A Bloody Dawn. Dan Harvey
A BLOODY
DAWN
Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey, now retired, served on operations at home and abroad for forty years, including tours of duty in the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans and South Caucasus, with the UN, EU, NATO PfP and OSCE. He is the author of Soldiering against Subversion: The Irish Defence Forces and Internal Security During the Troubles, 1969–1998 (2018); Into Action: Irish Peacekeepers Under Fire, 1960–2014 (2017); A Bloody Day: The Irish at Waterloo and A Bloody Night: The Irish at Rorke’s Drift (both reissued 2017); and Soldiers of the Short Grass: A History of the Curragh Camp (2016).
IN THIS SERIES
A Bloody Day: The Irish at Waterloo (2017)
A Bloody Night: The Irish at Rorke’s Drift (2017)
A Bloody Week: The Irish at Arnhem (2019)
A BLOODY
DAWN
THE IRISH AT D-DAY
DAN HARVEY
First published in 2019 by
Merrion Press
An imprint of Irish Academic Press
10 George’s Street
Newbridge
Co. Kildare
Ireland
© Dan Harvey, 2019
9781785372414 (Paper)
9781785372421 (Kindle)
9781785372438 (Epub)
9781785372445 (PDF)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
An entry can be found on request
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved alone, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Typeset in Bembo MT Std 11/15 pt
Cover front: American craft and personnel arrive at Omaha Beach, Irish amongst them, 6 June 1944. (World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo) Cover back: RAF Dakota, 6 June 1944. (Gary Eason/Flight Artworks/Alamy Stock Photo)
CONTENTS
1.Festung Europa (Fortress Europe)
7.Angriff! Angriff! (Raid! Raid!)
9.Defending Democracy on Gold Beach
Appendix 1: Second World War Operations
Appendix 2: Ireland’s British Army Generals in the Second World War
Appendix 3: A Chronology of the Second World War
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
When I was a boy growing up in Cork city throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Second World War had not really been over for that long. When the neighbouring families required a babysitter I sometimes substituted for my older sister, and one evening in a nearby house, on just such an occasion, I found myself receiving a rather rushed ‘babysitter briefing’ from the mother concerned. In the background, a decidedly distracted and flustered husband was rummaging around in the drawers of a sideboard, seeking something critical for the evening ahead. While he was conducting his urgent search, he left one of the drawers sufficiently ajar that I could plainly see the outline of what was unmistakably a Hitler Youth knife, etched with the motto ‘Blut und Ehre’ (Blood and Honour). It was an item instantly recognisable to a young teenage boy of the time, for the Nazis were still the villains in comics like The Victor and at the pictures, and that was what all young boys knew.
The much sought-after item found, the couple hurriedly departed, uncharacteristically leaving the sideboard drawers unlocked. Intrigued, excited, and fascinated all at once, I wondered how the knife came to be there. Had its current owner taken it as a war trophy during military service in the British Army, and was there a story