Themes

Article Highlights

• Introduction

• Planning

• Previous Allied advances

• Hampshire's involvement

• Southwick House

• Delays and final embarkment

Delays and final embarkment

The D-Day landings were to commence on 5 of June 1944, but were delayed as W. H. Evans explains in his memoir:

‘We should have sailed on the night of the 4th of June but it was delayed until the night of the 5th June instead, bad weather had caused the delay.’

On 6 June 1994 D-Day had arrived, the weather was considered good enough to launch Operation Neptune: the assault stage of Operation Overlord. Captain Michael Hutton recalls D-Day aboard HMS Warspite:

‘I remember countless major and minor vessels being sighted at last light together, with hundreds of small landing craft pitching in what were still very rough seas. …On D-Day I was given a small bundle of leaflets to give the members of the ship’s company near me on the upper deck. A message of good wishes from General Eisenhower to all soldiers, sailors and airmen for the crusade on which they were about to embark. Devotion to duty and courage etc, etc, all good stuff which went down well.’

In the run up to D-Day Captain Ralph Williamson Jones worked for the Drafting/Manning Office in Southsea, Portsmouth. He wrote down his memories of Portsmouth on D-Day:

'At noon I walked to Commercial Chambers, near the United Services Recreation Grounds and climbed up to the roof where I could get an excellent view of the Solent. A few days before it had been full of naval shipping – now it was empty.’