My interest in the 6 June 1944 invasion of Normandy by Allied forces to take back control of France from German occupation, known as Operation Overlord and D-Day, began in the silliest of ways.  Years ago, when I commuted back and forth from New York City, I overheard an off-beat conversation between two fellow commuters regarding D-Day.  One man was obviously well versed in the history of D-Day while the other, not nearly so, tried to impress the former with his “knowledge” of D-Day trivia.  Said he proudly, “did you know that ‘Mickey Mouse’ was the code used to launch the invasion?” to which the other man countered that he had read virtually every book on D-Day and he had never come across that information.

What follows is a mix of history and mystery surrounding the Allied invasions at Normandy that have fascinated me through the years:

As soon as I reached my home computer that evening, I queried “Mickey Mouse and D-Day”, discovering many unverified sources claiming that Mickey Mouse was, indeed, the codeword for the beginning of Operation Overlord. 

Walt Disney himself stated in 1954 that he hoped “we never lose sight of one thing:  that it was all started by a mouse.”  I did not find contradictory information at that time.

As I sat down to memorialize my thoughts on D-Day, I once again checked the Mickey Mouse/code word claims (not wishing to sound like the uninformed commuter) and found a 2016 quotation from a director of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans who, with a certain amount of pique,  put to bed the Mickey Mouse/code word/D-Day claim:

There is a myth that the password was "Mickey Mouse." Operation Overlord was not a Mickey Mouse project. In truth, the password was "Flash”, and the countersign was "Thunder." The troops were also issued brass crickets, a small toy that made a clicking sound when squeezed in order to recognize friendlies in the dark. One click was answered by two clicks. 

The next intriguing D-Day nomenclature that caught my imagination was the phrase “the longest day”, its origin and how Cornelius Ryan came to name his book and, subsequently, Daryl Zanuck, his 1962 film, The Longest Day.

Some have mistakenly attributed the expression to Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, but it is widely held that it was a member of Rommel’s staff who said, “for the Allies, as well as for Germany, the first 24 hours after the invasion will be the longest day.”

Many a young student will have asked for what “D” in D-Day stands.  It merely stands for “day”.  The dictionary generically describes D-day as the day on which an important event or change is to take place and, specifically, as the 6 June1944 Allied forces’ invasions of northern France via the beaches at Normandy.”   No mystery there.

The last bit of information, and I saved the best for last, is about a Portuguese man named Juan Pujol, who was a double agent known as “Garbo” to the allies and “Arabel” to the Germans.  Once again, I defer to the experts of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (www.nationalww2museum.org):

In January 1941, Juan Pujol Garcia (1912-1988), an anti-Fascist, decided to offer his services to spy for Britain, but he was refused. He then offered himself to the Germans with the plan to become a double agent for the British. The Germans were not interested either but told Pujol if he could get to England and send a report they would reconsider. Pujol only made it as far as Lisbon, but there he began to concoct “intelligence” derived from public sources and attributed to a network of fictitious sub-agents. Despite the reports having errors because Pujol had never been to Britain, the Germans were impressed enough to begin paying him. Pujol’s reports were intercepted and decoded by GC&CS, and by February of 1942, MI-6’s Section V (counterespionage) identified Pujol as the author and recruited him. A bureaucratic fight over territory broke out and because Pujol was supposed to be spying in Britain, MI-5’s BIA department acquired him from MI-6. Pujol had come a long way from being a reject to a star.

By June 1944, Pujol had a network of some 26 agents (all false) producing a constant stream of hundreds of coded messages, all drafted by Pujol and his case officer Tomas Harris. In July 1944, in recognition of Pujol’s warning about an imminent invasion (wrong day and wrong place, the Pas De Calais), his German case officer sent the news that Pujol had been awarded the Iron Cross. After the war, it was discovered that 86 specific messages from Pujol had been included in high level German intelligence summaries. This was the highest number of all the D-Day spies mentioned in this article.

After the war, Pujol vanished for many years until Nigel West, author of several books on MI-6 and MI-5, traced Pujol (sic) to Venezuela. Pujol agreed to meet West in New Orleans on May 20, 1984. They collaborated on a book about” his life; Pujol was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE.)

Nigel West’s book is called Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Double Agent of World War II for those of you interested in studies of espionage and intrigue.   Pujol is the only person to be awarded both the MBE and the German Iron Cross.

It was Juan Pujol’s little-known story, the film The Longest Day, and my Uncle John Romano’s service in Company F, 330^th Infantry Regiment, 83^rd Division, that arrived at Normandy D-Day+12, which set my desire to travel to the beaches of Normandy ablaze.  I traveled to France in 2006 to visit the beaches of Normandy.  It was an experience I will never forget.

