I time travelled to D-Day in 1944 (WW2)

Hi, welcome back. I'm in the south of England, it's June 1944, and today is gonna be a sad one, not gonna lie. In two days time, the largest seaborne invasion in human history is going to launch from this coastline. D-Day. 150,000 allied soldiers crossing the English Channel and landing on the beaches of Nazi-occupied France. They have been here in southern England for nearly two years, training for this. And I just, I felt like I needed to be here with the people who gave their lives, because these aren't statues or names on a wall yet. Right now they're young men in a field in Durset, waiting. I want to honor them properly. So that's what today is. So just a bit of background of how we got to this point. By 1940, Nazi Germany had basically taken over most of Europe. France had fallen, Paris had Nazi flags hanging from its buildings, Britain was the last major allied nation standing, and Hitler was looking across the Channel at it. America joined the war in 1941, and for the next three years, the Allies trained, planned, and waited for the right moment to go back into Europe and take it back. That moment was June 6th, 1944. They called it D-Day. This is just... Well, you're lost. I'm not lost. I'm, okay, a little bit lost. I'm Chloe. Tommy, you want some coffee? It's terrible. Oh, that is, yeah, that is terrible. Told you. So where'd you come from? You're not army. I'm a journalist, sort of. Sort of, sure. You want to see the accommodation? Yeah, go on then. This is cozy. That's one word for it. Home sweet home. How long have you been sleeping in here? Too long. What's happening? Briefing. Come on. That's a model of the beach, built from reconnaissance photos. Every German gun position, every obstacle in the water, every potential path. Every map in this tent has fake place names on it. The real location is classified. Even most of the men in this room don't know yet. They won't find out until they're already at sea. You all right? Yeah. You ask a lot of questions for a sort of journalist. That's kind of the job. Where are you from? Bedford, Virginia. Small town, mountains. You've never heard of it. How long have you been over here? Nearly two years. Don't recommend it. We're going soon? Yeah. You play cards? I'm terrible at cards. Perfect. Come on. How? How? I had a good hand. Chloe, you said that last time. I did have a good hand. You threw away a seven to keep a four. That was tactical. Tactical. What are you writing? Letter home. Who's that? My mother. Front porch. She made me take it before I left. Said she wanted me to have something to come back to. She sounds smart. Smartest person I know. Don't tell her I said that. You know what I'm gonna do when I get back? What? Sleep for about a month, eat my mother's cooking for another month, and get the dog. What kind of dog? Big one. Something that takes up the whole porch. D-Day was supposed to be tomorrow. The weather over the channel is too bad. The wave's too high for the landing craft. The cloud cover too thick for bombers. The wind too strong for the paratroopers. General Eisenhower delayed it for 24 hours. Some ships already at sea had to turn back. Chloe, I'm scared. I know. He said it just once, quietly, and then moved on. And I just sat there, in the rain, with him. Because what else do you do? He's going to be okay today. He's got one more day. One more. A message from General Eisenhower. You are about to embark on the Great Crusade, toward which we have strayed for many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you, in company with our brave allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts. You will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty, and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck, and let us all seek the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking. It's enormous. Don't think about the size of it. What do I think about instead? The dog. The English Channel. It's... Tommy, any advice for seasickness? Look at one fixed point. Yeah, that didn't help. Look at me, then. He fell asleep. He just fell asleep like it's any other night. In a few hours, the ship stops, and they get into a smaller boat, and then they go toward France. I'm glad he's asleep. Paratroopers. 13,000 of them. They're going first. Hell of a thing. Okay, that gap is... that's quite a gap. Come on, sort of journalist. To my dear son, Tommy. Come home safe. Come home soon. All my love. Always. Mom. I have to find her. I have to find his mom. I can't take any more of this. So it's the morning after. The beach is secure after everything yesterday, but somewhere around a thousand lives have been lost on just this beach alone in a single day, and there will be many more. After Tommy died, I kept asking myself the same question. What was it for? What did he give everything for? I needed to go and see the answer. Not stay on this beach. Not sit with the loss. Go and find what the loss bought. Bayeux. June 7th. The first French town liberated after D-Day. British forces entered this morning. The Germans had withdrawn from the town. Progress. These people have been occupied for four years. Four years of German soldiers on these streets. This is what it was for. This street. These faces. But it was far from over yet. Six days after Bayeux, the 29th division, Tommy's division, moved south into this. Ancient Norman hedgerows, some of them a thousand years old. The Germans knew every gap, every line of fire. They fought like this for weeks. Field by field. Hedge grow by hedge grow. In the summer heat, in the rain, in the dark. The beach was one morning. This was the rest of the summer. The hedgerows stopped even the tanks. So they invented something. They took steel teeth from the beach and welded them onto the tanks. They called them rhino devices. The tank could now cut straight through the hedgerow root system. This is Saint-Lô. They spent five weeks after D-Day fighting through hedgerows to reach it. When they captured this town, the breakout from Normandy began. The road to Paris and eventually Berlin opened here. Anyway, I need to go to Bedford to deliver the news to Tommy's mom. It's been weeks and she's probably expecting the worst. I'm not looking forward to this. I really am not. His mother would have been here when the telegram came. Getting ready for church, probably. A knock at the door. A knock at the door is how most of these families now found out. Ma'am, are you the mother of Tommy? I'm so sorry. I keep thinking about the first time I saw him sitting outside his tent like he had all the time in the world. She has his eyes. I didn't expect that. He was 25 years old. This is what it cost. I need to give you this. He wrote a letter to you. Dear mom, I hope you are well. The weather here is, well, it's England, so you can imagine. I think about home a lot. I think about the porch and the mountains and your cooking. I want you to know I'm okay. I'm with good men. We look after each other. I don't know exactly what's coming, but I'll be carrying you with me. When I get home, I'm gonna sit on that porch for about a month. Don't let anyone take my chair. Love, Tommy. Congress decided the National D-Day Memorial should be here. Not Washington. Not Normandy. Bedford. Because no community in America gave more proportionally than this one. They built it on a hill so you can see the mountains. The same mountains those boys grew up looking at. Today I followed Tommy's journey, but there were like thousands of these stories, and they all had mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children. This experience has grounded me in ways that I cannot explain. These men lost their lives, and it's hard not to get angry when you think about it, because war, any war, comes down to decisions made by people far from the consequences. It's hard not to think, why can't we just sit down and figure this out peacefully? And it's still happening even today. I keep coming back to this. I picked it up in Ancient Egypt in my last video. It represents rebirth. I pray that Tommy and everyone else gets to see that. I know I've cried a lot in this one. Sorry, I promise I'll do some happier stuff soon. For now, thanks for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.