Original subtitles

This programme contains footage some viewers may find distressing

June 6th 1944, 6am,

off the coast of Normandy.

More than 120,000 soldiers are about to land on the beaches

to take back France from the Germans.

Among them, a handful of cameramen and photographers assigned

to the 5,000 boats approaching the French coast.

Their role will be to ensure that the world can witness

how the fate of Europe will be decided.

The cameras are ubiquitous, everywhere.

Every single shot you see

was shot by someone who put himself in danger.

How did these men in the shadows,

amid the confusion and intensity of the fighting,

capture these thousands of photos

and hundreds of hours of footage,

some of which have become legendary?

He's cold, he's scared,

and all he can do is film.

He is capturing in real time action as it happens, and whatever he does

in that moment will be for ever.

Among those who took part, cameras in hand, in the D-Day landings,

we have chosen four men whose work has not only captured

but changed history.

John Ford, renowned Hollywood director, in charge of filming

as much D-Day footage as possible for the OSS,

forerunner of the CIA.

George Stevens, American film director,

head of a special film unit under the command of General Eisenhower.

Richard Taylor, military cameraman

with the 165th Signal Photographic Company.

And Jack Lieb, press reporter for News Of The Day.

Alongside them, and through exceptional archive footage,

you'll experience the candid, unvarnished events of June 6th

1944, and understand how these images played

such an important role.

If the Supreme Commander had decided that cameras should not be there,

there are all sorts of things we wouldn't know today

about what happened.

Come witness D-Day and the forgotten heroes

who risked their lives to film these 24 hours of fighting...

..that led to the liberation of France and the whole of Europe.

SHIP HORN BLARES

Southern England, spring 1944.

Thousands of American, British and Canadian soldiers prepare

for one of the biggest military operations in history...

..to retake control of France from the Germans.

After more than four years of conflict,

Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany still controls a large part of Europe,

but its military situation is critical.

In the south, the Allies have retaken North Africa

and gained a foothold in Italy.

In the east, Third Reich troops are suffering heavy losses

at the hands of the Soviets.

To win the war and keep the Germans at bay,

the Allied command must open a new front in the west.

The solution - land troops on the French coast to reconquer

enemy-occupied territory.

For this operation, they choose Normandy, 80km of sandy beaches,

ideal for soldiers to infiltrate from the sea.

But the operation would prove extremely risky.

The coast has been fortified.

The Nazi high command describes it as impregnable.

At the head of the Alliance against Nazi Germany

are Franklin Roosevelt, the American President,

Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister,

and Joseph Stalin, the Soviet ruler.

All three leaders know that the outcome of the Second World War

would be decided on the shores of Normandy.

Among the thousands of men arriving in England from the United States

are soldiers like no others.

They're not here to fight the war...

..but to film it.

Faced with a military and political stakes of the landings,

the American command includes photographers and cameramen

with the invading troops.

In World War II,

on the Western Allied side, there is a commitment to documenting

the war, to making sure that we have the footage, making sure

that we have the photographs, making sure that we're using, you know,

sort of camera technology, which was very advanced by the 1940s

to document this war for the people on the home front so they can see

what they're paying for, what they're sacrificing for.

To co-ordinate the use of cameras in battle,

Franklin Roosevelt selects William Donovan, head of the OSS,

the American intelligence service at the time, forerunner of the CIA.

Within the OSS,

the Field Photographic Branch is given a separate assignment.

A task force has been granted permission

to film clandestine operations.

At its head is Hollywood legend John Ford, with over 100 films

and three Oscars to his credit.

John Ford could have stayed in Hollywood and made a lot of money,

but he wanted to serve his country, and as early as 1934, he was already

in the Naval Reserve, and he was working as a kind of a spy

in his time between films.

He loved the excitement and the travel and seeing the world.

Since the creation of his unit,

Ford has used his cover as a Hollywood director

with a passion for navigation

to film over 87 movies for the OSS.

Ford also made propaganda films about Pearl Harbor

and the Battle of Midway.

Ford was not in the greatest physical shape,

and he had to get an exemption to be in the Navy because he had bad eyes.

