JUNE BRINGS D-DAY, OF COURSE

June is, of course, the month of the Normandy invasion; June 6, 1944. Winston Churchill wanted badly to cross the English Channel with the troops on D-Day and observe the invasion firsthand. The King, however, restrained him. On June 12 (D-Day +6), Churchill finally embarked from Dover, telegraphing to Stalin, “It is a wonderful sight to see this city of ships stretching along the coast for nearly fifty miles.”

For his own Normandy landing, Winston Churchill was run right up onto the beaches in an amphibious vehicle. He was then driven to General Montgomery’s headquarters, where he lunched amid air raid alarms and anti-aircraft fire that, Monty would later observe, left him rather pleased.

Churchill returned to the Normandy beaches on July 22, 1944, after which he was driven by Montgomery across the River Orne for a surprise visit to the French city of Caen, which had only just been captured by the Allies. A marvelous photograph of the two of them standing in Montgomery’s Humber (together with Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey, the Commander of the British 2nd Army) was signed by them both, and later framed. You can view it HERE.

Montgomery’s Humber was provided to him by the Humber/Hillman distributor in Cairo during Montgomery’s time there as commander of the Eighth Army, from August 1942 through 1943. Montgomery loved the car and brought it with him to Sicily, then on to France and Germany in 1944, before ultimately taking it home to England after the war, much to the annoyance  of the War Office. The car remained with him until his death.