Seventy years after Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, Cambridge University's Churchill Archives Centre has released a short film (free to embed) commemorating the 'forgotten architect' of D-Day.
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay was part of General Eisenhower's inner circle during the months and years of top secret planning that led to Operation Overlord, launched on June 6, 1944.
Ramsay was in overall command of Operation Neptune, the unimaginably complex naval and landing operations of D-Day, as more than 4,000 ships and landing craft, nearly 200,000 men and thousands of aircraft took part in the first wave of Normandy landings.
However, Ramsay has become one of D-Day's forgotten men; a fatal plane crash in 1945 robbing him of the chance of penning his memoirs or taking his place alongside other venerated Allied leaders such as Eisenhower and Churchill at the end of hostilities.
Today, the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, is home to the personal archive of Admiral Ramsay, as well as those of Churchill and other distinguished military and political figures. The Ramsay archive includes his D-Day diary, invasion maps, photographs and correspondence -- as well as eyewitness accounts from the Dunkirk evacuation, another watershed occasion in British naval history overseen by Ramsay.
5 июн 2014
