The Battle Of Lytham Green

Troops clash in the seaside town as Allied forces attempt to capture a German fuel dump.

- Paul Mackenzie

THE crack of a rifle rips through the smoke filled air and a soldier falls. He is a young man, perhaps about 20, whose face contorts with pain as he slumps to the ground. His comrades drag him to cover as the bullets continue to fizz past them. In a lull in the firing, they help him back their camp, near a bombed out hotel.

This is France in June 1944 and the Allied forces are attempting to secure a fuel depot close to Rommel’s ‘Atlantic wall’, the Nazis’ extensive network of coastal defences.

The Allied attack is three-pronged. British commandos are assisted by American troops in jeeps and have aerial support from Spitfires.

The Wehrmacht soldiers repel the first Allied attack but gradually they are weakened but after persistent bombardment from a booming six-pounder gun and an almost constant barrage of clattering rifle fire, they find themselves cornered.

As the thrum of Spitfire engines gets louder, panic seems to spread through the threadbare German lines. In a rattle of the planes’ guns the battle is all but over and the fuel depot – vital to both sides’ chances of ultimate success – is saved.

Survivors are captured and the Allies are pleased with a job well done. But as a German officer is led away, he breaks free from his guards just long enough to lob a stick bomb among the barrels. Soldiers hurl themselves to the ground and behind any cover they can find in the seconds before an almighty explosion sends a ball of fire and thick black smoke high into the air and the crowd begins to applaud.

Once the smoke has cleared, troops from both sides line up to observe a minute’s silence before the young German felled in the early exchanges of the battle walks away towards Lytham windmill, chatting with the British soldier who shot him.