marc wilson book lr.pdf

8/9/2019 marc wilson book LR.pdf

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THE LAST STAND

NORTHERN EUROPE

MARC WILSON


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Contents

Map

Foreword Roy Exley

England & Wales

Scotland

The Atlantic Wall

Short Select Bibliography

Selection of Online Sources

Acknowledgements

Support

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War is a brute, and its brutality unleashes energies that are at once startling and

terrifying. There is nothing subtle about the productivities sponsored by war;

commitment is total. Such is the intensity of those unleashed energies that wars

are, inevitably, historic watersheds way-markers in the history of civilisations. In

terms of the wider history of mankind they are often brief, but their effects and their

traces are, invariably, enduring.

Duration, durability, resistance to decay are, by their very nature, inherent qualities

of the edifices thrown up in the service of war. Those monuments, left by wars that

we prefer to forget, are rarely celebrated but nevertheless endure often resisting

or skewing those natural processes of growth and decay that are an integral part

of the evolution of the landscapes that surround them. The obdurate presence

of those monuments effectively punctuates their landscapes, both visually and

historically. The remnants of the defensive walls and fortresses of Roman times,

on through the castles and fortified bastions of medieval history, right up to the

massive defensive structures built by both sides of the conflict that was the Second

World War: those scars left by conflict remain. Such is the massive and monolithic

nature of these latter bulwarks, that they have resolutely resisted destruction in the

decades that have passed since the wars end. They do, however, have their Achilles

heel, which Marc Wilson, in his poignant images of those structures, does not fail

to emphasise. Built without foundations reliant on the massive weight of their

centres of gravity for their stability these structures, through the passage of time,

have become unstable through the natural erosion of the coastal sands upon which

many of them stand. They have simply tilted, tipped and tumbled in an inevitable

submission to the vicissitudes of gravity, coming to rest at crazy angles, their

attitudes, but not their structures, altered: a stoic invincibility transformed into a

wayward whimsicality. This endurance is, howe ver, relative and ultimately finite, a

fact compellingly attested to in Wilsons photographs.

War is a brute and the nature of its structures and works, by necessity, brutish. The

architecture of Hitlers concrete defences, theAtlantikwall, consisting of somewhere

in the region of 15,000 structures created by the Todt Organisation, was inspired by

the Cyclopean concrete architecture of Friedrich Tamms flak towers constructed

around Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna to protect the cities from Allied bombers. It

is uncompromising in the extreme: a chain of monumental sentinels stretching

along the maritime fringes of north-west Europe. If these edifices, whose facades

are frequently mask-like, had expressions, they might be typified as scowls, their

demeanour that of the curmudgeon. These scowling concrete sentries were intended

as a deterrent to, as much as a defence against, potential invaders. In the current

context their incongruity is striking: they mutely stand guard against bleak andbarren str etches of marginal and gener ally empty littoral landscapes. Som etimes

partially sometimes completely inundated by dune sands or immured by pioneer

woodland, they have not only become irrelevant but also, often, invisible. In the

impressively atmospheric images of his The Last Stand series, Wilson has invested

these structures with a new life, not so much a resurrection as a re-invention,

presented as Non-places like no other (Non-place in terms of being possessed

or frequented by no-one and rendering everyone strangers). The boundaries

between perceived contexts and actu ality are, in these scenes, often blurred. Are

we looking at images of scenes th at celebrate the architectural, the archaeological

or the geological, or something of each? Such references are emphasised to different

degrees in different images in this series. Also, the littoral environment of which

many of these photographs were taken is one that offers its own ambivalence:

the strand sometimes sea, sometimes land dominates these scenes, offering a

further fluidity to that quandary of identity that besets them. The military machine

of the Third Reich attempted possession of land through something that, ultimately,

nature would undermine. During the past four years, Wilson has journeyed the

length of Europes north-western coasts tracking the traces and remains of the

Atlantikwall, the ghosts left by the grandiose ideas of the Nazi leader and the 12 years

of madness they spawned.

The forms of those bunkers, gun emplacements, observation posts and command

centres constructed by the Third Reich using copious quantities of poured concrete,

defy and eschew any established aesthetic sensibilities: no hint of the classical, the

gothic or the baroque here (unless, perhaps, we were to invent the category of the

abstract baroque!). Their geometries, purely contingent, were designed to resist the

effects of the latest developments in projectile technology, their profiles shaped to

deflect such missiles and avoid any direct percussive explosions on their structures.

Those geometries developed out of the direct experiences of combat. In the

American Civil War almost a century before, the ironclad warships of both sides

the USS Monitorand the CSS Virginia had superstructures whose profiles avoided

rectilinear, flat, vertical surfaces. The Monitor had a wide, cylindrical design that

doubled as gun turret and control centre; theVirginia had a low-profile structure

whose sides were raked back at such an angle that any incoming ordnance would

be deflected, only to ricochet away har mlessly. In the Battle of Hampton Roads in

1862, both of these vessels fired endless rounds of shells at each other without either

succumbing or even being significantly damaged. Such structural solutions aimed

at damage limitation, while not directly imitated, can nevertheless be seen mirrored,

subsequently, in the design of those bunkers on theAtlantikwall. There was nothing

speculative or arbitrary about the bulwarks of their sometimes bizarre and often

ungainly forms: they were purely functional. While far from being graceful or

classically proportioned, there is something visually appealing about the alien (and

sometimes sinister) forms of those bunkers. Novelty does not quite describe this

appeal: more surprise perhaps a surprise that courts the sublime.

Wilsons photographs depict these ruins as mellowed through the passage of

the years. Like classical ruins looming out of the mists of time, the weathering

effects witnessed here, while superficial, nevertheless ameliorate and soften the

intrinsic grimness of their stern facades. In his images, they merge with, rather

than punctuate, their landscapes. Somehow they have become a topographical

component of, rather than an imposition upon, those landscapes. The narrow tonal

range of The Last Stand

emphasises that mellowness that has ultimately softenedthe edges of the menace they formerly possessed. Wilson achieved the paradoxical

dreamscape atmospheres of these images by photographing the sites at dawn

when not only the low angle of illumination from the sun, but also t he presence of

high atmospheric humidity, reduced any possibilities of brightness in the incident

light around those scenes: the sense of limbo residing there, enhanced.

An on-going project rolled out between the years 1942 and 1945 to protect the Nazi

occupation forces in France from Allied invasion from the sea, the designs of the

Atlantikwallfortifications were constantly evolving. Any formulae involved in their

conception were being continually adapted or revised and this is what makes the

natures of these structures so diverse, so intriguing and so photogenic. The intrinsic

irony surrounding these bunkers is that as massive and monolithic as they are, built

to withstand the ravages of both war and time, their usefulness was extremely brief,

their significance fleeting. Once they had been by-passed by the surging advance of

the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, they became, in effect, redundant hulks.

As witnesses to, and participants in, a rapidly evolving and restless consumerist

culture, we have become accustomed to the built-in obsolescence that characterises

many of the products we purchase. In contrast, it seems outrageous that such

productions of war as the bunkers of theAtlantikwall given their imposing presence

and the huge effort and energy expended, the enormous input of manpower and

materials that went into their construction should so rapidly become obsolete.

Why were lessons not learned from the earlier failure of the Maginot Line on the

Franco-German border? Were they the last desperate, and ultimately futile, effort of

a regime that was staring defeat in the face?

Eschewing any form of decorative elaboration to which much architecture can

be vulnerable, the bunkers and gun emplacements that dot the Atlantic, English

Channel and North Sea coastlines have a purely utilitarian, functional aesthetic. The

contingently chamfered, curved and raked facades (facilitated by the plasticity and

eminent mouldability of poured liquid concrete) for the deflection of any incoming

ordnance and avoidance of catastrophic direct hits, are the most dominant featuresof the profiles and structural forms of these buildings. Narrow slits and slots,

observation ports, and embrasures pierce the massive walls, the chamfered edges to

Foreword


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their frames effectively generating ricochet upon contact for any incoming bullets

or shells. The design of these structures stands in stark contrast to the clean, pristine,

rectilinear profiles of the modernist architectural styles of the time.

In an analysis of the nature of and the philosophy behind the Atlantikwall, the fact

of the construction of those bunkers does indeed represent the onset of defeat for

the Third Reich. They are the physical, historical traces (like flotsam left on the

strand-line) of the turning of the tide against Nazi Germany in the Second World

War. With its policy of blitzkrieg(swift, intense attack), the Nazi war machine could

only maintain its dominance through expansion, through a philosophy of proactive

determinacy offensive action. Once it went on the defensive (an attitude effectively

betrayed through the construction of theAtlantikwall), defeat for Germany was

inevitable. Lightning advance through the deployment of ultra-mobile and flexible

offensive forces, both in the air and on the ground, was its speciality. Once it halted

or worse, retreated all was lost: the ultimate example of pride going before a

fall. That such massive and apparently impregnable monumental structures should

represent and commemorate the beginning of the end for the Third Reich, is the

ultimate irony.