Gone were the steel barriers constructed by the Germans to thwart Allied entry onto the beaches and the shells that permanently scarred the land at Pointe du Hoc.  The British and Canadian beaches dubbed Gold and Juno, respectively,  are calm now, the mighty cliffs the Americans scaled at Omaha and Utah are silent.  In all 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives at Normandy and fill 27 cemeteries near the French coast.  The Germans lost 80,000 troops in Normandy, most of whom are buried inland apart from the Allied dead.

As the 78^th anniversary of the Allied landing at Normandy approaches, my thoughts turn to the words of the Supreme Leader of the Allied Expeditionary Forces Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter sent to every American soldier, sailor, and airman, reminding them that the eyes of the world were upon them as they joined with their allies and brothers-in-arms in the Great Crusade to end Nazi tyranny over the “oppressed people of Europe and security for ourselves”.  He closed by wishing them good luck and asking all to beseech Almighty God for His blessing upon that “great and noble undertaking.”

Written by Diane Romano. June 2022

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My love for history travel is not restricted to physical travel. It is also to travel into new areas of history I know little about but also, and importantly, to find out more about what I already think I know and especially to open my mind to new information which potentially challenges what I think.

So you can imagine what a fantastically energising weekend I have just had attending 6 history talks in the past 2 days at the Gloucester History Festival. Each one helping me reform my understanding of areas of history, both familiar and less so. Some of the things I learned can be described almost as trivia and yet others fundamentally undermining the received history I had until now taken for granted.

If you, like me, love learning new things then here are just a few to challenge your thinking. Some are simple and quick to comprehend, others perhaps will exercise your grey matter a little more, some may even challenge what you have accepted as ‘truth’ for a long time.  So, keep your mind open and enjoy the challenge!

The first is from Dr Sam Willis, Naval historian and author of the updated Ladybird book on The Spanish Armada. Next time you’re in a medieval building with a hammer beam ceiling, think of the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace as a perfect example, you could also be looking at a ship’s hull of the same era as they were built using the same design and techniques - just the other way up in the final finish.

The next is from Sam again and was one of the many, many fascinating things I learned at his ‘Histories of the Unexpected’  talk along with his co-presenter Prof James Daybell. (They are also co authors and presenters of a series of books and a podcast by the same name.) This one I shall call ‘The White Glove Myth’. You know when a historic document is being handled by someone for a TV programme and they are careful to always don white cotton gloves? Well, they are not only completely unnecessary for the conservation of the documents but worse, they represent a real hazard in themselves for, they make the wearer more clumsy. They can no longer feel the document with precise touch and are in fact more likely to damage it by accidental tearing. It is for this reason that some curators have in fact banned the wearing of gloves to handle precious manuscripts, books and documents. 

Dr Suzannah Lipscomb’s talk about her most recent book focussed on the accounts of women, written as part of civic record in Protestant areas of France in the 16th century. She raised many points in terms of understanding the role and behaviour of women in Europe in this period but I will share just one with you. Suzannah pointed out that only 5% of women at this time were literate. This was a flash bulb moment for me. We are reminded frequently of how women’s stories have been lost to history because they were only ever footnotes to the stories of men, unless they were extraordinary or in an extraordinary positions, in other words, simply could not be ignored, for example women holding public roles such as Elizabeth I. This however, points us to a much more simple but actually more significant reason - the women weren’t writing anything down. They had no diaries, didn’t write letters or even make shopping lists. This also goes for the illiterate male population. So it is not always that sections of society have been purposely underrepresented but that the raw materials are lacking from which to build a representation and record.

In the final section of this blog I am going to repeat the shocking injustice and misrepresentation of 5 victims of the heinous and unjustifiably glamorised murderer, Jack the Ripper, as articulated by Social Historian Halle Rubenhold. I expected to learn a few more details about the women as I knew Halle’s new book covered their life stories. What I didn’t expect to learn was that these ‘prostitutes’ who had been easy picking for the murderous intentions of this never identified murderer, were in fact not. Only one had ever worked in the sex trade and she had been a high class prostitute, what we would term an escort and she was not working as that at the time of her death. Add to this the fact that there was no sexual element to the crimes and you undermine the common beliefs surrounding this most infamous case. It also shines a bright light into the eyes of us so willing to believe unquestioningly the categorisation of these women by the police at this time and our faith in the written record. 

I hope this has provided food for thought.  As always I would encourage us all to question both received history and our own viewpoints when interpreting stories and forming opinions. It is absolutely impossible for any of us to be impartial. Our thought patterns are not just a result of our own experiences but also of those who have ever had influence on our thinking too; and this is not a problem so long as it is something we at least aim to recognise and acknowledge. 

Until next time, take care

Philippa

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