But he was eager to join the service,

and he was the perfect kind of guy to run an operation filming.

ARCHIVE: Somewhere in England,

Army Signal Corps cameramen await the order to go into action

with General Eisenhower's forces of...

In addition to John Ford's cameramen and the OSS, another team

is assembled, this time under the direction

of the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe,

who leads the entire invasion force,

General Dwight Eisenhower.

He wants his own film crew,

and selects another great American

director to lead it, George Stevens.

My father, before World War II,

had become one of the most prominent

directors in Hollywood, making a variety of films.

He was well beyond draft age.

He was 37 years old.

And I think out of a sense of patriotism and a feeling

that his skills could make a difference, he went away

for three years.

It was a personal awareness of his own.

That's where he belonged.

George Stevens will select the best civilian and military cameramen,

some of whom have already worked alongside him on his feature films,

to create a team called the Special Coverage Unit.

Their job was to film 35mm black and white coverage,

which they did, these excellent cameramen.

But my father had a 16mm Bell and Howell camera, which he took

behind-the-scenes shots,

and he took these pictures in colour.

And he, and others in his unit,

would pass that camera around and shoot in colour.

And it's one of the best-quality films ever made.

While General Eisenhower has his own film crew,

other US Army divisions can also count

on specially trained military photographers and cameramen

embedded with the combat troops.

They are part of the Army Signal Corps that manages

all telecommunications between the American land forces.

For the landing,

the 165th and the 166th companies are mobilised.

In addition to the military apparatus, the Allied command

authorises several reporters and war correspondents to embark alongside

the troops. Hand-picked for their reliability and skills,

several arrive in England and wait, like the soldiers, for the mission

to be launched.

Among the reporters on site is Jack Lieb, a renowned cameraman

and reporter sent by News Of The Day,

a company that produces newsreels, which, at the time,

were shown in cinemas across the USA.

My grandfather was an adventurer.

He travelled through Africa for many years.

He had gone to Nicaragua,

so he had already been a world traveller at this point.

And his films were quite respected by management.

On June 1st 1944,

after several weeks of waiting, the war correspondents finally

receive the order to leave their base camp.

Their destination is Plymouth,

over 300km from London.

We were being boarded onto military trucks

to be taken to the south coast,

and we went through small British towns,

and life was going on as usual.

Each crosspoint was under guard of both an American

and a British soldier.

If they wanted to see what you had in your bedroll,

you showed it to them.

This is the care that was taken - that the secret of the invasion

be kept as long as it could.

We tried to keep our mind off of what was coming, and we knew

it was going to be a short time before we would be on board.

While the soldiers and cameramen don't know when the mission

will be launched, or where they're going, they're boarding

the boats that will take them to the French coast.

The barges that will land

the soldiers on the beaches are so heavily laden that trucks must

push them so they can be under way and attached to the boats

that will cross the Channel.

The men aboard can do nothing but wait patiently

for the operation to begin.

On the evening of June 5th,

the Special Coverage Unit cameras are with General Eisenhower

at Greenham Common airbase, south of the small town of Newbury.

The film crews and photographers had been summoned at the request

of the Supreme Allied leader himself, but Eisenhower is worried.

After having to postpone the landings due to bad weather,

he has just given the go-ahead for the operation that would change

the course of history.

It's probably midday on June 5th when he has to make his call,

according to how the timetable is going to unfold.

He's arguably the most powerful person in the history of the planet,

with all this military means at his disposal.

Once he gives the decision to go, it's kind of all out of his hands.

It's in everybody else's hands by then.

It begins with paratroopers

from the American 101st Airborne Division,

about to take off for France.

They will land behind enemy lines during the night to prepare

the ground for the invading forces.

It's 8:30pm, and General Eisenhower is eager to greet his men

as the cameras roll.

He knows that many of them will not return alive.

His airborne commander, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory,

had warned him that between 50 and 70% of his airborne

and glider forces would be eviscerated.

This is a terrible number.

You get up into those kinds of numbers and the operation

is a failure.