Once these bunkers had lost that meaning, construed through their purpose; once

they had become abandoned, obsolete and redundant their utilitarian ethos erased

they invited fresh, other, contextual meanings, alternative visual identities. So,

with their utility neutralised , the foundation of war removed, their defensive stance

against the supposed or anticipated offensive actions of their foes destabilised, their

identity has become similarly unstable. Flawed as credible fact, they are now cast

adrift on the currents of fiction and fantasy. Once militarily apparently infallible,

their credibility is only tentatively supported in the face of their inherent fallibility.

Much the same can be said of the Second World War fortifications and defences

on the British side of the English Channel. Without the manpower of massed slavelabour that was at the Nazis disposal, the British war defences bunkers, pillboxes,

gun emplacements and maritime barriers were somewhat more modest in both

size and number. In terms of design, they were more utilitarian and less visually

striking than theAtlantikwalldefences on the other side of the Channel. However,

Wilson explores the remains of some impressive examples in his images. One being

the chain of concrete cones, whose serrated profile looks for all the world like the

back of some sea-dragon or serpent emerging from the waters and heading for th e

bleak shore through th e ghostly mists of the Fir th of Forth. Th ey are, in fact, the

tops of submerged pillars between which were suspended spans of anti-submarine

cables. Wilsons camera angle and his viewpoint conjures a scene here of pure

surreality. Dorset also provided a happy hunting ground for Wilson in his quest for

the remnants of military fortifications. The gun emplacements at Portland looking

like the forlorn remains of a space-ship launch site from a 1950s sci-fi B movie; and

a comparatively diminutive pillbox clinging, at a precarious angle, to a crumbling

cliff its pediment testing out the water before it plunges in are two memorable

images from his Dorset series.

In her recent review of the exhibition Ruin Lust at Tate Britain inLondon Review

of Books, Rosemary Hill wrote: Ruins are unstable things, sometimes physically,

culturally almost always they are the remains of something else, of which they

must necessarily be a shadow, an echo or a critique.[1] This is the crux of our

experience of these concrete ruins, whose tilted and toppling traces are but benign

shadows of the sinister workings of the Third Reich, or the reply from their Allied

adversaries. Their shadows mellowed by the crepuscular light of dawn in Wilsons

atmospheric images, these ruins have indeed become something else, and it is

difficult to perceive their materiality outside of the historical framework within

which they were conceived. While t hey lack the romantic resonance of those ruins

dreamed up in the landscape paintings and synthetic parkland landscapes of

the Picturesque movement during the 18th Century conjured up to weave their

sublime spells for the leisured pleasure of the aristocracy and landed gentry of those

times the demeanour of Wilsons images nevertheless imbues them, paradoxically,with a faux romantic mien.

The monumental bunkers and other defensive works we have inherited from the

hostilities of the Second World War, we have done so unwittingly and are hesitant to

give them space, to acknowledge them, in the annals of architectural history. They

are monuments to something that we would sooner forget than commemorate.

Nevertheless they remain. Thomas Traherne, the 17th-Century mystic, wrote: For

we can unsuppose Heaven and Ear th and annihilate the world in our imagination,

but the place where they stood will remain be hind, and we cannot unsuppose or

annihilate that, do what we can.

Some of these bunkers, resemble ancient rock tombs with the diminutiveembrasures, portals and tunnels let into their massive concrete bulwarks, or burial

mounds subsequently opened up by treasure-hunters as if their subterranean

depths could entomb and withhold the secrets and purposes of their birth,

beyond their death. Did they, beyond their death, assist with the bir th of brutalist

architecture in the 1950s? Did they only supplement the influence of the work

of Le Corbusier or did their aesthetic take the baton from him (see his chapel at

Ronchamps) as an inspiration for the brutalist architecture of such architects as

Peter and Alison Smithson, Sir Basil Spence, or Rodney Gordon or were they

swayed by the aesthetics of the bunker? Brutalist architecture is exemplified by

forms derived from the pouring of concrete rather than the forming of metal or

laying of brick or stone. It precludes any use of pre-fabricated units and so avoids

the formulaic. It has been classified as sculptural architecture or architectural

sculpture and the bunkers have been described as the apogee of the architectural

achievements of the Third Reich making a joke of the pompous neo-classicism of

Hitlers chief architect Albert Speer.

Before the onset of the machine age, wars were often protracted and slow-moving

measured in decades rather than months or years and the resulting flux of

peoples was widespread. The traces of those distant wars are retained not in the

landscape, but in our genes, through that resultant intermixing of peoples. The

relatively brief machine-age wars leave scars on the landscape that take but a few

generations to pass and so their traces are also short-lived; the fierceness of modern

warfare is ameliorated by its greater transience. The mood of Wilsons photographs

deftly captures this transience so clearly manifested by the ghostly presence of the

Atlantikwallbunkers on the coasts of north-western Europe and the Allied defences

in Britain. Repeated viewing of these images intensifies that mood, eerily immersing

the viewer in their dreamlike countenances.

Roy Exley

Roy Exley is a freelance art critic and curator based in London. He has written for many art

magazines and journals and is currently a regular contributor to the contemporary photography

web magazine Photomonitor www.photomonitor.co.uk. He has curated eleven exhibitions of

contemporary art in London and Paris since 2000.

[1] RosemaryHill, AtTate Britain,London Review of Books, Volume 36 No.7, 3rdApril 2014.Page20.


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On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later, having given Poland

guarantees in the event of German aggression, Britain and France declared war on

Germany. On 4 September, advance parties of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)

landed in France.

By May 1940, the German army had swept through Holland, Belgium and France

in a lightning blitzkriegoffensive. Forced to retreat to the French coast, the BEF and

other Allied troops became trapped in and around the port of Dunkirk. In early

June, in Operation Dynamo, more than 338,000 men stranded on the beaches were

evacuated by a flotilla of hundreds of small boats that had sailed from the Englishcoast to rescue them, transporting them to larger ships offshore.

Soon after war had been declared, the German Admiralty began to initiate a plan

for the invasion of England, codenamed Operation Sealion (Seelwe). Following

the capitulation of the French Government and the German occupation of France

and the Low Countries, Hitler hoped Britain would negotiate for peace. But on 16

July 1940, he issued his Sealion directive: S ince England, in spite of her mi litarily

hopeless position, shows no sign of coming to terms, I have decided to prepare a

landing operation against her[1]

Three days later, in a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler offered Britain the choice betwe en

peace or unending suffering and misery[2]. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the

Admiralty and a member of the War Cabinet since the outbreak of the war, who

had become Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, commented: I do not propose to say

anything in reply to Herr Hitlers speech, not being on speaking terms with him.[3]

Faced with the threat of German invasion, Britains first line of defence was air

reconnaissance, submarine watching and attacks on the enemys shipping and

operational ports. Its second was the constant patrolling of the seas around British

coasts by hundreds of Royal Navy vessels, with destroyers ready to intercept and

attack any invading seaborne expedition.

Churchill, inspecting every aspect of British defences, toured the countrys military

coastal installations. Should the enemy near or reach the shores of Britain, it would

face a coastline bristling with emergency batteries; entanglements of barbed wire to

hamper beach access; minefields; lines of anti-tank concrete blocks some in rows

two or three deep; and thousands of pillboxes, some on the sands, others on cliffs

overlooking the beaches.

To defend the coastline and prevent the enemy from landing, an almost continuous

chain of defences was established on the south and east coasts the most vulnerable

areas for what seemed an imminent German invasion from the sea and also on

many parts of the west coast. Radar stations were established along these coastlines

to give warning of approaching enemy planes. These replaced early 20th-century

pre-First World War acoustic mirrors, rendered obsolete by technology and the

speed of later aircraft.

The success of Germanys plans for the invasion of Britain depended on the Luft waffe

winning air supremacy over the Channel and southern England, defeating the Royal

Air Force and destroying its airfields, as well as British aircraft factories. But under

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, commander-in-chief of Fighter Command,

the RAF successfully defended the skies during the Battle of Britain in the summer

of 1940. The defeat of the Luftwaffe forced Hitler to postpone his invasion plans, and

Operation Sealion was later abandoned.

In April 1940, Germany had also invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway.

When the Luftwaffe started a relentless bombing campaign against the north of

England from its bases in occupied Norway, decoys were sited in Yorkshire to

divert the enemy aircraft and lure them into dropping their bombs away from

their intended targets. First used to protect airfields and factories, the decoys,

which simulated burning targets, were soon being used to pro tect towns and

cities all over Britain.

