D-Day 6.6.1944 Page #2

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a pious remembrance for all our dead.

Berlin will be delighted

with their new recruits in Swansea.

Who will be the brothers

in the Aryan World Order?

I was thinking of creating

a retired sailor,

a few salesmen, a WREN, perhaps.

And how's your mistress, Agent J5?

Still giving me information

from the War Office.

Still asking for clothes and perfume?

She's a very demanding woman.

So... this makes

26 wonderful works of fiction.

The more agents,

the more information, the more risk.

Sometimes I worry

the whole house of cards could collapse.

It is elaborate and beautiful.

But fragile.

Many of the people of France

accept neither capitulation nor servitude.

It is therefore essential to gather as

large a French fighting force as possible.

I invite all those citizens who seek

liberty to listen to me and follow me.

Long live Francel

Despite France's fall to Hitler's forces,

over 300,000 French men and women

are involved in some form of resistance.

They relay messages, forge documents

and rescue stranded Allied airmen.

Amongst the Resistance fighters is

a 24-year-old teacher, Andr Heintz.

I was part of the Resistance

between 1940 and 1944.

My first group was disbanded.

My second leader was arrested and shot.

I am very lucky to have survived.

But by the spring of '44, the most crucial

aspect of French resistance work

is the mapping of the German defences

on the Normandy beaches.

Near the village of Merville they have

identified a lethal threat to the Allies -

a heavy gun battery

within range of the beaches.

I was meant to stand in for the captain

because he was going on holiday.

I didn't want to shoot,

so I was trained as a surveyor.

I was 22 years old.

Four concrete casemates, six feet thick,

steel doors front and rear.

15 to 20 gun pits,

four to five machine guns in each.

Two six-foot barbed-wire perimeter fences,

anti-tank ditches and a minefield.

The daunting challenge of putting the

Merville battery out of action on D-Day

has been given to

the 9th Parachute Battalion,

under the command

of Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway.

The battery was sighted

to fire along the length of Sword Beach,

across which the British Third

Infantry Division was going to land.

Everybody emphasised to me personally

what would happen if we failed.

Thousands of men killed on the beach.

Each casemate has a howitzer

with a seven-mile range.

They can hit incoming battleships

and the beach

where 30,000 Allied troops will land.

They can do a lot of damage.

Any questions?

- What is our mission, sir?

- To take it.

We have four hours to destroy the battery

before the landings begin.

B Company and "C" Company

will mount the main assault here.

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