But he did a strategic analysis, realising that he absolutely

had to use airborne forces, because they had to clear

the causeways off the beaches so that the troops that were landing

on the beaches could actually make progress,

get off those beaches in a timely way.

So it was a very, very courageous decision.

I think it's even more courageous to go look people in the eye

after you've made a decision that you know

is going to be potentially devastating to those individuals.

Hand in his pocket and a smile on his face,

the most powerful man on the planet becomes the equal of his soldiers.

As captured in this legendary image of a conversation

between the General and Lieutenant Wallace Strobel, then aged 22.

Paratrooper number 23,

in that iconic picture, survived the war.

What they were talking about was fly fishing.

If you look carefully at his hand gesture, you can see

that he's casting his line.

He wanted to actually give these young men a sense of home,

a sense of life, of what they're going to come back to,

because he knew that they were probably very, very frightened.

The last thing he wanted to do was to frighten them more with a pep

talk, but to be casual with them and to be approachable and to let

them know that he had their backs.

Dwight Eisenhower understood the power of photography

and sending messages.

There's no doubt that he wanted it photographed.

It was as important to send a message to the troops

as it was to their families at home.

Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, standing side by side

with the men who were going to carry out this mission.

From that moment, as the planes and gliders take off from the English

base, the die is cast.

It's down to the minute, the culmination of months and months

and months of minute, careful orchestration and planning.

By the evening of June 5th, most of the boats have sailed.

They're on their way to France.

It's generally about a six-hour journey, roughly, for a lot of them

to get across. And, of course, there's a timing and schedule

as to when they're supposed to get there and where they go

and which sea lane.

As the first Americans parachute onto French soil

around midnight, the land invasion forces set sail for France.

Destroyers, battleships, barges, and transport barges.

In all, more than 5,000 ships, carrying 123,000 soldiers

and over 20,000 vehicles.

Along with the soldiers, a few dozen military cameramen and war

correspondents are distributed among these ships.

The cameras are ubiquitous.

You have that kind of visual documentation right there and set

up to go - everywhere.

All those cameras are documenting the faces, the reality

of what this looked like, what people were wearing,

what the expressions were on their faces, how they were moving

around, what the vehicles looked like.

This is the most documented event in human history,

up to this moment in time.

George Stevens, head of the Special Coverage Unit,

is aboard HMS Belfast, heading for Juno Beach.

Jack Lieb, the war reporter, is on LCI-5.

Destination - Utah Beach.

John Ford, in charge of filming operations for the OSS,

is aboard USS Plunket, a US Navy destroyer.

His crews will film the soldiers landing on Omaha Beach

from the ships.

And among all the cameramen aboard the invasion fleet, one man

will capture the first moments of battle as no-one ever had.

Aboard the British ship HMS Empire Anvil,

Sergeant Richard Taylor is a member of the 165th

Signal Photographic Company.

Along with seven other members of Detachment L, he has been assigned

to a battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment of the fifth

US Army Corps.

His mission is to land on Omaha Beach alongside the very first

waves of soldiers.

In a letter he wrote to his sister-in-law,

Taylor recounts the restless hours he spent off the coast of England

before departing for the French beaches.

Between 11 and 12 o'clock, the night of June 5th, I was tossing

and turning in my bunk, knowing that by 3am.

we'd be in little boats headed for Normandy Beach.

I just couldn't sleep.

Thinking of my family...

..the fun and good times we all spent together.

Yes, and even the rough times.

Read my Bible, but couldn't concentrate as you and family

would bob up in my mind.

Wonder if anyone back there thought that in the next six or seven hours,

hell would break loose.

Kind of a goodbye letter.

I think a lot of things are running in his head that night.

Is this going to be it? Is this going to be my last time

I'm going to see everybody?

He was pretty nervous.

He knew that he was going to be part of something really big.

There was that kind of that excitement, kind of mixed

in with the fear of what was going to happen and who was going to die,

and he knew there was going to be death, but he just didn't know

what to expect.

In the early hours of the morning, Allied aircraft and ships begin

bombing enemy defences along the coast.