Decoys were also used to protect the Royal Navy installations on the Humber

Estuary and the forts built during the First World War to defend the Humber against

German torpedo boats and air attack. During the Second World War, the defences

of these forts were updated and expanded, and their armaments upgraded.

In the South-east, the White Cliffs, stretching along ten miles of the Kent coastline,

became an iconic symbol of resistance. Early in the war, Churchill had insisted upon

coastal defences and artillery positions being strengthened to protect this stretch of

coastline, which was to endure more than four years of bombing and shelling from

German-occupied France across the Channel. Secret tunnels below Dover Castle,

constructed in the chalk cliffs during the Napoleonic wars, housed the Coastal

Artillery Operations Room. It was from here that Vice Admiral Sir Bertram Ramseymasterminded the Dunkirk evacuation.

After Dunkirk, in June 1940, in order to keep fighting and to harass the enemy

in occupied Europe, Churchill gave orders that a special force should be trained

for raids and sabotage missions on occupied territory. Hayling Island, on the

Hampshire coast, was the wartime base for the highly secret COPP (Combined

Operations Assault Pilotage Parties), a group of commandos assembled by Lord

Louis Mountbatten. One of its teams was trained to reconnoitre potential Allied

invasion sites on the Normandy beaches for the D-Day landings.

England had been threatened by enemy invasion at various times in past centuries

and ports on its south coast had been fortified against attack from France and Spain.

Henry VIII ordered extensive construction of defences to protect key harbours and

vulnerable landing sites. Following the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 during

the reign of Elizabeth I, further fortifications were built and the updating of those

earlier defences was carried out. In the second half of the 19th century, with the

perceived threat of a French invasion, new defences (the Palmerston Forts) were

constructed. During the Second World War, these were used as communication

centres and observation ports and some were re-armed.

Wales, too, saw extensive building of anti-invasion defences. Some were constructed

to protect against possible invasion by Germany from Ireland, should the Germans

have invaded Ireland and used it as a base from which to launch attacks. Both Cardiff

and Swansea were heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe because of their importance as

docks and industrial centres. Wales played an important part in the Battle of the

Atlantic. Sunderland flying boats flew anti-submarine reconnaissance patrols from

Pembroke Dock. They also rescued crews from ships torpedoed by the Germans.

On 23 March 1942, Hitler signed a directive ordering the building of theAtlantikwall

(Atlantic Wall) [4] to fortify the coasts of German-occupied countries against

future Allied invasion. By now, Operation Sealion had long since been abandoned,

America had entered the war, and Germanys conflict with Russia on the easternfront was draining its resources and manpower.

By 1943, with German invasion no longer a threat, many of the beach defences in

southern England, including mines, were being cleared. Several locations in Dorset,

Devon, Cornwall and Wales where defence structures had been built were used

in 1943 and 1944 as training grounds for D-Day, as their beaches were similar to

those in Normandy where the Allied landings were to take place.

Battle practice areas for the US troops who were to storm Utah Beach on D-Day

were set up on the south De von coast. Residents of Torcross, and other villages and

farms in the vicinity of Slapton Sands, were ordered to evacuate their homes with

their livestock, farm equipment and personal belongings. A large-scale rehearsal,

codenamed Exercise Tiger, was to end in a landing and mock assault at Slapton

Sands beach. To make it as realistic as possible, live naval and military ammunition

was to be used. The exercise ended in tragedy. Over 900 American servicemen were

killed, many by drowning when their landing ships sank after they were torpedoed

by German E-boats, or by friendly fire on the beach.

In north Devon, the coastline from Braunton to Morte Point consisting of miles

of beaches, cliffs, headlands and sand dunes was assigned to the US Army Assault

Training Centre. The troops (later relocated to Slapton Sands for the second part of

their training) practised new tactics of amphibious assault against heavily fortified

England & Wales


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enemy-occupied coasts, and how to neutralise beach defences and then fight their

way inland. U sing information about German fortifications gathered by local

French Resistance movements, the Allies constructed mock German defences to be

used in training. These replicas included concrete pillboxes. One of them, at Baggy

Point, still bears the name of an American soldier scratched into the concrete: AA

Augustine. He was to die on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

In August 1942, an Allied amphibious raid had taken place on Dieppe, on the

northern coast of German-occupied France. One of the raids objectives was to

test the feasibility of capturing a port where the enemy was entrenched during theinitial stages of a future invasion of the Continent, and to learn the problems that

would face a full-scale Allied fleet. The r aid went disastrously wrong and 4,000

Canadian and British troops from a 6,000-strong force were killed, wounded or

captured. Until the Allies could secure a deep-water seaport, they had no way to

offload men, vehicles and supplies from ships off the coast, nor to supply the Allied

troops who would be advancing across France following the invasion. So when the

Normandy landings finally took place in June 1944, the Allies brought their own

two prefabricated and transportable ports codenamed Mulberry each the size

of the port of Dover. A large number of sea-going tugs were requisitioned to tow the

various parts across the English Channel.

The Mulberry project is said by many historians to be one of the greatest military

engineering achievements of all time. Referring to the Mulberry harbours at the

Nuremberg Trials in 1946, Albert Speer, Hitlers chief architect and head of the

Todt Organisation in charge of building the Atlantic Wall, said: To construct our

defences, we used some 13 million cubic metres of concrete and 1.5 million tons of

steel. A fortnight after the Normandy landings, our efforts were brought to nothing

because of an idea of simple genius.[5]

[1] FhrerDirectiveNo.16On preparation fora landingoperation againstEngland, 16July, 1940. Listand details of

FuhrerDirectives, C.PeterChen, (Founder& Editor), WorldWar IIDatabase, www.ww2db.com.

[2]AdolphHitler, speechto theReichstag (Berlin), 19July, 1940.

[3] JohnColville, Diary ofJohnColville(memberofChurchillsPrivateOffice), 24 July, 1940.Asquotedin

MartinGilbert inFinestHour:Winston S. Churchill 1939-1941(William Heinemann, 1983).

[4] FhrerDirectiveNo.40,On CommandOrganization of the Coasts, 23March, 1942.

WorldWar IIDatabase, www.ww2db.com.

[5] Albert Speergiving evidence: NurembergWarCrimes Trials Proceedings [Vol.16.], June1946asquotedonThe

AvalonProject, avalon.law.yale.edu.


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Abbots Cliff,Kent,England

Separated from France by only 21 miles of sea, Kent has often

been threatened by invasion. During WW2, new anti-invasion

defences were built, such as those at Abbots Cliff between

Dover and Folkestone. Coastal batteries were established and

earlier ones were re-armed. Cross-Channel guns, t wo of them

nicknamedWinnie and Pooh, were positioned on the cliffs at

St Margarets near Dover as a response to the danger from

German long-range guns in the Pas-de-Calais.

Abbots Cliff I,Kent,England. 2010


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Abbots Cliff II,Kent,England. 2010


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Hayling Island,Hampshire,England

During an air raid in April 1941, Sinah Common, a decoy site on

Hayling Island, attracted more than 200 German bombs and

parachute mines intended for Portsmouth.

Some sections of the Mulberry harbours used on the D-Day

beaches were built on the island.

In late 1943 and early 1944, Hayling Island-based COPP survey

teams, trained as frogmen and canoeists, were taken by X-Craft

mini-submarines and dropped off in two-man collapsible

canoes three to four kilometres off the coast of Normandy.

After paddling closer to the shore, the reconnaissance man

swam to the beach, while the second commando stayed in

the canoe conducting offshore surveillance. They recorded

every detail of possible landing sites and assault areas, and

information about the German enemy defences. A geological

assessment of the beach was also vital, including the gradient

of the underwater approaches. Core samples of the sand and

gravel were taken to find out whether heavy armed vehicles and

tanks would be able to negotiate the terrain. These commandos

returned on D-Day, when they guided the Allied ships to the

landing beaches.

Hayling Island,Hampshire,England. 2013


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Studland Bay,Dorset,England

In April 1944, after months of intensive planning and practice, a

full-scale D-Day rehearsal for the Normandy landings was held

in Studland Bay. Exercise Smash, in which live ammunition

was used, was watched from Fort Henry, a nearby reinforced

concrete observation bunker, by King George VI, Prime

Minister Winston Churchill and Supreme Commander of the

Allied Forces General Dwight D Eisenhower.

