This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns. 6th of June, 1944, so the largest seaborne assault in human history, Dede.

While much has been written about the operation as a whole, little detailed attention has been paid to the battle for Sword Beach itself, the eastern

most of the amphibious attack areas.

For this episode I'm joined by Stephen Fisher.

Stephen is a historian, an archaeologist who specializes in military history.

He is also the author of Sword Beach, The Untold Story of D-Day's forgotten victory.

Thanks for joining me.

We're going to be looking at the landings on Sword Beach

on 6th of June.

So let's start with the beach itself.

I know the Atlantic Wall is inconsistent. How formidable was the Atlantic Wall in Normandy?

Was it any more dense at Sword Beach than say Omaha?

Well, yeah, like you say, the Atlantic walls, this sort of propaganda term, that Hitler

wanted to create this image of this continuous wall of concrete, you know, for thousands

of miles along the Atlantic coast, which wasn't really the case.

But what you had at sword wasn't dissimilar to what you had at Omaha, which is various defense positions that all interconnect and can cover each other.

So you have several strong points along the landing area.

A sword and at swords the landing area that the allies chose, Queen White and Red Beaches, is only one mile wide. But within that area, you have two, sort of two and a half strong points. You have Viedel Strandel Nest 18 at the eastern end, which was codename Skate by the British.

Pretty much near the middle you have Liedel Strano nest 20 which is cod and over to the west side you have a small

sort of intermediary strongasuary strong point,

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