They came ashore into a beach that had not been cleared, and they were still fighting three days later.

In our last episode we followed 1st Special Service Brigade as a whole, from the Normandy beaches to the bridges over the Caen Canal and the River Orne. Now we go back and follow the Commandos one unit at a time.

First, No. 4 Commando. We land with them on Sword Beach alongside Capitaine de corvette Philippe Kieffer's French troops, setting foot on their own soil for the first time in four years. We fight through the fortifications of Ouistreham — the anti-tank wall, the Casino strongpoint, the battery at the mouth of the Orne — and march more than fourteen kilometres under sniper and mortar fire to cross the bridges last of all the Brigade, as night falls on June 6th.

Then we turn back to the morning of June 7th and to No. 3 Commando. Held on D-Day guarding a divisional headquarters while the battle moved on without them, they are sent against the Merville guns — silenced by the 9th Parachute Battalion a day earlier, and speaking again. What follows costs them half of two troops and their second-in-command.

Both threads end on the same ground: the high ground east of the Orne, around Amfreville, Le Plein, and Hauger, where on June 8th the Germans throw fresh divisions against the Brigade to drive it off the ridge and roll up the flank of the invasion.

This is the story of how the Commandos held.

Sources include Charles Messenger's Commandos: The Definitive History, Tim Saunders's Commandos and Rangers: D-Day Operations, James Ladd's Commandos and Rangers of World War Two, Donald Gilchrist's The Commandos: D-Day and After, and Jeff Steel's From Dunkirk to D-Day: A Commando's War.

For maps, photographs, original documents, and the full source base behind this series, visit worldwar2-sof.com

#DDay #WW2 #WWII #Commandos #Normandy #SecondWorldWar #MilitaryHistory #History #HistoryPodcast #WW2History #BritishCommandos #Lovat #SwordBeach #Ouistreham #MervilleBattery #SpecialForces #WW2Podcast #Airborne #OperationOverlord #FreeFrench #Kieffer #1944 #MilitaryHistoryPodcast #WarHistory #DDay80

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