D-Day, 6 June 1944: South Africans who made history during the invasion of France

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"Into the jaws of death": photo by CPHoM in Normandy on the morning of 6 June 1944 (image source: Public domain; Wikimedia Commons)

Fighter pilot ace JJ le Roux successfully targeted “Desert Fox” Erwin Rommel’s staff car and so knocked the greatest threat to the success of D-Day out of the war.

Major AS du Toit devised the famous “flail tank” to detonate Rommel’s mines buried on the beaches.

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We owe the trappings of the democratic system and a free vote for all, including in South Africa, to the brave men and women who put their lives at risk in 1944 to crush the Hitler gospel.
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It would be easy in South Africa today, preoccupied as it is with the result of its own parliamentary election, to overlook the importance of the Allied D-Day landings of 6 June 1944, which liberated the world from the Nazi scourge. But that would be a mistake.

Even though it was 80 years ago now and in another country, it was our own 20th century Waterloo. A victory of freedom over tyranny. We owe the trappings of the democratic system and a free vote for all, including in South Africa, to the brave men and women who put their lives at risk in 1944 to crush the Hitler gospel.

For anyone who wants to be reminded of what this gospel was, with its legacy of concentration camps and death marches, it is enough to read Lord Russel of Liverpool’s The scourge of the swastika (1) and other memoirs and histories. Two clicks on Google will get you there.

Ever since my own boyhood, growing up on various South African Air Force (SAAF) bases with a pilot father who saw action in both the Second World War and the Korean War, military commemorations have been a big deal. Descriptions of the South African Army and Air Force in the Second World War, fighting their way up through North Africa, and the battles for Italian-occupied Abyssinia, Tobruk, El Alamein and Monte Cassino, followed by the relief of Rome and Florence by the South African 6th Army, all made a huge impression on my young mind.

But the biggie, the real McCoy, was Operation Overlord, or D-Day, the invasion of occupied Europe by the Allies. Hollywood marked D-Day with blockbuster movies like Saving Private Ryan and The longest day. Antony Beevor’s magisterial account of D-Day (2) is a brilliant account of the invasion as well.

So, this year, enshrining the 80th anniversaries of two momentous turning points of the Second World War, in which the South African Army and Air Force were key participants, is especially poignant, since no one of that generation will be alive to mark the 90th anniversary. The important anniversaries were, in fact, the Allied occupation of Rome on 4 June 1944 and the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 on French beaches in Normandy, which marked the beginning of the liberation of Europe from the yoke of Nazi Germany. To this list must be added the 1944 summer offensive (see below) of the Russian army. A year later, it was all over and Hitler was dead.

In 1943, field marshal Erwin Rommel, scourge of the Allies in the North Africa campaign, was personally directed by Hitler to prepare defences against a possible Allied invasion from Britain across the channel. Hitler had been fooled by an elaborate British intelligence scam into thinking that the main attack would be in the Calais area in northern France, which would give the Allies access to French ports needed for supply provisioning. The scam involved planting false intelligence (eg, the famous Operation Mincemeat) as well as a misleading build-up of Allied troops at the port of Dover opposite Calais. One of the creative minds working to fool the Germans was that of Ian Fleming, writer of the James Bond series of books after the war. Through their secret success in decoding German Enigma signals, the Allies knew that the deception had worked as far as Hitler was concerned.

But Rommel was not so easily deceived, although he was unable to persuade Hitler and the German High Command that he felt the Allied landing would be elsewhere. He knew how ineffective the inland German defences really would be against a determined invasion, and that the only hope of success was to defeat the invaders as they came in from the sea on what would be D-Day itself.

Accordingly, some six million mines and over half a million foreshore obstacles were planted on French beaches all the way to the Spanish border. The Desert Fox, even though his wings had been clipped by Hitler, was still taking pains to thwart Churchill and Eisenhower’s invasion plans as best he could.

That he was eventually proved right, and Hitler wrong, about the destination of the invasion landings, was little consolation to Rommel. However, all he needed was a little more time to redirect German resources to Normandy, and he could still conceivably have been able to stop the Allies in their tracks. But fate, in the form of South African fighter pilot JJ le Roux, was to decree otherwise, as we shall see below.

D-Day, involving some three million men and women in uniform, was not an easy invasion. Ten thousand Allied soldiers were casualties on the first day on the Normandy beaches. Rommel’s mines took a terrible toll, and withering fire decimated the first lines of Allied soldiers as they landed. Watch the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan for a horribly realistic portrayal of the landing. All that was needed towards the end of the first day was for Rommel to bring in his feared Panzer tanks to pin the attackers down.

South Africa’s contribution to D-Day on 6 June 1944, though not as prominently highlighted as that of the major Allied forces, was significant and multifaceted. The country’s involvement was primarily through the South African Air Force and individual soldiers who fought alongside other Allied troops during the Normandy invasion.

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The South African Air Force played a crucial role in the air operations that were pivotal for the success of D-Day. South African pilots were part of the Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons, which provided vital air support during the invasion.
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The South African Air Force played a crucial role in the air operations that were pivotal for the success of D-Day. South African pilots were part of the Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons, which provided vital air support during the invasion. These squadrons were involved in various missions, including bombing German defences, disrupting supply lines and providing air cover for the advancing Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy. The precision and effectiveness of the air strikes contributed to weakening German positions and reducing their ability to mount an effective counter-attack against the invading forces.

