Memories of the vital role Lepe Beach played in D-Day will be remembered on the 80th anniversary of the storming of Normandy beaches by allied troops
Wading through the freezing sea, their guns held aloft, the troops made their way in silence towards the flotilla of boots waiting offshore.
It was the start of Operation Overlord, hailed as the most audacious military action Britain took against the Germans in World War II.
The D-Day Normandy landings were launched on 6th June 1944. For two years before that under a cloak of secrecy thousands of allied troops had been hidden away along the Hampshire coast, living in camps buried deep in the New Forest.
As General Dwight Eisenhower commented: “All southern England was one vast military camp, crowded with soldiers waiting for the signal to go.”
In preparation for that moment Lepe Beach was to play a vital part of what was to become a turning point in the war.
Under the control of HMS Mastodon which had its HQ at Exbury House the beach was the site from where thousands of soldiers left to take part in the invasion of Gold Beach in Normandy.
But for years before that the beach was also the focal point for the construction of part of something which was to prove crucial to the success of Op-Overlord.
Mulberry harbours were a brilliant feat of engineering consisting of sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways.
Central to their effectiveness was the breakwater which was made from from B2 Phoenix concrete caissons.
The caissons were made from hollow concrete, the inner chamber of which were flooded to make them sink to the bottom of the sea.
Six of the massive caissons were built at Lepe with 300 labourers employed to work on them. Slipways were created on the beach to launch them when finished.
In preparation for D-Day the components for the Mulberry Harbours were towed to seas off Omagh and Gold Beach in Normandy where they were then put together. They were secured to the beach by ‘Beetles’ and ‘Whales.’
On D-Day the Mulberry harbours proved crucial to the seaborne invasion by allowing thousands of troops, heavy armoured vehicles and tonnes of supplies to rapidly get ashore.
Apart from its role in helping to create the Mulberry Harbours Lepe came into its own on D-Day itself.
Shortly before June 6th 1944 a fleet began arriving at Beaulieu River consisting of gun landing vessels, rocket landing boats and infantry landing craft. In the early hours of June 3rd it moved to Lepe where on D-Day 1579 men and 292 tanks and armoured vehicles boarded the vessels.
Some of the soldiers clambering into the boats would never return. Upon reaching France, the Mulberry harbours were deployed and proved crucial to the success of the invasion.
Acting as breakwaters they ensured that all the artillery and vehicles made it ashore along with most of the troops. The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history. But the cost to British soldiers was high with 15,995 killed and 57,996 wounded.
Op-Overload is credited with bringing the end of WWII forward. At Lepe beach there is lots of still visible evidence of the historic role it played in it.
They include beach hardening mats held in place with iron hooks over which the heavy tanks and armoured vehicles drove over the shingle and the dolphins which formed part of the pier head used to load the ships sailing for Normandy.
On the beach there are construction platforms where the caissons were created, running 374 metres and are 11metres wide and 1.3metres high.
But the most poignant pointer to how important a role Lepe Beach played in the run up to the invasion and on D-Day itself can be found at the far end of the beach at Stanswood Bay.
Here there is a monument to the Royal Dragoon Guards who took part in Op Overlord and the 100 plus of their regiment who did not make it back.
A plaque on it reads: “Take these men for your example. Like them remember that prosperity can only be fore the free, that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.”
