Context 160 - July 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 0 : J U L Y 2 0 1 9 41 The feudal organisation of William’s realm served to link together Normandy and England, and to join together the Christian Anglo- Norman peoples in a common purpose. Many of the Norman magnates continue to be powerful, landowning families in Britain today. Many of them took their seats in the House of Lords until Tony Blair’s government removed the rights of hereditary peers (but 90 hereditary peers still sit lawfully in the House of Lords). The troops from the USA who were deployed for the D-Day landings in June 1944 were stationed at Peninsula Barracks, Winchester, the exact site where William the Conqueror had built his royal residence. In 1944 Winston Churchill stood on their parade ground and rallied his American cousins, many of whom had Norman blood. Church services were held on the ships before they departed to liberate Normandy in Operation Overlord. Hitler knew that Britain and her allies would need to take the European Atlantic ports so he spent four years building Fortress Europe, which included a wall of defences and mined beaches along the coast of France and the Low Countries. Before D-Day, George VI called his nation to pray for victory, as didWilliam I before the battle of Hastings. The crown, the government and the people were united in petitioning God. On 6 June 1944 the Germans decided not to send out their normal sea patrols or air reconnaissance because of a battering storm, the worst seen in the English Channel for 25 years. Out of that storm came the largest invasion force the world has ever seen, with 156,000 Allied troops from Britain, the USA, Canada and other nations, aboard an armada of 7,000 vessels, including 2,000 warships, supported by 11,600 aircraft. Weather stations in the north Atlantic had revealed to the Allies that calmer weather was coming on the 6th of June, so that was the day of the landings, just as the storm ebbed. ‘That capricious change in the weather was our Trojan horse,’ US general Omar Bradley said. The D-Day landings involved leaders from the same families as in 1066, but this time crossing the English Channel in the opposite direction. Field Marshall Montgomery could trace his lineage back to the Montgomery who fought alongsideWilliam the Conqueror in 1066. It had taken the Dukes of Normandy and their people almost 900 years to build up the international political, military and industrial might to defeat what Churchill referred to as ‘a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime’. The city of Caen, whereWilliam had established his capital in Normandy prior to his conquest of England, was ruined by the Allied air raids, involving over 2,000 bombers, on 18 July. However, the Abbaye aux Hommes, the magnificent monastery built by William in the centre of Caen in 1063, which is his final resting place, survived. The Allies had agreed with the French resistance that the building would be protected and that civilians should seek shelter within it. Within three months of landing in Normandy, the Allies had freed practically all of France and the final victory was close to hand. Nick Corbett, associate director – heritage,WSP | Indigo A monument to William the Conqueror at Falaise, sculpted by Louis Rochet (1818 –1873) (Photo: Man vyi, Wikimedia)