Studland Bay III,Dorset,England. 2011


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Studland Bay II,Dorset,England. 2011Studland Bay I,Dorset,England. 2011


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Portland,Dorset,England

The Verne Battery was built in 1892 in a disused stone quarry

on the Isle of Portland in Dorset as part of Britains coastal

defences. Decommissioned in 1906, it was used after WW1 for

storing field guns brought over from France, and during WW2

to house ammunition in preparation for the D-Day landings. It

also became an AA battery (anti-aircraft artillery). Thousands

of gravestones were hewn from Portland Stone for the fallen

Allied soldiers who died in both World Wars. It was also used

to build the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Portland,Dorset,England. 2011


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Torcross,Devon,England

Exercise Tiger was a large-scale rehearsal by US troops for

the D-Day landings. It took place in the area around Slapton

Sands and Torcross in 1944. Alerted by heavy open-radio

traffic between the Allies, German E -boats on a reconnaissance

mission sighted a convoy of eight landing ship tanks (LSTs)

travelling back from Lyme Bay to Slapton Sands. Torpedoes

fired by the German E-boats sunk three of the LSTs. More than

900 US soldiers and sailors died during the exercise.

Torcross,Devon,England.2011


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St Michaels Mount,Cornwall,England

At low tide, St Michaels Mount is joined to Marazion on the

south coast of Cornwall by a granite causeway. Its Benedictine

priory, dedicated to the Archangel St Michael, was turned into

a fortress by Henry VIII. He prepared defences against invasion

threatened by France and Spain.

The very first beacon warning of the arrival of the Spanish

Armada in 1588, during the reign of Elizabeth I, was lit on the

Mount, which remained a fortified island until the end of the

Napoleonic era.

In 1940, it was again garrisoned and fortified with a light

anti-aircraft battery and three pillboxes. One of them, made to

blend with its surroundings, was built of concrete blocks and

located in a cleft in the rocks.

St Michaels Mount,Cornwall,England.201 2


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Isle of Sheppey,Kent,England

The Warden Point acoustic mirror on the Isle of Sheppey

had been part of the Thames Estuary Defence early-warning

system. By the outbreak of WW2, technology and the speed of

aircraft had rendered the acoustic mirrors obsolete, as enemy

planes would be within sight by the time they were located.

The system was replaced by radar, which linked tracking

stations and plotted aircraft movements.

Isle of Sheppey,Kent,England. 2012


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Tilbury II,Thurrock,England. 2011


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Orford Ness,Suffolk,England

Orford Ness, on a gravel and shingle spit, was a secret military

site from WW1 until the end of the Cold War in the 1980s.

Early research and testing of radar by Robert Watson-Watt and

his team at Orford Ness led to the development of the network

of radar-directed air defences along the east and south coasts of

England at the outbreak of WW2.

Orford Ness,Suffolk, England.2011


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Spurn Point,Yorkshire,England

Spurn Point is a curving sand-and-shingle spit stretching

between the North Sea and the Humber. In WW1, Spurn Point

was leased and then purchased by the War Department, which

built fortifications and gun batteries protecting ports along the

River Humber from attack by German U-boats and Zeppelins.

During WW2, the defences were updated and extended with

anti-tank blocks, pillboxes and g un emplacements.

Spurn Point,Yorkshire,England. 2012


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Reighton Gap,Yorkshire,England

Reighton Gap and the surrounding area was part of the heavily

defended Yorkshire coast. Single lines of concrete blocks ran

down the beach to the seas edge to stop landing enemy vehicles

traversing the sands. Double lines of anti-tank blocks were

constructed along the top of the sands b elow gaps in the cliffs.

Three artillery guns covered Reighton Gap. Along the coast

were lines of pillboxes, at the head of the beach and at the edge

of the cliffs above.

Reighton Gap,Yorkshire,England. 2012


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Bamburgh,Northumberland,England

A tidal surge in December 2013 at Bamburgh uncovered a

pillbox in the sand dunes. It was constructed from hessian

sandbags filled with concrete and was part of a long chain of

coastal defensive sites including pillboxes, gun emplacements,

anti-tank blocks and a radar station. RAF Bamburgh was a

Chain Home Low radar station, which gave early warning of

enemy raids approaching the north of England.

Bamburgh,Northumberland,England.2013


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Borth-y-gest,Snowdonia,Wales.

Sited at Borth-y-gest on the north coast of Cardigan Bay inWales, standing above the waters of the Glaslyn, this pillbox is

constructed from concrete and camouflaged with local stone.

A mile away is the port of Porthmadog, where Dutch troops

from 10 Inter-Allied Commando were based while training in

Snowdonia in 1942.

Up in the hills are the slate mines of Blaenau Ffestiniog. The

Manod Quarry nearby was used by the Government as a secure

location for storage of the National Gallerys paintings to

protect them from the London Blitz.

Borth-y-gest,Snowdonia,Wales.2013


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Ragwen Point,Pembrokeshire,Wales

Pembrokeshire, in south-west Wales, had already been

fortified over the centuries. During WW2, pillboxes, tank-

traps (such as those at Ragwen Point) and radar sites were

built and minefields laid. Pembroke Dock became the largest

operational flying-boat station in the world. Stationed there

were Sunderlands, joined later by US Catalinas. These large

aircraft defended the Western Approaches, escorting Atlantic

convoys and attacking U-boats. In June 1944, they protected the

sea-lanes to Normandy as part of the D-Day operations.

Ragwen Point,Pembrokeshire,Wales.2011


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Brean Down,Somerset,England

Brean Down, a 19th-century Palmerston Fort 60 feet above sea

level, was part of a chain of defences protecting the approaches

to Bristol and Cardiff. Re-armed with a coastal artillery battery,

it was also used as a test site for rockets and experimental

weapons, such as torpedo decoys and the bouncing bomb

designed by Barnes Wallis.

Brean Down I,Somerset,England. 2012


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Brean Down II,Somerset,England.201 2

Brean Down III,Somerset,England. 2012


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Braunton Burrows,Devon,England

Braunton Burrows was the location of live firing ranges

and dummy pillboxes used by US troops for training. In the

Burrows are the remains of concrete replicas of landing craft.

Their fronts slope down, as did the ramps of the real craft once

they were lowered. The water in the dip at the front of the

mock-ups represented the sea into which the soldiers had to

plunge when they landed on the D -Day beaches in Normandy.

Braunton Burrows II,Devon,England. 2012


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Widemouth Bay,Cornwall,England

In 1944, the 2nd US Ranger Battalion, under the command of

Lt Col James Earl Rudder, carried out training exercises near

Widemouth Bay in north Cornwall, including climbing nearby

steep sandstone cliffs. Their D-Day mission was to launch an

attack to destroy the German battery above the sheer cliff of

Pointe du Hoc in Normandy. This battery could direct its fire on

both Utah and Omaha, the two D-Day beaches on which the

Americans were to land, so needed to be disabled. The British

would land on Gold and Sword, and the Canadians on Juno.

Widemouth Bay,Cornwall, England.2011

Scotland


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Scotlands coastal landscape, like that of England, changed during both world wars

especially during the Second World War with the construction of numerous

defences against possible German invasion.

On the west coast, anti-aircraft defences protected strategic locations such as

the Firth of Clyde, the regions industries and shipyards and the city of Glasgow.

Churchill described the Clyde Estuary (as he did the Mersey Estuary in England)

as the lungs through which we breathed [1]. Through their ports arrived urgently

needed food, weapons and war materials from the US and Canada.

The building of coastal defences was concentrated on Scotlands east coast. Before

May 1940, measures to protect this area had been minimal, although its sandy

beaches and good communications offered ideal conditions for an enemy invasion,

and as early as 1938 German aircraft had been seen photographing the coast. The

Chief Royal Engineer for the 9th Highland Division GA Mitchell, a veteran of

the First World War, was made responsible for the Scottish defences. These were

intended to slow down a beach landing in the event of a possible invasion from

Norway, which Germany had occupied since April 1940.

Mitchell organised the construction of beach defences including concrete anti-tank

blocks; pillboxes; observation towers; large, tubular-steel scaffolding poles; barbed-

wire entanglements; minefields and gun-emplacements. Long wooden poles were

erected along the coastline to prevent enemy gliders from landing behind defence

lines. Coastal gun batteries were placed at ports and airfields, which in the event of

an invasion would become major targets for the enemy.

Above the Firth of Forth, just weeks after war was declared, the first daylight air

attack over Britain took place. Twelve German Junkers JU 88 and Heinkel He 111

bombers attacked th e Royal Naval base at Rosyth, on t he north bank of the River

Forth, damaging the British cruisers HMS Southamptonand HMS Edinburghand the

destroyer HMSMohawk. Sixteen Royal Navy crew were killed and 44 wounded. RAF

Spitfires shot down two of the Junkers and a Heinkel. They were the first enemy

aircraft of the war brought down over Britain. Two of the German airmen were

buried in Portobello Cemetery overlooking the Firth of For th w ith fu ll military

honours and the chaplain wrote to their mothers.

