Normandy Beaches: Educate me!

I saw a programme recently where the guy who actually made up the names was interviewed ( sorry, can’t remember guys name or programme – old age setting in!)

He said the names were all fish: swordfish, goldfish and….jellyfish. When he told his boss the third name he was told (not unsurprisinhgly) to change it and the next word that came into his mind beginning with “J” was Juno!

Kind of related to this thread as it is about the beach code names – I vaguely recall a true story of how three boys nearly blew everything by using the beach code nameslike Utah and Omaha, etc., – which they’d overheard from US soldiers – in crossword puzzles that their teacher made them create as detention. This teacher was submitting the crosswords to a national newspaper, and MI5 or someone noticed the codenames and the teacher was arrested. It was all an innocent misunderstanding, but MI5 thought he was giving secret codes to the mythical Fifth Column.

This story was dramatised really well in 1989 in the BBC’s ‘The Mountain and the Molehill’ See more here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097920/

My dad was out there slinging shells at Omaha and Utah from just off the Carenten peninsula on June 6. He was on HMS Hawkins that was part of the joint task force so Royal Navy ships bombarded the American beaches and vice versa.

Dad was in the Royal Marines and they were told that if the Americans didn’t get foothold on Utah and had to retreat then the Marines would go in and get sacrificed to get them out in the same way the French used a Battalion to help us get off from Dunkirk. Utah was shaky for a while but fortunately dad stayed on the ship.

MH

Thanks Andy. That’s great.

Well the British choice makes sense, but there is no explanation for why the U.S. states were chosen. One can only guess they had an affilation.

Beaches..

Hi Janie
According to ‘D-Day Then and Now’ Vol 1.
(After The Battle Publications 1995 P.109)

“Brigadier David Belchem head of Montgomery’s Operations Staff, claims to have chosen the actual code-names given to the British landing. Gold, Juno and Sword were selected from an old army manual which listed short words easily pronounced, while Belchem says that Major General J. Lawton Collins, the VII Corps commander, chose Utah and Major General Leonard T. Gerow, Omaha for V Corps.”

Hope this helps
All the best
Andy
PS Had your hair done?? 😀 😉 😀

“I’m blonde, I don’t care”

If you were a true red i’d tell you.