Today is the 70th anniversary of the greatest naval invasion the world has ever seen and for me, the son of a former member of the British 21st Army, it is very moving to hear the memories of the last surviving veterans.
My father landed on D+4 as a member of the advanced party of Guards Armoured Division and I remember his vivid descriptions of the beachhead when he arrived in Normandy and the later battles of the campaign.
With the passing years and with fewer veterans still surviving, my Dad passed away in 2003, the likelihood is that this will be the last significant commemoration of a campaign that dramatically changed the course of WWII and the history of our world today.
My blog since its beginning back in December 2012 has had a strong theme around the Peninsular War as a period that I have chosen to focus on for the foreseeable future.
Prior to it I had spent the previous three years building up a large collection of WWII Normandy forces for my own home brewed WWII rules and latterly IABSM. Those figures have taken a "back seat" in recent times but were regularly featured in games that I reported on the Devon Wargames Group Blog.
With the importance of today's commemoration, I thought I would pay my tribute to the events of seventy years ago by highlighting those postings that were part of a campaign run back in 2010 and that is still to be completed, and will be returned to later. As the map shows we had all the beaches to fight except Utah in the first turn.
So first up, the battles for the beaches beginning with Juno
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| The landing on Juno Beach |
The second game featured Bloody Omaha
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| No quarter asked or given on Omaha |
The third game was fought out on Sword beach
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| Solid landing on Sword |
And last but not least, Gold
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| The first breach made on Gold |
The position at the end of D Day
Fitting tribute. Your games look great too.
ReplyDeleteCheers Jon, it's been quite moving to hear the recollections of the remaining old soldiers this week. It brought back a lot of memories of holidays, as a kid, in France and Belgium.
DeleteWhich boardgame/cyberboard game did you use for the map of your D-Day campaign?
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your Peninsular war info, as I am a Napoleonic newbie;love your website!
Hi Terence, thank you, glad you like the blog. The D Day map is one I found on one of the Flames of War forums in the early days of their Firestorm. Campaign system, which I adapted for my own purposes. If you check out the Battlefront site I am pretty sure they have a Firestorm campaign that covers the British and US beaches separately but would probably work just as well combined that does what I did a whole lot better.
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