Not to take anything away from the military talents of General Montgomery— still, the surrender he accepted was one among several.

As the German army lost ground, there were numerous acts by which various arrmies and groups surrendered. General Montgomery accepted the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath–which concerned (from Wikipédia), …”the German forces in the Netherlands, in north west Germany including all islands, and in Denmark and all naval ships in those areas. The surrender preceded the end of World War II in Europe and was signed in a carpeted tent at Montgomery’s headquarters on the Timeloberg hill at Wendisch Evern.”

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_surrender_at_L%C3%BCneburg_Heath)

The full general surrender by the German Army’s supreme command was made formal at Reims, France, on the 8th of May, 1945. British Air Chief Marshall Tedder was the British representative present.

C. de Gaulle left London near the very end of May, 1943 and spent the next twelve months in North Africa, mainly in Algiers, leaving there on June 3rd, 1944 with other members of the just-established (declared that day) Provisional Government of the French Republic and returning to London on June 4th–so when he met Churchill (with Anthony Eden, then British Foreign Secretary) and later, Gen. Eisenhower, he’d only just returned from a year-long absence and the planned embarkment of the 4th had already been cancelled.

The British had flooded them to keep them in place off shore. The plan was to pump the water out and tow them across the channel and drop them in place to form an artificial harbor. The American commander took one look at their pumps and said they wouldn’t work. The British were steadfast in their assessment that their pumps would work. They said they were more than adequate. A test was scheduled.

A pump was set up and various engineers were there to witness the pump’s success. The pump was engaged and nothing happened. They tried increasing the pump’s RPMs to its maximum. Still nothing. Various different strategies were tried but at the end of the day nothing had worked. The pumps were totally useless. The problem turned out to be cavitation. Tiny bubbles forming on the blades of the pump.

The British were so sure their pumps would work they didn’t even test them. A search for new pumps was quickly put in place. I don’t recall how long it took them to replace the pumps but it was long enough to totally screw up the schedule for putting the Mulberry units in place had they waited to discover their pumps were useless.

There were other aspects of the D-Day invasion the commander covered in his book. Mostly the various strategies that were used to overcome the defenses the Germans had in place. The tragedy is that none of them worked or had little effect. The men that went ashore went in alone with nothing but their own weapons against undamaged defenses. All the big guns, all the 8th Air Force bombs landed far inland. They didn’t want to make shell holes on the beach. They were afraid the men would drown in them. They were also concerned about hitting the gathering landing craft. Everyone erred on the safe side and missed the gun emplacements on the shore.

One other thing he mentioned that I never read or heard about anywhere else. He said we had spotter planes. Little two seat single engined Cessna types. They had the invasion black and white markings like all the other planes. All the anti aircraft gunners were warned about them. The aircraft were to be used to spot enemy shore-based gun emplacements. The ones that were missed by all the bombs. It seems some gunner got trigger happy and shot at one of the spotters. Once that happened all the other gunners somehow got the message that the spotter planes were the enemy and they were all shot down in a matter of minutes.

The film the Goofs refers to is not ‘ ‘The Longest Day’ , but “Ike: Countdown to D-Day” with Tom Selleck as General Eisenhower.

Sorry for the error!

RE:

“One of the most interesting movies if you are at all into modern history or military stuff isThe Longest Day, which was based on the book The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day.”

Over at Internet Movie Database, there is this, under the “Goofs” header:

Factual errors

Charles de Gaulle is shown refusing to put French troops under Dwight D. Eisenhower’s command, but in fact he had done so, and French naval and ground forces, including an armored division, participated in D-Day. Also, when Eisenhower briefs de Gaulle on 4 June 1944, de Gaulle is shown objecting to different parts of the battle plan. In fact he had no such objections, and complimented the “Anglo-Saxons” on their attention to detail.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401504/goofs?item=gf0936781

And there’s more. Just yesterday, in a post by Conrad Black at Huffington Post (please don’t give that junk-site another “page-view”, they don’t deserve it!) about D-Day, Black repeats the canard and presents de Gaulle as a selfish, petulant little twit, who, again, is alleged to have withheld French forces from Eisenhower’s invasion force.

In fact, de Gaulle was given his first notice of the timing of the impending D-Day invasion in a morning meeting with Churchill on Saturday, June 3rd. with the invasion then supposed to begin the next day, Sunday, June 4th in the pre-dawn hours. Only bad weather prevented the planned launch on the 4th. Thus, Churchill (and Eisenhower) gave de Gaulle a scant 24 hours’ notice of the launch of the invasion–which, of course, de Gaulle knew was planned. In the meeting Saturday, Churchill advised de Gaulle to leave right away for Washington, D.C. to see Roosevelt about the matter of how France was to be administered in the Post-Vichy period. Later on that Saturday, de Gaulle also met with Eisenhower, who then informed him that he (E.) planned to address the French public by radio on the day following the landings. E. explained that he would, in the radio address, invite De Gaulle to follow his (Eisenhower’s) orders over the days and weeks following the landing.

The war in Italy doesn’t get as much attention, but it did keep a lot of Germans busy and out of Normandy on D-Day.

They wanted the majority to be well trained but inexperienced troops because men with combat experience generally lack enthusiasm for running up beaches into machine guns. They were led by a smattering of more experienced senior NCOs and officers who could pick up the pieces if youth, enthusiasm and inexperience momentarily failed to carry the fight.