One of these South African pilots was SAAF squadron leader JJ le Roux, who became the highest scoring fighter pilot in Normandy after the onset of the D-Day invasions. As recounted in SADF archives (3): “Le Roux was able to achieve what an entire squadron of SAS operators dropped behind German lines had been unable to – that being to assassinate or capture Rommel.”

It was due to squadron leader Le Roux that Erwin Rommel was neutralised – just when the Germans were preparing a counterstrike under his direction: “Rommel’s car was targeted and destroyed by the South African fighter ace, and the wounds Rommel sustained were so serious that it was believed he would never properly recover. The ‘Desert Fox’ was consequently declared unfit for further duty and relieved of his command.”

In addition to the air operations, many South African officers served within the British Army units that landed on the Normandy beaches or contributed to the invasion preparations. One of these was Major AS du Toit, who devised the famous “flail tank” to detonate mines buried on the beaches. The device consisted of a drum mounted on long metal arms in front of the tank. The drum had chains loosely attached, which circulated with sufficient force so as to trigger a mine explosion before it could damage the advancing tank. It was dubbed the “Sherman crab” and proved crucial to the eventual success of the invasion.

The estimated 900 South Africans who took part in the D-Day landings were easily identifiable by the orange shoulder flashes they wore. Almost 100 were serving with the Royal Marines, a crack early-landing unit, which had been seconded while doing duty in Alexandria in December 1943. Several dozen South Africans also served with the Parachute Regiment and 48 and 45 Commandos. There were quite a few female officer volunteers from South Africa as well, serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, who were involved with the invasion.

The Allies had taken ingenious steps to ensure a steady supply of arms, fuel and provisions. They had built prefabricated harbours known as “mulberries” which they simply towed across the channel from Britain and anchored to the French beaches, eliminating the need to capture the well-defended ports of Cherbourg and Calais, among others. Within a day, all five landing beaches on the Normandy coast were linked together with a defensive perimeter, and the rest, as they say, is history. (A modern aside: the supplies currently being shipped to Gaza are facilitated by a similar “Mulberry” temporary harbour concept.)

In the build-up to the D-Day commemorations, which this year will be held in both the UK and France, the British and French press are already churning out fresh historical material to remind readers of the scale of the victory.

The Daily Telegraph (23 May 2024) noted that while the British and Americans were involved in the biggest and most elaborate build-up of invasion forces in history, the Russians were doing exactly the same. The plan was to coordinate the June 1944 invasions across three fronts – Normandy and western France, Italy and southern France, and finally Russia in the east.

As the Telegraph explains (24 May), in Moscow the Soviet High Command achieved what many had thought would be impossible – the transfer of hundreds of thousands of men and heavy machinery across enormous distances, without alerting German military intelligence. Like the decoy intelligence planted by the British and Americans to mislead the Germans regarding the actual landing places, the Russians had done the same, and just as brilliantly.

To ensure absolute secrecy, only four senior officers on the Russian side were in on the plans for the Russian summer campaign. No communications by conventional means – telegraph or telephone – were permitted between them.

Extraordinary ruses to fool the enemy were embarked on. Soviet fighters would patrol the skies but seemingly accidentally make way for German spotter planes, which would film fake Russian troop movements and wooden tank and artillery mock-ups.

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The Soviet Union may no longer exist and the danger posed by Islamist terrorists has subsided, but the emergence of new global threats means that the democracies today find themselves facing a multitude of challenges, as was the case in 1939.
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The Soviet Union may no longer exist and the danger posed by Islamist terrorists has subsided, but the emergence of new global threats means that the democracies today find themselves facing a multitude of challenges, as was the case in 1939. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 began the biggest conflict Europe has seen since the Second World War and raises the very real prospect of a conflict between the nuclear-armed powers of Russia and the Nato alliance.

Moscow’s emerging alliance with other authoritarian regimes, such as China, Iran and North Korea, means that the West’s long-standing pre‑eminence in world affairs faces its most significant challenge since the Cold War era. At the same time, China’s bid to rival the US as the world’s undisputed superpower is likely to result in an upsurge of territorial disputes in the Pacific region, especially over Taiwan, while Iran’s determination to extend its influence in the Middle East is another potential source of conflict.

The 80th anniversary of D-Day will be commemorated across Europe, with a big focus on what it took – what an enormous effort in “blood, sweat and tears”, in Churchill’s phrasing – to confront the dictators and defeat them. Right now, the democracies are rearming, “just in case”, on the premise that Mr Putin will take advantage of weakness. Conscription is being reintroduced in several Nato countries. Even the British Conservative Party has promised to reintroduce national service for 18-year-olds if it wins the next election (unlikely). An incoming Labour administration will probably not follow suit, unless it is forced to, but has promised voters it will not be soft on defence. There are auguries, and D-Day reminds us all of the price of freedom.

Endnotes

1. Lord Russel of Liverpool. 1954. The scourge of the swastika. Corgi Books.

2. Antony Beevor. 2009. D-Day: The battle for Normandy. Penguin Books.

3. Noelle Cowling. 1994. “Operation Overlord”. Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 24(2).

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