The invasion troops on the ships have just been ordered

to climb aboard the barges that will take them to the beaches.

The H-Hour, the time at which the first wave of soldiers will set

foot on French soil, has been set for 6:30am.

The photographers, they're right in there with these guys.

You're aboard the boat, you're supposed to hit the beach,

you're supposed to secure the beaches.

It's a straight, linear kind of operation aboard those boats.

I think you get a sense of how confining they are,

where people are standing and how uncomfortable they look.

It's just a kind of sensory overload.

The mist, the bobbing around, the sea spray, the seasickness,

maybe, of somebody near you.

The sounds, the overwhelming sounds, because there's a lot of ordnance.

The shelling from warships, the rocket boats, the noise,

the noise of the engines.

The smell of the fumes, the engine fumes.

It's right there.

In addition to that salty brine of the sea, the stink of wet uniforms.

A kind of overwhelming of the senses of sound, sight

and smell, in addition to whatever kind of nerves you would have had,

whether it's a rifleman or a commander or a photographer.

Sergeant Taylor is aboard an LTA, a small barge that carries

around 30 soldiers.

He has just loaded his first roll of film and turned on his camera.

For a few seconds, the images are blurred.

We can only make out the other barges advancing towards the beaches

on either side of the boat.

Think of the incredible motion of the landing craft, the jostling

from the soldiers, the danger of the gunfire.

So he's, in a very real sense,

getting, finding his feet on the boat

as the film begins.

And in a way, that kind of mirrors what the soldiers were probably

feeling, is like, there's initial confusion.

You can smell the fear right in the air, but then you get close

to the beach, and then things stabilise

and things become more clear.

Some of that out-of-focus work is just him getting ready to make

sure that everything is ready for him to go, that as soon

as he hits the beach, he's going to be shooting.

There was a big expectation placed on him and the other photographers

to do this, and he knew that.

So he was going to make sure it was going to be good,

in his eyes. He was always a perfectionist, always.

He was ready to start.

He had a job and he was going to do it and do the best job he could.

Richard Taylor is seated in the back of the LCA boat that he was in

because the combat soldiers needed to be up front, they were the ones

who were going to jump out, and his job was to film from behind.

Then any land that's in front of you, that's a hostile presence.

There are Germans there. You're in your boat.

You want to get off that boat, but where are you going to go?

Land. Land controlled by your enemies.

The glimpses start to come in of that coastline,

through the mist, the smoke and dust and disorientation,

the bobbing around.

You're seeing those obstacles.

Whether the log obstacles, the hedgehogs, and wondering, probably

constantly, are we going to hit mines in our boat?

Or when I get ashore, am I going to touch off a mine?

In the soldier's mind, all right, we're here.

Now we know what to do.

Now we're not simply helpless people bobbing about.

We've got a mission

we know how to execute, and they go forward.

With Sergeant Taylor's barge still a few hundred yards from shore...

..John Ford and the OSS teams aboard USS Plunket lead the convoy.

They land at Omaha Beach.

Some of these destroyers are getting as close to the beach as possible,

nearly running aground to provide covering fire.

So John Ford, from his vantage point on a destroyer, it is close enough

that you can actually see the action.

I'll never forget how rough that sea was.

The destroyers rolled terribly.

How anyone on the smaller landing craft had enough guts left to get

out and fight, I'll never understand.

The Plunket dropped anchor close inshore off Omaha Beach

about 6am.

Things began to happen fast.

It was extreme low tide, and all the underwater obstacles put

there by the Germans stuck out crazily like giant kid's jack straws

with mines and shells wired all over them.

As the first landing craft started past the Plunket, I could see

the troops bailing with their helmets, stopping

to heave their guts out every few throws.

Unhappily, when our bombs missed their troops opposing us,

they finally opened up with firepower.

It was tragic what they did to us.

Troops were jumping over the side into the water so they wouldn't

have to wade through streams of machinegun fire

when the bow ramp dropped.

Before the cameramen's eyes, the soldiers fall in battle.

The first of many to lose their lives on this day.

A few minutes after the first wave of soldiers arrives, the barge

carrying Sergeant Richard Taylor reaches Omaha Beach...

