaches in Normandy, France.  

In June of this year, President Trump and the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, and a number of other countries observed the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Portsmouth, England – the most important of the many D-Day embarkation ports.

Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson

I flew to London the following day and travelled on to Portsmouth, where the group of American pilgrims I was with visited the National Museum of the Royal Navy (which is home to HMS Victory, the flagship of the great Lord Nelson) and The D-Day Story Museum (the only museum in the UK dedicated to D-Day). 

That night, we boarded the MV Normandie, a ferry that can carry up to 2123 passengers and 575 vehicles, for an overnight trip from Portsmouth to Ouistreham, France – which is the port for Caen, the third-largest city in Normandy and was our home away from home for the next four nights.

MV Normandie

Our voyage replicated that of the 29,000 British troops who landed on Sword Beach, which was the easternmost of the five D-Day landing areas.

I don’t mean to compare my English Channel-crossing experience to that of those troops.  After all, I wouldn’t have to face mines, artillery, machine-gun fire, and all the other hazards of war at the end of my voyage.

Also, the soldiers crossed the channel in much smaller ships and on much rougher seas – from what I’ve read, most of them were so seasick that they vomited until there was nothing left to vomit.  Our journey was quite smooth.

My zero-sleep berth

But I’m willing to bet that none of those British soldiers got less sleep than I did.  Because I got zero sleep that night, and I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to get less sleep than that.

*     *    *     *     *

While in Normandy, we visited three museums that were jam-packed with World War II-vintage airplanes, tanks, artillery pieces, trucks, and jeeps:

Of those museums, I think my favorite was the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mère-Église, which is dedicated to the memory of the American paratroopers who parachuted into that area the night before the D-Day landings.

One of the buildings at the Airborne Museum houses one of the C-47 airplanes that dropped paratroopers that night:

The C-47 is the centerpiece of a large and detailed diorama showing preparations being made for its mission.  That diorama depicts General Eisenhower exhorting a group of paratroopers:  

Eisenhower did in fact speak with men of the 101st Airborne Division a few hours before they took off for Normandy:

Across the street from the Airborne Museum is the Sainte-Mère-Église church, which was built in the 12th century:

The parachute of one unlucky American paratrooper caught on the spire of that church, so he played dead for two hours while his comrades and German troops battled one another.  (He was eventually taken prisoner, but managed to escape and rejoin his unit.)

Today there is a dummy paratrooper hanging from the church spire:

*     *     *     *     *

The next day, we got a close-up look at the well-preserved German fortifications near the village of Longues-sur-Mer:

Next, we took a walk on Omaha Beach, where German resistance to the D-Day landings was the fiercest.  

Almost everything that could go wrong there did go wrong.   The preliminary naval and air bombardment that was supposed to suppress hostile fire from the German defenders was inaccurate and ineffective.  Many of the landing craft carrying American troops got lost and landed them in the wrong places, or discharged them in deeper water that they were prepared for – which required them to jettison much of the equipment they were carrying to avoid being drowned.    

As a result, there was tremendous confusion and disorganization among the invaders – officers were separated from their men, leaving many relatively young and inexperienced soldiers without leadership – and those that did make it ashore had little in the way of heavy weapons, explosives, or communications equipment.  

Monument to Allied troops at Omaha Beach

Not surprisingly, casualties at Omaha Beach – especially among those in the first landing wave – were very high.

In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you about our visit to two very different D-Day cemeteries.

*     *     *     *     *

Jim Radford was only 15 years old when he participated in the D-Day landings as a galley boy on the deep-sea tugboat Empire Larch.

Jim Radford today

“The Shores of Normandy,” which is about the D-Day invasion, is the first song that Radford ever wrote.  It topped both the Amazon and iTunes download charts in the first week of June 2019 when it was released to raise funds for the Normandy Memorial Trust, which is raising funds to build a memorial to the 22,442 British soldiers and sailors who died on D-Day and the subsequent fighting in Normandy.

Click here to watch a video of Jim Radford singing “The Shores of Normandy” in 2014.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: