This is real first-hand footage of D-Day.
On a single morning, on a fifty-mile stretch of French coast, the largest invasion in human history began...
It was the 6th of June, 1944. By the end of that one day, around 160,000 Allied soldiers had crossed the English Channel and landed in Normandy.
They were carried by more than 5,000 ships and supported by some 13,000 aircraft, a fleet so vast that, to the men who saw it from the water, the horizon itself seemed to be made of steel.
The plan was almost insane in its ambition...
In the darkness after midnight, 23,400 paratroopers were dropped behind enemy lines to seize bridges and roads. At dawn, after a bombardment from sea and air, the infantry went in across five beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword.
What you are watching was filmed in those hours.
It is worth remembering what it actually shows. Each of those small landing craft held a few dozen men. When the ramps dropped, they stepped out into water and onto open sand, into machine-gun fire from concrete bunkers that had been built and ranged for exactly this.
On Omaha Beach, the worst of the five, the fighting was so severe that American forces alone suffered around 2,400 casualties in that single sector.
By the end of the day, at least 4,400 Allied soldiers were confirmed dead. Most of them were very young. Many had never been in combat before that morning, and would never see another.
What makes the day almost impossible to comprehend is not only its scale but its uncertainty. No one watching the boats go in knew it would work. Eisenhower had written a short note the night before, to be released if the invasion failed, taking the entire blame upon himself. He kept it folded in his wallet but he never had to use it...
Within a year, the war was over.