..and the area known as Fox Red, on the eastern edge of the beach.

Richard Taylor was the first camera guy on the ground on Omaha Beach

in that sector.

He did not know what he was going to experience.

He knew his role was to film his soldiers that he came

with as they were going against the fire and into the enemy

territory on the beach.

As they jump out of the boat, he has to jump out of the boat

as well, into the water.

He jumps out, and 30 seconds later he's hit in the left arm.

So he is trying to stay alive himself and keep his camera dry

and run for his life.

And he's got 300 yards to get across the beach.

And he sees the cliffs on Fox Red.

It's the only part of Omaha Beach that has these cliffs.

It's very distinguishable. SOLDIER: Over there!

You can tell that they were in the right place.

Everyone was running for those cliffs because that was shelter.

Above the cliff,

that's where the Germans are, on WN60, shooting down on them.

There's WN60, 61 and 62.

62 is over to your right.

61 is the middle.

And they're running straight towards the Germans at the nest

of number 60.

Below the nest is this cliff, and everybody's running

towards it to try to save themselves.

Sergeant Taylor and the few soldiers he has landed with manage

to reach the cliff.

They are finally protected from enemy fire directly overhead.

It's around 7am,

and despite his wounded arm,

Sergeant Taylor turns his camera back on.

Sergeant Taylor was lucky to be alive

at that point, to begin with.

He's been in the water.

He's cold.

He's scared.

It's sandy, it's early in the morning,

and all he can do is film.

This is when the cameraman filmed these images of Omaha Beach.

12 seconds of film that would resonate for generations.

Before his lens, two soldiers are mowed down as they run.

Neither would recover.

It was fortunate that he landed there,

that he was able to get to a position

where he was then able to turn

his focus back to the beach.

And his tracking shot reveals

his understanding of the needs of the moment -

that in order for the people back home to understand

the scale of this thing,

that he needed to do the sort of the panorama -

like start with the American officers in the foreground

and then do a pan across so you can see the bigger picture.

He is capturing in real time action as it happens.

It was not planned.

As far as he knew,

the next bullet was going for him,

and yet he keeps his focus.

He recognises the importance of the moment,

and whatever he does in that moment will be for ever.

Minutes later, when calm had returned,

Sergeant Taylor took the time to film the men

he had landed with.

Some are wounded,

others are digging foxholes to protect themselves.

But most are stunned

by what they've just experienced.

Taylor - he's wounded himself,

and he's there with all the wounded guys.

And as a photographer,

he's trying to get the human experience as well -

at the same time, scared to death

and witnessing something

that he never thought he would witness.

He understands

and he can relate to these guys.

And that's maybe why this footage is so powerful -

because he's one of them.

He just happens to be holding the camera.

And he was going around and filming these guys.

I mean, maybe there is a little bit of laugh or a smile,

but, you know, they survived.

After filming his last images

and taking a few snapshots with his camera,

Richard Taylor returns to England

to have his wounded arm treated.

Five days later, from his hospital bed,

he writes these words to his family.

"You've wondered why I haven't written lately.

"Couldn't say then, but can now, I guess.

"I got in quite early on one of the landings,

"but was winged slightly in left arm.

"Don't worry, as it's not bad.

"It was somewhat rough on the others, though.

"I'm in a beautiful section of England now,

"in a lovely and clean hospital,

"resting and taking life easy.

"Managed to get some fairly good photos

"before returning from France."

He wasn't one to brag about himself,

but it's historical.

He didn't know that he was taking history at the time.

He did not know.

But he was a professional, so he said, "I took some good shots."

Taylor's roll three, taken there,

Omaha Beach,

is the first motion picture footage

taken by an American combat photographer

of the Normandy invasion.

All of its ugliness,

all of its chaos and confusion,

this is just a little bit of reality

of the war that he's capturing.

And yet it gets us closer

to the reality of that event

than anything else that we probably did.

As Sergeant Taylor made his way to England,

John Ford and his cameraman land on Omaha Beach.

"When our outfit hit the beach, we ran for cover.

