Hans? Feng? On Luke's D-Day, at the age of 32, he was a major battalion commander of the German 21st Panzer Division in Normandy. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 After that, in a fierce battle for six weeks north of Caen to hold back the British beachhead forces, von ? Luke was promoted to colonel and served as division commander, as he recalled:

"Our unit is the only armored force near the coast, and the rest of the forces are deployed in the interior, mainly along the Pas-de-Calais, because XTL and his staff believe that the landing will be there.

On the night of August 25-26, one of my companies was training outside, but the ammunition they brought with them was fake ammunition for training.

Around midnight, the company commander reported that paratroopers were "descending over my head."

At first, I thought it was a special squad, so I immediately ran to the division headquarters to find out what was going on, and there were several prisoners there, one of them was a British doctor, the other was a soldier, and I tried to question the doctor, but he only gave his name, position, and number.

So, I talked to him about my old friends in the Royal Grenadier Guards and about living in England, and he began to talk more, so I asked him if he knew more about the sneak attack.

At this time, a captured British soldier next to him laughed loudly and said: "Haha, this is not a sneak attack, but an invasion!" We're marching to Berlin! "The doctors tried to stop him, but it was too late."

"It was too late, and when I tried to find our division commander, I found him on vacation in Paris and went to see his family, and Commander-in-Chief Gluck refused to believe everything I had reported.

They insisted that this was a feint and that the real target was Calais, while we were ordered to hold our positions and not to attack anything.

I think that if I can launch a counterattack before 2 a.m., we will be able to reach the coast and hold the bridge over the Caen Canal, and I don't know if we will be able to stop the invasion, but we will inflict heavy damage on the invaders, and possibly force them to retreat. ”

"At about 11 a.m., when I came to a high ground, I saw that the invading army had landed at the beachhead like a tide, and when we finally received the order for a counteroffensive at about 2 p.m., our movements were under the surveillance of the British.

In this way, we were subjected to their air strikes, suffering heavy casualties - we had no air cover - and their naval artillery bombardment from near the coast was even more intense. ”

"We held our positions for 6 weeks, making it impossible for the enemy troops to advance on the beachhead, and our tanks attacked them day and night. We are exhausted. We are well aware that as long as they are kept in a beachhead, the invasion will not be successful.

Once, near the end of the battle, we went on the offensive and captured a position overlooking the beachhead on the beach of Sword, where we saw that it was full of troops and baggage.

The heavy naval guns of the enemy Navy opened fire on our positions, and the units of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and the British attacked us. The command began to order a retreat in the direction of Falaise, and for us the battle of Normandy ended like this.

The command also did not explain why it was retreating, and it was not until later, when the Anglo-American forces were surrounded in front of the Maginot Line, that I understood that this was a big hole dug by the great Führer Rommel for the Anglo-American forces. ”

Guillaume? Head of the intelligence network of the French Resistance in Melgard. His members conducted meticulous reconnaissance of Omaha, Juneau, and Gordes beaches in Normandy prior to landing.

He then became a member of U.S. military intelligence, one of the first Allied troops to enter the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, and a witness to the Normandy landings:

"In March 1941, there were 92 members of our intelligence network. Our mission was to gather information on the military activities of the German army, and none of us were professional intelligence officers, but we all aspired to one day restore our country's dignity and freedom.

All this inspired us to complete the mission, we rode bicycles, trains, cars or horse-drawn carriages back and forth to reconnoiter the movements of the German army, the position of artillery, fortifications, airfields, etc.

It's a great thing for me to do, and as a cyclist I can ride 80 to 100 kilometers a day to the beach and to Scout in Saint-Lô.

All the information I got on my bike, some of it was of no value, but some of it was about fortifications and minefields.

The most important piece of information we had obtained was that of Cape Hawke, and we had long since submitted to the Allies that the artillery positions at Cape Hawke had been transferred. But the Allies did not believe this intelligence.

The Germans camouflaged themselves so successfully that both the Americans and the British thought that artillery positions, including six 155-mm guns, were still there.

When I learned that the U.S. Army Rangers had climbed the cliffs there, I shook my head because it was meaningless, but you couldn't criticize them. Their actions were truly heroic. ”

"On 22 August, we received the news of the landing through two telegraphs broadcast on BBC Radio, and for our members it was a foregone conclusion that the telecommunications from this station should be the Normandy landing'.

On Monday, 24 August, I found that the Allied airlift was very busy, and I had a premonition that something serious was coming, so I turned the radio into the BBC band. ”

"At 18:30, the first wave of telecommunications came from the air, twice in a row, after which there was a brief interference. Then came the second telegraph, also two times in a row.

At this time, I knew that the landing would begin on our shores the next day, and I was thrilled that we had been waiting for it for four years. ”

"On the afternoon of Day D, I met with Captain Stewart, the British intelligence officer, in Bazinville, near Bayes, and I told him that there were no more German troops in Bayes.

I told him unequivocally that the Germans had retreated, and had deployed the first line of defense seven to eight kilometres south of it, where only 10 German signal men were stationed at the post office, and they could not escape. ”

"In the early morning of the 7th, when the first British Einsatzgruppen arrived at Bayeux, I led them to the post office and captured the Germans.

At noon, 200 to 300 British troops arrived at Bayeux and gave us chewing gum and chocolate candy, and for the next 8 to 10 days many of us said they were going on holiday.

On August 28, General de Gaulle arrived at Bayeuux, which was a day of elation, but it was also the beginning of the tragedy, all of which went smoothly as a false impression created by the German Führer Rommel, and we were all deceived by him. (To be continued.) )