During the First World War, small islands in the Forth including Cramond, May,

Inchcolm and Inchkeith had become part of the defences of the Firth of Forth.

Following the Luftwaffe attack on the Royal Naval base, their defence and coastal

batteries were refurbished and updated. To support the defences of Rosyth,

particularly against midget-submarines and E-boats, the Fast Attack torpedo boats

of the Kriegsmarine (the German Navy), anti-submarine magnetic indicator loops

were laid on the sea floor of har bours.

Off the northern tip of Scotland lie the Orkney Islands. Some surround Scapa

Flow, a large 120-square-mile expanse of water within the southern part of

Orkney. It has been used as a safe haven by ships, including those of the Vikings,

throughout the centuries.

With easy access to the North Sea to the east and the Atlantic to the west, Scapa

Flow became the chief anchorage of the Royal Navys Home Fleet during the First

World War and again during the Second World War. But by 1939, its First World

War defences had been neglected and become run down. Winds and tides had

shifted the blockships (old merchant ships that had been sunk to protect the eastern

approaches), and some had been dismantled and r emoved.

On 14 October 1939, two days before the German air raid on the Forth, in a daring

mission, a German U-boat (U-47) was able to penetrate Scapa Flows defences. Its

torpedoes sank the battleship HMSRoyal Oak as she lay at anchor, with the loss of

833 lives 120 of them boy sailors aged 14 to 18.

The Admiralty called for an immediate plan of action to improve and increase the

defences of Scapa. It included the reinforcement of the boom nets, backed up by

controlled minefields and indicator loops. New batteries were sited to cover allapproaches and searchlights were installed on coastal positions. To seal the eastern

entrance, the building of the Churchill barriers was started. These were a series

of causeways made with huge concrete blocks connecting the mainland to Burray

and South Ronaldsay and the two smaller islands of Glimps Holm and Lamb Holm.

The construction was continued by Italian soldiers taken prisoner in North Africa

in 1942. They left behind a legacy a beautiful small chapel they had built on Lamb

Holm by converting two Nissen huts: The Italian Chapel.

The Home Fleet, which had been lying at Rosyth, sailed back to Scapa in March

1940. Barrage balloons, forcing enemy aircraft to remain at high altitude from

where bombing was less accurate, were set up so that the anti-aircraft guns could

protect the anchorage. A network of radar stations was established, its operationscontrolled from Kirkwall, the capital of the Orkney Islands.

As a temporary base, some of the ships of the Fleet also anchored in the deep

waters of Loch Ewe, which opens onto the Atlantic Ocean via a narrow mouth.

Sheltered from the prevailing westerly winds, this north-facing loch in the north-

west Highlands was less exposed to air attack than Scapa Flow and easier to protect

from the threat of enemy submarines. Anti-submarine guard loops were laid with

controlled mines across the mouth of the loch and also anti-submarine boom nets.

Loch Ewe served as an assembly point for the Arctic convoys to Russia.

Control of Norway gave Germany direct access to the Atlantic Ocean, in addition

to naval bases for its submarines and warships and air bases for the Luftwaffe. By

controlling the port of Narvik, Germany also secured the supply line for Swedish

iron ore needed for the production of weapons.

The Shetland Islands played a vital role in the North Sea blockade. A base for

aircraft, ships and submarines, 20,000 troops were garrisoned there. Anti-

aircraft gun barrages and searchlight towers were set up all around Shetland and

new coastal batteries were sited to protect Lerwick, Scalloway and Sullom Voe.

Because of the threat to Allied merchant shipping using the high-latitude routes

across the North Atlantic, the range of coverage provided by the radar stations on

Orkney was extended by locating radar units on the Shetland Islands; two of them

on Unst, the most northerly inhabited island. Throughout the war, a strong link

developed between people in occupied Norway and the Shetland Islands, where

many Norwegians had taken refuge after the invasion of their country.

A plan to organise the transport of secret agents by sea to Norway was developed in

London between the British Secret Intelligence Service and the Military Intelligence

Service of Norways Government-in-Exile. A base for Britains Special Operations

Executive (SOE) was established in Lerwick, the capital of Shetland. From there

was conceived the clandestine operation The Shetland Bus. In the dark of winter

to avoid detection by the Germans, this saw Norwegian fishing vessels manned byvolunteer Norwegian crews make numerous journeys often in violent seas from

Shetland to Norway and back again. They took undercover agents, radio operators

and saboteurs to meet up with Norwegian Resistance fighters and also delivered

supplies and weapons. On return journeys, they sometimes brought back to safety

Norwegian refugees escaping the Gestapo.

The British fed German Intelligence with misleading information about Allied

invasion preparations, such as Operation Fortitude Nor th, which simulated a build-

up of forces in Scotland. The attack of targets in Norway by Allied commandos in

spring 1944 reinforced the Germans belief that it was the prelude to an invasion. By

then, Hitler had 13 army divisions in Norway. The Allies hoped that Fortitude North

would prevent or delay the reinforcement of German troops in France following the

planned June invasion of Nor mandy.

Scotland

[1]WinstonSChurchill, Ocean Peril, in The SecondWorldWar, Book IV:Their FinestHour (Cassel andCo, 1948-1954).


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Cramond Island,Firth of Forth,Scotland

An anti-submarine barrier, known as the dragons teeth, was

built along the causeway between the village of Cramond

and Cramond Island. Arranged in a long row, these pyramid-

shaped concrete pylons up to three metres high and spaced

at 1.5 metre intervals have vertical grooves in their sides into

which were slotted reinforced concrete panels. On top of the

blocks were fixing rings for large-diameter steel wire and anti-

submarine nets.

Cramond Island,Firth of Forth, Scotland.2012


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Newburgh, Aberdeenshire,Scotland

A one-kilometre-long anti-tank wall was built across

Newburghs sand dunes, 100 yards inland. This barrier

consisted of a mound of sand, a deep ditch and a large wall

made from steel scaffolding poles. It was designed to protect a

gun battery up in the dunes from any flanking attack by tanks

managing to get through the main defences on the beach.

Newburgh I,Aberdeenshire,Scotland. 2012


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Newburgh II,Aberdeenshire,Scotland. 2012


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Lossiemouth,Moray,Scotland

A line of defences ran along the Moray coastline between

Cullen Bay and Findhorn Bay through the Lossie and Roseisleforests. Anti-tank blocks ran the full length of this par t of the

coast, forming a barr ier with the pillboxes that were placed

between them at regular intervals. Some of the defences were

constructed by a Polish army engineer corps stationed in

Scotland. Kazimierz Durkacz, a medical student who joined

the Polish forces, wrote: At first, we used wood to make the

moulds for the large concrete blocks and then a combination of

corrugated iron and wood... I remember mixing concrete with

a shovel.[2]

Lossiemouth I,Moray,Scotland. 2011

[2]KazimierzDurkacz, quotedinForestryCommissionScotland,WWIICoastal Defences.www.forestr y.gov.uk.


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Lossiemouth II,Moray,Scotland. 2011

Fi dh M S tl d


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Findhorn,Moray,Scotland

Some of the amphibious Valentine tanks used by Allied troops

while training for the D-Day landings sank in the Moray Firth.

In 1943, British Army officer Captain Marks a nd four Norwegian

sailors working at a nearby shipyard drowned in Findhorn Bay.

The seamen were part of the clandestine Norwegian Resistance

group the Shetland Bus. Using volunteer Norwegian crews,

it ferried undercover agents and equipment from the Shetland

Islands into Nazi-occupied Norway, maintaining contact with

Resistance groups.

19 May 1943

In office at 9. Quite busy with letters until 10.30 when Lt Hauge

Norwegian from Burghead, came to collect urn.

Took me to the church at B. for the memorial service of Captain Marks,

who drowned with several Norwegians in Findhorn Bay on Easter

Saturday Hauge read his part of the service in Norwegian which

was most impressive we then marched down the high street at B. with

a Sqd of Norwegian sailors carrying the urn down to the harbour &

pier, where a few of us boarded a fishing tug & put out to sea.

When we stopped for the scattering of the ashes, a great swell nearly rolled

us over & I had great difficulty in reading the prayer! However, all went off

according to schedule the Norwegian sailor with Mrs Marks remarking

It is very very strange not according to the rules apparently. My first

burial at sea or rather my first service for the scattering of the ashes.

From the diary of Rev A T Goodrich,

Chaplain at RAF Kinloss,1943-1944:

Findhorn,Moray,Scotland.20 11


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Loch Ewe,North West Highlands,Scotland

The Arctic convoys to Russia, called by Churchill the worst

journey in the world assembled in Loch Ewe before sailing to

the ports of Archangel and Murmansk in the northern Soviet

Union. These merchant ships, escorted by Allied warships,

carried vital supplies and ammunition to Russia, fighting the

German army on the Eastern Front in what the Russians called

the Great Patriotic War. More than 3,000 seamen in these

convoys lost their lives in the icy waters, fog and raging storms

of the Arctic, their ships attacked by German submarines and

aircraft from bases in occupied Norway.

Loch Ewe,North West Highlands,Scotland. 2012


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Lyness,Hoy,Orkney,Scotland

Hoy is one of the islands encircling Scapa Flow, which was

the Royal Navys chief anchorage during both world wars.

On the hillside above Lyness stands the Wee Fea NavalCommunications and Operational Centre. From 1943, this

was the main base for, and controlled, naval operations in

Scapa. It enabled direct communication to all defence sectors

and then to the outside world.

Lyness Naval Base was the site of the operation to salvage the

German Fleet scuttled in 1919 during its internment at Scapa

Flow at the end of WW1. It took eight years to raise 45 of the

52 scuttled ships.

Lyness,Hoy,Orkney, Scotland.2013


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Golta Peninsula,Flotta,Orkney,Scotland

The small island of Flotta, the flat island in Old Norse, was the

gateway to Scapa Flow. The multiple launcher site of Z battery

was installed on Golta Peninsula on Flotta to protect military

targets against low-flying German aircraft. It comprised 64

rocket launchers and over 100 shelters, forming a grid. They

were used to protect the gun crews and to store the ammunition.

Golta Peninsula,Flotta,Orkney,Scotland. 2013


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Stanger Head,Flotta,Orkney,Scotland

To protect Hoxa Sound, the main entrance channel to Scapa

Flow, new coastal defences were established during WW2. They

included gun and rocket batteries, boom nets, searchlights, also

anti-aircraft and barrage balloon sites. The Navys signaling and

observation station on Stanger Head was also enlarged.

Stanger Head,Flotta, Orkney,Scotland.2013


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Calf Sound,Flotta,Orkney,Scotland

Anti-submarine boom nets strung from shore to shore

protected the main entrances to Scapa Flow. At the end of

WW2, boom netting and cables were dumped in Calf Sound.

Calf Sound,Flotta,Orkney, Scotland.2013


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Lerwick,Shetland,Scotland

In May and June 1940, Lerwick, the capital of the ShetlandIslands, saw the arrival of refugees from Norway, fleeing their

country after it was invaded by Germany. In 1941, it became the

official base of the SOE where the Shetland Bus operation was

conceived. It was also the base for No 14 (Arctic) Commando,

formed to raid German bases on the Norwegian coast. To

defend Lerwick, new coastal batteries were built. As part of

the harbour defences, three torpedo tubes were mounted on a

concrete platform built on the rocks at the headland of the Knab.

Lerwick,Shetland,Scotland.201 3


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Mavis Grind,Northmavine,Shetland,Scotland

Northmavine is joined to the Shetland island of Mainland by

Mavis Grind, which means the gateway of the narrow isthmus.

At its narrowest point, 33 metres wide, it separates the Atlantic

Ocean to the west from the North Sea to the east. It is believed

that the Vikings dragged their longships across Mavis Grind to

avoid having to sail around the rocky shores of Northmavine.

Nearby, Sullom Voe became a flying-boat base.

Mavis Grind,Northmavine,Shetland, Scotland.2013


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Lamba Ness,Unst,Shetland,Scotland

Because of their proximity to occupied Norway, where the

Germans had established U-boat and Luftwaffe bases from

which they threatened Allied shipping in the North Atlantic,

it became urgent for Britain to extend the range of the radar

covering Orkney and Shetland. A Chain Home Low rada r

station (RAF Skaw) was set up at Lamba Ness in Unst, the most

northerly island of Shetland. It could detect enemy aircraft

flying at a minimum altitude of 500 feet.

Lamba Ness,Unst,Shetland, Scotland.2013


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Constant photo-reconnaissance by air-crews flying unarmed Spitfires, brough t back

to Britain film that was developed and then interpreted to ascertain the location of

bunkers, the anti-tank obstacles, telephone and telegraph wiring between batteries;

and also the location of V1 and V2 launching sites.

Following the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944, the breakout from Normandy and the

liberation of France and Belgium, the Allies needed ports to land supplies for their

advancing armies. They had only Cherbourg and the remaining Mulberry harbour

at Arromanches. French and Belgian Channel ports were still held by German forces.

Having expected an invasion in France in the spring of 1944, Hitler had ordered that

some of the ports should be declared fortresses to be held at all cost, and to the last

man [4], blocking access to them and the ir installations.

The clearing of the Channel coast and the capture of its ports, from Normandy to

the Scheldt estuary in the Netherlands, were assigned to the First Canadian Army.

Le Havre, designed as a fortress, required a full-scale assault as did Boulogne

and Calais.

Antwerp on the River Scheldt, which flows from Northern France through Belgium

and the Netherlands to the North Sea, was one of the largest deep-sea ports in

Europe. Although Antwerp had fallen to the Allies in September 1944, its port could

not be used while German forces still held the Dutch island of Walcheren in the

Scheldt estuary. As a fortress, it had formidable defences and was also protected

by two lines of fortifications. One faced seaward, the oth er inland to defend the

coastline bunkers from flanking manoeuvres and attack from the rear. The Scheldt

estuary and Walcheren were liberated after fierce battles.

The Allies finally breached the Atlantic Wall in June 1944 with the D-Day landings

the first step to the liberation of Europe. In less than a year the Third Reich would

cease to exist. The unconditional surrender by Nazi Germanys armed forces on

8 May 1945 marked the e nd of the Second World War in Europe.

[1]FhrerDirectiveNo.40,On CommandOrganization of the Coasts, 23March, 1942.WorldWar IIDatabase, www.ww2db.com.

[2] FhrerDirectiveNo.51,On preparations fora two-frontwar, 3November, 1943.

WorldWarIIDatabase, www.ww2db.com.

[3]AdolphHitlerat a meetingwithViceAdmiral Kurt Frickeofthe Kriegsmarine, 22January, 1942, quotedin

ClayBlair, Hitlers U-BoatWar:The Hunters 1939-1942 (ModernLibra ry, New York, 1998).

[4] HitlersOrderNo.11,To Commandants of FortifiedAreas andBattle Commandants, 8 March, 1944. Hitler sWar

Directives 1939-1945, HughTrevor-Roper, (Sidgwick& Jackson, 1964).


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Haugesund,Rogaland,Norway

Haugesund, on the west coast of Norway, was defended by the

naval battery (Marine Kste Batterie) Bismarck. It comprised

four 15cm guns, which could each fire a one tonne shell per

minute up to a distance of 1 7 kilometres. The Kriegsmarine

(German navy) and Luftwaffe used their bases in Norway toattack the Allied Arctic convoys bound for Russia.

In 1943, Allied commandos from No 14 (Arctic) Commando

took part in a raid Operation Checkmate on German

shipping near Haugesund. They used canoes and kayaks and

attached limpet mines to the hulls of the ships. During that

raid, a German minesweeper was sunk. While waiting to be

picked up by a Royal Navy motor torpedo boat (MTB), the

commandos were captured, taken to concentration camps in

Germany and executed.

Haugesund I,Rogaland,Norway.2014


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Haugesund II,Rogaland, Norway.2014

Haugesund III,Rogaland,Norway.2014


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Haugesund IV,Rogaland,Norway.2014


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Kristiansan d,Vest-Agder, Norway

A coastal artillery fortress, named Batterie Vara when built

by the Germans in 1941, was located in the cliffs of the Mvik

peninsula near Kristiansand. It occupied a commanding

position overlooking the Skagerrak the stretch of sea between

Norway and Denmark. Together with an identical battery on the

Danish side in Hanstholm, Vara prevented the Allies from using

the shipping lanes of the strait.

Three 38 centimetre Bismarck guns, some of the worlds largest

guns, were installed in land-turrets. These were the same type

of guns used both on the battleshipBismarck(sunk by the Royal

Navy in May 1941), and on the Tirpitz. A casemate with walls 3.8

metres thick and a roof 4.5 metres thick was built for a fourth

gun. But its barrel, which was over 19 metres long and weighed

110 tonnes, was lost when the ship Porto Alegraon which it was

being transported from Germany was sunk in the Kattegat by a

British air attack in February 1945.

The Vara fire control main bunker was built on the island of

Flekkery to the south of the battery.

Mvik I,Vest-Agder,Norway.2014


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Mvik II,Vest-Agder,Norway.2014

Flekkerya,Vest-Agder,Norway.2014


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Lkken,Nordjylland,Denmark

In April 1940, in what was the worlds first airborne invasion,

hundreds of German paratroopers landed in Denmark and

seized the Aalborg airfield in North Jutland. The Germans usedit as a refuelling base and to transport troops for their campaign

in Norway. In Lkken, 50 kilometres away, they built large gun

batteries in fortified casemates.

About 8,000 concrete defence structures, including 2,000

Regelbau bunkers, were constructed along the Jutland coast.

Lkken,Nordjylland,Denmark.2014


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Vigs II,Nordjylland,Denmark. 2014


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Hanstholm,Nordjylland,Denmark.2014

Hanstholm,Nordjylland,Denmark

Soon after the German invasion of Denmark and Norway,

Hanstholm, which commands the entrance to the Skagerrak,

became the most heavily fortified position in Denmark.The battery covered more than nine square kilometres with

more than 450 bunkers. Together with an identical battery in

Kristiansand on the south coast of Norway, it defended the

channel between Denmark and Norway and sealed off the Baltic

to Allied ships.


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Vorupr,Nordjylland,Denmark

Vorupr, on Jutlands west coast, was the site of a

Wassermann-S radar receiver. Mounted on a 42-metre-high

tower, it could rotate through 360 degrees and track aircraftas far as 190 kilometres away. On the night of 30 August 1944,

tracked by a smaller Wassermann, a Lancaster was hit by a

German night fighter. The Lancaster caught fire and crashed.

All the crew were killed. They were buried by German soldiers

with the inscription: Here rest seven unknown English and

American airmen [5], and a white cross on the grave. They are

now buried in Vorupr cemetery.

Vorupr I,Nordjylland,Denmark. 2014

[5] Memorial stoneat theCommonwealthWarGravescemetery, Nrre Vorupr,

Denmark.AlsoquotedonAirmenDK, www.airmen.dk.


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Vorupr II,Nordjylland,Denmark. 2014


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Houvig,Midtjylland,Denmark

The Houvig stronghold, on the west coast of Jutland, had 50

bunkers and another 50 concrete defence structures. Around

the fortifications were large minefields and barbed wire

entanglements.

In 2008, 63 years after the end of the war, an intact bunker

(including the personal effects of its crew), which had been

entombed under the sands in Kr yle, was uncovered following

violent storms. One of the former German soldiers who had

been stationed there, Gerhard Saalfeld, had come back to

Denmark many times after the end of the war looking for his

bunker. When it was discovered, inside he found a shoe brush

with his name engraved on it. He had been 17 years old when he

had left it.

Houvig,Midtjylland,Denmark. 2014


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Bredene,Ostend,Belgium

Bredene lies north of Ostend, in Flanders. In 1941, the Germans

constructed a railway gun battery (EisenbatterieE 690) linked by

rail to Ostends station. The battery had four 28cm guns placed on

a turntable that could turn 360 degrees. It also had a command

post for arming the coastal battery, a fire bunker in front of the

guns and behind them bunkers for munitions and the crews.

Facing the Allied advance in September 1944, the battery was

dismantled and the guns moved to Dordrecht in Holland.

Bredene II,Ostend,Belgium. 2012


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Bredene I,Ostend,Belgium. 2012


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Dunkirk,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France

Known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, Operation Dynamo lasted

from 26 May to 3 June 1940. While the RAF patrolled the sea-

lanes, civilian boats (the little ships) and Royal Navy ships

crossed the Channel and rescued 338,226 Allied soldiers from

the Dunkirk beaches. Fighter planes engaged in dogfights and

many of the air battles took place further inland so were not

seen by the troops as the RAF tried to break up the Luftwaffe

formations to prevent them reaching the beaches.

Dunkirk,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France.2012


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Wissant,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France

Wissant means white sand in Dutch (wit-zand). From the 7th to

the 14th century, it was considered to be part of Flanders and the

local language was called Old Dutch. During the Middle Ages,

it was a major port of embarkation for England until, towards

the end of the 12th century, it became silted up by the shifting

sands. Some historians believe that it was from Wissant that, in

55 BC, Julius Caesar sailed for his invasion of B ritain.

During WW2, the Germans believed the Allies would regard

Wissant, the closest point on mainland Europe to the English

coast, as an ideal beach for an invasion. Situated between

Cap Gris Nez and Cap Blanc Nez, it was heavily fortified with

enormous bunkers, blockhouses, minefields, an anti-tank wall

and long-range guns that could reach the English coast. In 2013,

these German defences were removed by the local authorities.

Wissant IV,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France. 2012


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Wissant I,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France.2012 Wissant II,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France.2012


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Wissant III,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France.2012


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Wimereux,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France

During WW1, Wimereux and Boulogne were part of animportant hospital centre. John McCrae was one of the doctors

there. He had come to France with the Canadian Expeditionary

Force. After the death of a friend at the Second Battle of Ypres,

he wrote the poem In Flanders Fields. McCrae died in 1918 and was

buried in the cemetery of Wimereux.

Wimereux,Nord-Pas-De-Calais,France.2012


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Berck,Pas-De-Calais,France

One of the Allies objectives before launching their invasion

of occupied Europe (Operation Overlord) was to destroy

Germanys secret V1 and V2 sites in Operation Crossbow.

Aerial photographs brought back by reconnaissance crewsflying unarmed Spitfires were analysed at RAF Medmenham in

Buckingamshire. Using stereoscopes, photographic interpreters

could see the landscape in 3D. In addition to those in North

Germany, many of the V1 and V2 sites, with their launch

platforms, were positioned in the Pas-de-Calais away from

the coast. Strongly fortified by the Germans with a four-gun

position, Berck-sur-Mer and its airfield were heavily bombed by

the Allies in 1944.

Berck I,Pas-De-Calais,France. 2012


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Berck II,Pas-De-Calais,France. 2012

Mesnil-Val-Plage,Seine Maritime,

Haute Normandie,France


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Mesnil-Val-Plage is near the seaport of Le Trport, on the

Channel coast, between the estuaries of the River Seine and the

River Somme, about 30 kilometres east of Dieppe. Its cliffs, the

highest chalk cliffs in Europe, are over 100 metres high.

During WW1, the Trianon a Belle Epoque hotel on top of the

cliffs above Le Trport was turned into a hospital for British

soldiers wounded in the Battle of the Somme. In WW2, the

building was destroyed by the Germans, who established a radar

detection station there.

In August 1942, soon after the Allied raid on Dieppe (Operation

Jubilee), the Germans established a command post they called

the Kahlburg(bare fort), dug out of the chalk cliffs, to protect

that area. A maze of galleries, reinforced by brick masonry, it

was built on four levels and reached by 225 steps, giving access

to technical rooms, barracks, three observation posts and two

combat posts. It also housed a 75mm heavy artillery battery.

Mesnil-Val-Plage,Seine Maritime,Haute Normandie,France. 2012

Sainte-Margue rite-sur-Mer,

Upper Normandy,France

On 19 August 1942, on the beach of Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer,

f N C d d th d f L d


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a group from No 4 Commando under the command of Lord

Lovat, landed with a mission to assault and destroy the German

Hessbattery above Varengeville, which could fire on the beach

of Dieppe. They were successful, but the Dieppe raid ended in

disaster for the Canadian and British troops.

After the raid, the German coastal defences were strengthened.

The monolith on the shingle beach was part of a blockhouse

that originally stood on the cliff.

Nearly two years later, when landing on Sword Beach in June

1944 during Operation Overlord, Lovat instructed his personal

piper Bill Millin to pipe the commandos ashore. This was

against War Office regulations (many pipers had been killed

during WW1). As Millin cited the regulations, Lovat replied: Ah,

but thats the English War Office. You and I are both Scots and

that does not apply.[6]Millin struck up Highland Laddie, then

Road to the Isles. The Germans did not fire at him.

Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer,Upper Normandy,France.2012

[6] AsrecalledlaterbyBill Millin.www.thewashingtonpost.com,In the news,

T.ReesShapiro (21 August, 2010).

At dawn on 6 June 1944, while the German beach defences

in Normandy were being pounded by heavy naval and aerial

bombardment, the Allied forces breached the Atlantic Wall.

The night before, 21,000 paratroopers one British and

two American Airborne Divisions had been dropped into

Normandy, securing the flanks of the D -Day assault zones.

Their task was to destroy German gun batteries and capture

vital bridges. Operation Overlord had begun.

Around 156 000 invadingtroops landed on the beaches

enemy guns. They scaled the steep face with ropes fixed in

place by rocket-fired grappling hooks, and ladders borrowed

from the London Fire Brigade. However, some of the ropes

were waterlogged so did not extend to the top of the cliff.