"Then we made for the hills,

"pausing to expose film footage

"here and there.

"I don't think I ever saw more than a dozen men at a time

"on that beach.

"That's all my eye could take in.

"It is the extreme example of the narrow view

"of the participants,

"because my staff and I had the job

"of seeing the whole invasion for the world,

"but all anyone of us saw

"was his own little area."

What you're seeing is mainly

just sort of the guys around you,

and the whole plane of your existence

is those people

right there at that place in time.

You're in your own little world

with you and six, seven, eight, ten other guys.

That is your world. You have no sense of the larger expanse.

On that day,

the only people able to capture the scope

of this extraordinary military operation

are the photographers from the US Air Force.

Aboard American aircraft,

they are the first to fly over the 80km of landing beaches,

taking thousands of photos.

These images bear witness

to the morning of June 6th 1944

when the Allies land on French soil.

You're going to have this combined arms assault -

tanks, infantry, engineers

all coming in, like at the same time,

to overwhelm the German defences

and the German defenders, all doing their own job.

As the hours unfold,

the invasion is ongoing,

which means just constant new waves

of people and equipment and vehicles

and weaponry coming ashore.

And that's the key to the Allied victory...

..just that kind of constant overwhelming of the German defences.

As the waves of soldiers and vehicles

continue to pour onto Omaha Beach,

other Allied divisions descend

upon the other four landing beaches.

Some 30km east of Omaha,

George Stevens and the Special Coverage Unit cameramen

are aboard HMS Belfast,

facing Juno Beach and the small commune of Bernieres-sur-Mer,

where the Canadian units will land.

In the images filmed aboard the ship,

we see the director among the soldiers,

shots in black and white, and others in colour,

taken with his personal camera,

capture the atmosphere aboard the ship off the French coast.

This was an armada.

This was the greatest seaborne invasion in history.

You see barrage balloons in the sky

and you see ships beyond it.

And around a corner of the ship -

walks into the frame - is my 38-year-old father in combat gear.

The HMS Belfast was the flagship of the fleet,

and Belfast would fire the first shot to the French shoreline

at 5:30 on the morning of D-Day.

And later, George Stevens talked to the admiral commanding the ship

and got permission to go ashore on a DUKW onto Juno Beach.

And they were able to go to shore

and be part of that on D-Day.

George Stevens climbs aboard an amphibious vehicle

heading for Bernieres-sur-Mer.

Earlier in the morning,

soldiers from the North Shore Regiment,

an infantry regiment of the Canadian Army,

landed on the beaches opposite the village.

Three of the barges had been fitted with automatic cameras.

Each camera was loaded

with one minute of film.

But it would be enough.

The first on-board cameras in history.

The images filmed by these three cameras,

with their lenses facing Juno Beach on D-Day,

will become legendary.

They allow us to experience from the inside

the anguish of the first assault wave of soldiers

seconds before they hit the beach.

These are the only images to document the fateful moment when,

having arrived at the French coast,

the barges open their doors

and tens of thousands of soldiers

pour into the water.

For some of these soldiers, exposed to enemy fire,

it could be the last thing they do.

At the end of the footage,

shot by camera number 27,

when the barge has almost emptied of its occupants,

one of the last soldiers can be seen

giving his comrade a friendly pat on the shoulder.

The soldier would later be identified as Private George Baker,

21 at the time...

..bestowing a token of encouragement and humanity...

..in the horror of war.

Of the 37 members of young George Baker's platoon,

nine would be killed within minutes of landing.

ARCHIVE: Canadians meet considerable fire on the beaches

as they work their way into the defences.

There is stiff hand-to-hand fighting in the little coast town.

But the citizen soldiers of yesterday are now a hardened mass

of professional killers.

It takes several hours of fierce fighting

before Canadian troops recapture

the small town of Bernieres-sur-Mer

from the Germans.

After disembarking with their equipment,

George Stevens and the Special Coverage Unit cameramen

crisscrossed the town's streets

to immortalise the day of liberation.

The unblinking eyes of the cameras

record the stigmata of battle

left on the buildings.

