The beginning of the end...

The liberation of Europe, when it finally came, was a momentous task consuming the energies of millions of men and women. The thousands of troops who went ashore on June 6, 1944, were the tip of a very long spear that would ultimately pierce the heart of fascism

- By Peter Caddick-Adams

D-DAY was a day like no other. Although every military operation has a D-day - when it begins, with the D confusingly standing for "day", too - in the popular mind there is only one D-Day.

As Bob Capa, the acclaimed war photographer who found himself on Omaha beach that morning wryly observed: "From North Africa to the Rhine there were too many D-days, and for every one of them we had to get up in the middle of the night."

At 10am on June 6, 1944, the BBC Home Service presenter John Snagge spoke these immortal words: "D-Day has come. Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitler's European fortress."

Operation Overlord, as it was code-named, was massively over-insured against every conceivable setback or adversity, making the 24 hours of the Longest Day (the phrase was Erwin Rommel's) among the best-prepared military endeavours of history. If warriors striding through the surf can be assessed as "beginning the end" (Winston Churchill's phrase) of the European war, then for the US, Canada and Britain their respective wars also began with water.

In Britain's case, the rescue by small boats from Dunkirk four years earlier in May-June 1940. In America's case with Pearl Harbor in December 1941. For Canadian troops it was the long boat trip across the Atlantic.

In fact the sea dominates the story of the liberation of France, for it is how the bulk of the invasion forces arrived. It was naval gunfire support from warships offshore on to German defenders that enabled the Allies to land.

And without the massive maritime sustainment of Admiral Bertram Ramsay's Operation Neptune, the Allied coalition would not have broken out into France or subsequently been able to invade Germany.