D-Day: The Spy Who Fooled Hitler

Paul McGann (0:00)

Hi, listeners. In the coming weeks, we'll be covering the story of D-Day. June the 6th marks 80 years since D-Day itself, when the Allies landed in Normandy and pushed back against Hitler. We'll follow the soldiers on the beaches, the paratroopers who landed from the air, the men and women working feverishly behind the scenes, the spies who gathered vital intel, and the commanders whose fateful decisions touched the lives of millions. It's a particularly poignant story for me, because my dad was part of the first wave of men to go ashore on Gold Beach on June 6th, 1944 My brother Stephen and I will delve into that in the course of the series. So, this is D-Day, The Tide Turns. We hope you enjoy these episodes.

It's New Year's Eve, 1943 A rough, moonless night in the English Channel. We're just a few hundred feet off the coast of Nazi-occupied France.

A small torpedo boat stealthily approaches the shore. As the rain streams down, another barrage of waves buffets the craft, drenching the small group of men on board. Among them, a 24-year-old British captain, Logan Scott Bowden, and his trusty sergeant, Bruce Ogden Smith. They're on a mission of the utmost importance.

Through the watery haze, the men make out a dark, solid strip of land ahead. A broad, sandy beach. This is as close as they dare take the boat. They cut the engine.

Out of the darkness, faint voices and music are just about audible in the distance. The Germans on land must be celebrating. Preparing to welcome in the new year. Hopefully, that means their guard is down.

Dressed in loose-fitting diving suits, the two commandos prepare to disembark. They arm themselves with waterproof Colt.45 pistols. Commando knives. And, quite possibly, their most important kit of all. A belt full of 10-inch sample tubes. Then, as quietly as they can, they slide into the water. Bitter cold envelops them. They do their best to steady their breathing, treading water. Then, they swim for land.

As they draw closer, a nearby lighthouse casts its beam across the water, briefly illuminating the shoreline. In the low light, they see the outlines of row upon row of barbed wire, piles of rubble, concrete walls, interspersed with concrete bunkers looming out of the sand. They follow the hunched shapes of sentries against the skyline, patrolling the sea wall. The current is strong. It threatens to drag the two Brits off course. But they manage to make it to the shore. Casting around, they get their bearings. They have landed on a stretch of Normandy coastline, near the resort town of Luxembourg, otherwise known as Gold Beach. It's one of two earmarked by the British for invasion on D-Day.

Hearts pounding in their chests, eyes scanning frantically, the men get to work. They start filling their sampled tubes with as much of the local sand as they can gather. Suddenly a flash of light as the beam swings their way. They duck, flattening themselves on the ground.

It passes overhead.

The British commandos get back to their feet and continue, transferring more and more sand into their containers. Their receptacles are full now. They need to get the hell out of there. They steal themselves, and then they run. They keep low, scampering back down the beach, weaving through the haze of rain. And then they're in the sea again, fighting through the surf and swimming with everything they've got through the frigid water. Their boat bobs in the gloom. The crew haul them aboard, checking that their samples are all intact. They've done it. Firing up the engine, they turn and head for England.

A crucial intelligence gathering mission has just been carried out, right under the German's noses. The Allies now have vital information about the state of the beaches they will be landing on later this year. The sand samples they have collected will indicate whether the terrain can bear the weight of armored vehicles. Because when the time comes to attack, a few grains of sand could quite literally be the difference between success and failure. From the Noiser Network, this is D-Day.

Giles Milton (5:36)

It was the greatest battle of its age.

Joshua Levine (5:40)

Hundreds of thousands of men involved.

Tessa Dunlop (5:43)

Total high stakes, never been done before. This feels like a watershed. It is a watershed.

Jeff Warrow (5:51)

This was a really pivotal moment in not only World War II, but world history. This was really the time that we began to break the back of this Axis coalition and shatter the Nazi regime.

Giles Milton (6:02)

Of course there's heroics, but there's also a lot of blood and guts, because the sad reality of D-Day is that for many people it was a horrifically brutal and violent experience.