The Rangers, forced to free climb the last 15 feet, had to use

their trench knives as holds on the slippery clay surface.

They got to the top, only to find that the casemates were

empty; the guns had recently b een moved. Following heavy

tracks along a dirt road, they discovered the cannon one

The next day, they made contact with the British who had

landed on Sword, together with British commando units

under the command of Lord Lovat. Attached to No 4 British

Commando were 177 French commandos the French green

berets headed by Philippe Kieffer (his commando training

had been carried out at Achnacarry in Scotland). They were

the first to disembark, the troops of No 4 Commando letting

them lead the way to the French shore.

The commandos went on to capture a strongpoint and

Normandy,France


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Around 156,000 invading troops landed on the beaches,

supported by nearly 12,000 aircraft, and a vast number of

naval forces: 6,939 vessels including combat ships, landing

craft and merchant vessels. The majority of troops were

from the United States, Britain and Canada, with others

from Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece,

the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland.

The Allied landings took place at five separate beaches on a

50-mile stretch of the coast of Normandy. Each was given a

code name. In the west, the Americans would land on Utah

and Omaha; in the middle, the British on Gold and the

Canadians on Juno; and in the e ast, the British on Sword.

Utah was the first beach secured by the Allies. They

encountered little resistance and their casualties were the

lightest of any of the invading troops. They were to join

men of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions who had

parachuted in and helped to secure Sainte-Mre-Eglise, the

first town in France to be liberated.

On the extreme western edge of Omaha, jutting into the

sea, is Pointe du Hoc. This 100-foot-high cliff had been

heavily fortified by the Germans with six 155mm cannon in

strong reinforced concrete casemates, which could fire on

the troops landing on both Utah and Omaha. Lt Col James

Earl Rudder and his 2nd Ranger Battalion were assigned to

assault it one hour before the landings and to take out the

kilometre further inland, but from where they were still

able to target the Allied ships and American troops on the

beaches. Using thermite grenades, the Rangers destroyed

the guns. After accomplishing their mission, they remained

under siege for two days during which they held off five

German counterattacks. By the time they were relieved by

the 5th Rangers Battalion, 135 of them had been killed.

Omaha was a narrow, enclosed, six-mile stretch of beach

dominated by steep bluffs fortified by Rommel with massive

defensive structures. On D-Day, Bloody Omaha[7], as the

New York Times reporter Hanson Baldwin called it, suffered

more than 3,000 American casualties.

On Gold, also strongly defended, casualties were heavy

but the British established a beachhead, linking with the

Canadians who had landed on Juno. They captured the

harbour of Arromanches where they were to build one of

the Mulberry harbours, Port Winston. It was in use for ten

months, landing 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and 4

million tonnes of supplies. The British were able to advance

almost to the outskirts of Bayeux, which they captured the

next day.

The Canadians encountered strong German resistance on

Juno and suffered very high numbers of casualties, but they

were off the beach within a few hours and pressed inland.

The commandos went on to capture a strongpoint and

gun battery in Ouistreham, later meeting the British

paratroopers at the Bnouville Bridge over the Caen Canal.

John Howards commandos had secured it after a brief

assault the night before, having landed in gliders. It was

re-named Pegasus Bridge, after the flying horse shoulder

emblem worn by the British airborne forces. One of the

objectives of the troops landing on Sword beach had been

to seize Caen, but it took a lmost seven weeks to liberate this

key city, and by 21 July it had b een almost totally destroyed.

D-Day Allied casualties are estimated to have numbered

more than 10,000 men killed, wounded, missing in action

and prisoners of war including nearly 4,500 dead. German

casualties are not known, but they are estimated to have

been between 4,000 and 9,000 men.

The Battle for Normandy raged for 11 weeks after D-Day,

ending with the Battle of the Falaise Pocket in August

1944 when 10,000 German troops were killed and 50,000

were taken prisoner. Eisenhower described it as one

of the greatest killing fields of any of the war areas

encountering scenes that could be described only by

Dante[8]. Allied and German troops suffered over 425,000

casualties during the Battle for Normandy, while 20,000

French civilians were killed. Many villages and towns were

destroyed in the fighting and by bombing raids.

Courseulles-sur-Mer,Normandy,France. 2014

[7] HansonW.Baldwin, Beginnings in France, New York Times, 14 June, 1944. [8] General Dwight D.Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, (Doubleday, 1948).


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Arromanche-les-Bains I,Normandy,France. 2014


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Arromanche-les-Bains II,Normandy,France. 2014

Promoted to Midshipman, Basil John Valentine Spain took command of

LBK1 [Landing Barge, Kitchen], a Thames lighter, which he picked up at

Rochester and navigated round to the Isle of Wight shortly before D-Day.

The unseasonably bad weather conditions delayed D-Day by 24 hours, but

then Midshipman Spain set off on the 6 June 1944 along with thousands

of other craft at dawn.


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The crossing took around 24 hours and the seas had still not calmed and

every man aboard was sea sick, including Basil himself. Once off the

Normandy coast, it was his job to secure the boat for a few days until bad

weather forced them into Arromanches harbour, a temporary pontoon.

LBK1s role was to cater for the servicemen engaged in the operation onGold Beach. A minor landing craft would go out to the larger supply

ships, collect whatever food was available and make meals for their fellow

servicemen. Basils war effort was publicised in the national and local

press, under the headline Mickys Fish and Chip Bar, a common name in

those days for fish and chip shops.

The mackerel were certainly plentiful in the waters around the LBK1 as

they fed off the blood and bodies of the many men who had lost their lives

in the water.

It was while involved in this operation, that Basil was mentioned in

dispatches.

Midshipman Basil John Valentine Spain

Arromanche-les-Bains III,Normandy,France. 2014


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Colleville-sur-Mer I,Normandy,France. 2014


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Colleville-sur-Mer II,Normandy,France. 2014

...the movies could never explain the colour of the water, bright red and all

the boys floating...

US Sergeant Bernard Kaufman (on General Eisenhowers staff)

with troops at Omaha Beach landing for Stars and Stripes.


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Pointe du Hoc I,Normandy,France. 2014

Pointe du Hoc II,Normandy,France. 2014


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La Madeleine,Normandy,France. 2014


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The Channel Islands,UK

Thirty thousand German troops were garr isoned in the Channel

Islands, which had been invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany

in 1940. Although of no strategic importance to Germanyexcept for propaganda value, and believing that the Br itish

might try to recapture them, Hitler gave orders that the Channel

Islands be turned into impregnable fortresses [9]. Due to their

heavy defences (including the defences at St Ouens Bay, Jersey,

and a fort at Les Grandes Rocques), the Allied forces by-passed

them during the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

St Ouens Bay,Jersey,UK. 2013[9] FhrerDirective, Fortifications andDefence of the EnglishChannel Islands ,

20October, 1941.Michael Ginns, M.B.E., Livingwiththe enemy,

www.livingwiththeenemy.com.


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Les Grandes Rocques,Guernsey,UK. 2012


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Pointe de Pen-Hir,Brittany,France

Gun emplacements were built at Pointe de Pen-Hir to guard the

entrance to Brest harbour, which was used as a U-boat base. The

submarines began operating from Brest in August 1940, after

being transferred from their bases in Kiel and Danzig on the

Baltic. Using wolf-pack tactics, they inflicted heavy losses on

the Allied convoys.

Pointe de Pen-Hir,Brittany,France. 2014

Lorient,Brittany,France

The Brittany harbours of Brest Lorient and Saint Nazaire


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The Brittany harbours of Brest, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire

became bases for the German submarines that attacked the

convoys bringing military equipment and food supplies from

the United States to Britain.

In Lorient, the largest of these U-boat bases, the Germans built

three gigantic reinforced concrete structures on the Keroman

peninsula. The third of these, K3, was 138 metres long, 170

metres wide and 20 metres high. It was protected by a double

roof 7.4 metres thick that the Allies were unable to destroy,

despite very heavy bombing. Floating armoured doors sealed

the pens, from which the U-boats had direct access to the deep

waters of the estuary.

Lorient,Brittany,France. 2014

Ile de R,Charente-Maritime,France

During WW2, to protect the port of La Pallice, six kilometres

from La Rochelle, the Germans fortified nearby Ile de R

with gun batteries. La Pallice was used by the Germans as a

U-boat base. From here, they operated in wolf-packs, attacking

the Allied Atlantic convoys that brought vital supplies from

America. Two twin gun turrets part of four originally built for


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the German heavy cruiser Seydlitz, which was never completed

were sent there to reinforce the Atlantic Wall defences at the

Karola and Kora batteries. The range finder was located on a

concrete tower, 25 metres high.

In 1944, La Rochelle bec

marc wilson book lr.pdf

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