Well hello it's James Holland here, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. I still haven't got Al but I have got Dr Peter Johnston with me.

We're here at the National Army Museum and we're looking at one particular cabinet here.

Now this is, I'm looking at a battle dress, the turtle helmet, a couple of flags, some medals including a military cross and a map of the sword beach area.

So Peter, let me talk me through it, I've always been a big advocate of the battle dress, I kind of, you know, it's much more line but it seemed to work for me.

And what I notice about this is an officers version so it's not buttoned up all the way, it's got the little lapels and this is the Ike jacket isn't it?

Well the Ike jacket comes a little bit from this.

I think so definitely, I mean this is sort of the iconic dress that the British officers of the Second World War was certainly dressed in.

And if you think back to where we were earlier about the, the space, you know, our first World War figure next to our second World War figure, you can see there's not actually a radical difference in what the British Army were.

I still think here at the museum we still actually astound our visitors because our visitors are so used to seeing soldiers in camouflage and the various trends that go with it and they come in and think like wow, why is there no camouflage on this?

Why is this, you know, why these guys you thought the Second World War, why they were in this heavy sort of wool material and doesn't seem very functional, what Hammersby gets wet.

You know, the answer is you end up, you know, being bloody miserable because it's in soggy because it's in soggy.

But you know, for us this is a wonderful uniform not because it shows what the British Army fought and won the war because they wore it.

Because who wore it exactly that and you know Alfred Row was a beach master captain Alfred Row.

Yeah, captain, captain Row, he was a beach master and these are guys who were probably a bit well, you know, your book on Normandy talks about, you know, the drives get off the beach and all these sort of things and how important that was.

And these guys were absolutely essential in that. They got the traffic moving. They got people, they got people up there, they got them ready, they got the supplies ashore, got them where they need to go.

And that was another job, isn't it? I mean, just thinking of the logistics of that detail you need to know and just how organized your mind needs to be.

With all the other crap that's going on around you, I mean, it's just unbelievable.

Let alone what someone's dropping shells on you, yeah. Right exactly.

And you know, but also the ability to react and think on your feet and when invariably the landing craft turns up in the wrong place and people are miles off because the heavy swallows battered them about.

You've just got to make snap decisions having the air and stay with them.

And you've got to be, you've got to have a pretty grip with good grip what's going on behind you.

You know, you can't just need to be looking out to see and watching guys come in. You can't just be looking up the picture.

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