THE LONG JOURNEY TOWARDS D-DAY

The soldiers, sailors and airmen who began the liberation of Europe 80 years ago today were the tip of the spear. But Operation Overlord involved millions of people before a single boot was put ashore

- Peter Caddick-Adams

IT IS often said that, in war, amateurs talk tactics while professionals talk logistics.

So it was with the invasion of Normandy where the Allies had to bring everything with them to beat the German defenders.

Across the English Channel came an inventory of 700,000 separate items.

They included 137,000 jeeps, trucks and half-tracks; 4,217 tanks and fully tracked vehicles; 3,500 artillery pieces; a replacement railway network with 1,800 steam locomotives; 240 million pounds of potatoes; 54 million gallons of beer; 26 million jerrycans; sixteen million tons of fuel, food and ammunition; 15 million condoms; 10 million "bags, vomit" for the sea journey across the Channel. Plus, 2.4 million tent pegs; a million gallons of fresh drinking water (for the first three days alone); 800,000 pints of blood plasma (segregated carefully by black and white donors); 300,000 telegraph poles; 260,000 grave markers; cigarettes; toothbrushes and 210 million maps.

Almost every aspect of the equipment used in the June 1944 assault was a "one-off" - the culmination of amphibious attacks the Allies had mounted in previous years. Much of it was so successful that equivalents are still in use somewhere 80 years on.

Surprising though it may seem, none of the Western democracies had much experience of opposed landings on hostile coasts before 1940 - the exception being the assault on the Turkish-held peninsula of Gallipoli in 1915.

That operation's ultimate failure cost its architect, Winston Churchill, his political job, and the unsuccessful campaign still haunted him in 1944. Thus, the US, British and Commonwealth forces had to start from scratch in developing specialised craft, training and tactics to deposit troops onto contested shores.