big part of a number of nationally or internationally important events. There was the second crusade in 1147 when 169 ships massed in the harbour before heading off to the Holy Land; or its pivotal role in the Civil War, when keen resistance led to a Royalist defeat in the town and also at the key city of Plymouth and of course it was an unplanned stop off for the Pilgrim Fathers, en route to America. But perhaps no event has seen


Dartmouth so connected to vital world events as those in June 1944 – as the harbour became one of the bases for the greatest invasion force ever assembled: for D-Day. The size and scale of D-Day – in which the allied powers aimed to push into Europe and wrench it from the clasp of Hitler and his Nazi forces – is truly staggering. 5,000 ships, 12,000 aircraft and 350,000 men took part in the invasion. The men launched from 10 ports, as far afield as Felixstowe in the East to Swansea in the West. The build up to Operation


Overlord had begun in 1942 – with the covert transportation of weapons, planes, gliders and ships. A counter- intelligence campaign was run to convince the Germans that any invasion would come at the narrowest point of the English Channel, at Calais. The plan, audacious and in many ways the stuff of wildly inventive fiction (inflatable tanks and planes were used to allow the Germans to ‘see’ a build up of equipment and troops in the South East for example) but it worked like a dream, to the extent that Hitler refused troops transferral to fight in Normandy as he thought the invasion landings were a ‘feint’. Dartmouth and the land around it played no small part in the preparations for this


DARTMOUTH AT D-DAY T


hroughout its long and proud history, Dartmouth has been a


PICTuRes suPPLIeD BY DARTMOuTH MuseuM


great day – and shared in tragedy as well as the triumph. When Rear Admiral Bernard Law Montgomery, the hero of Al Alamein, suggested that the beaches of Slapton would be perfect for practising the planned landings on the beaches of


The preparations around the town and elsewhere were


clearly building to some sort of operation, but secrecy held.


France which had been codenamed ‘Utah’, it initiated a huge operation. An area of more than 30,000 acres around the beaches were to be cleared, to allow the American


troops who would be going ashore at Utah to have complete secrecy and somewhere to live. In November 1943 signs went up in the villages around the area – East Allington, Stokenham, Blackawton and Slapton itself – asking for all villagers to attend public meetings. They were informed the area from ‘The east end of Blackpool bay’ all the way to Beesands was to be vacated. All men and women had to vacate and find other places to live by December 21. It was a hard and traumatic time for many families who had lived in the villages for generations. But it shows the fortitude of the British people that there were few complaints. The incoming Americans – complete with their handbook ‘A Short Guide to Great Britain’ which told them not to throw their money around and to appreciate the British were ‘reserved, not unfriendly’ – found a note posted on the doors of all the parish churches from the Bishop of Exeter, informing them that: “This church has stood


here for several hundred years. Around it has grown a community which have lived in these houses and


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