But the Hollywood director knows that, despite the losses suffered

by the troops,

the images his men are capturing

would prove that the Allied landings in Normandy are a success.

So he stages this shot in front of the train station.

A powerful symbol for the world at Bernieres-sur-Mer -

the flag of France once again flies freely.

After the hours of anguish involved in crossing the Channel

and arriving on the beaches,

the cameramen are finally able to take a few minutes to breathe.

This is an opportunity for them

to label the rolls shot

during the landings -

moments of respite

before filming the remaining operations in the field.

As George Stevens and his crew

prepare their camp

outside Bernieres-sur-Mer,

Jack Lieb, the News Of The Day reporter,

has just landed on Utah Beach.

Of the five beachheads, Utah is the furthest west.

When he finally got to the beaches of Normandy,

he had to make several trips back and forth

through the water

just to bring his camera equipment

onto the beaches.

Soldiers are being shot

left and right,

and he's carrying his camera equipment.

He's got to survive.

He's got to make his way to the beaches.

I don't think he worried about dying,

in the sense that... he would focus on what he needed.

Dying could happen,

but that wasn't a reality for him.

His reality was, "I've got to get the shot."

"The section of the beach we were on

"was being attacked by enemy fire.

"The bulldozers were trying to clear roads

"to let our tanks move forward.

"Even though it was June,

"the area was quite cold.

"The men dug their foxholes a little deeper.

"Later that day, we filmed some of the first German prisoners

"taken in the area,

"who were captured close to the beach."

While the reporters on Utah Beach

prepare to spend their first night on French soil,

reinforcements continue to arrive from the sea -

a continuous parade of men and vehicles

that will last through the summer of 1944.

By the evening of June 6th,

fighting has ceased on the five landing beaches

recaptured from the Germans.

The toll of this day -

one of the most important in history -

amounted to over 10,000 dead, wounded or missing

on the Allied side,

nearly half of them on Omaha Beach alone,

which would later be nicknamed

Bloody Omaha.

On the German side,

losses amounted to almost 6,000 soldiers killed.

Several thousand were taken prisoner.

The thousands of images and miles of footage

shot by photographers and cameramen during the D-Day invasion

are gathered together and rushed to England.

The Allies have a huge publishing capability in London.

They can actually be coming out very quickly,

but using some of the early teletype

and telegraphic transfer information,

almost like a fax machine for 1944.

So it's not going to be the highest quality.

But for a newspaper, it's perfectly fine.

They are creating

a much more rapid turnaround of information,

but for the public.

As early as June 7th,

the world's press shows the first photos

of the Allies' arrival on the beaches of Normandy.

ARCHIVE: Today, just as in these scenes,

the armies of the United Nations have made their first landings

on the soil of Western Europe.

There was a lot of concern that the invasion would fail,

so given the scope of the sacrifice,

this was going to give the public

a morale boost,

because the war has been going on for several years now.

And by finally kicking in the door of Europe,

people could see there could be an end in sight.

We are now moving towards a point

where we could actually win this war.

In London,

John Ford and the OSS teams are tasked with editing a film

in less than 48 hours.

They would compile 33 minutes

of the day's most powerful shots,

to be shown to Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin,

demonstrating the success of the Allied landings

on June 6th 1944,

the day that changed the fate of Europe.

So much was riding on the invasion.

This was opening a second front.

The Soviets had been demanding

that the Allies do this for a long time now,

so it was vital

for Churchill and Roosevelt to show Stalin

that this was a success.

So the OSS special effort

to document and turn it into a quick turnaround film

for senior leaders

was a very important diplomatic tool

that would help keep the alliance together.

And this is part of the reason

why it was so critical to get the footage on the beach

and get it back

as quickly as possible.

On the ground,

soldiers, cameramen and photographers

prepare to spend their first night on French soil...

..relieved that they had survived the first day of the operation.

For all they know, the days, weeks and months to come

will also be filled with fighting, wounded and dead.

On the evening of June 6th 1944,

the battle for the liberation of Europe has only begun.

News Of The Day reporter Jack Lieb

and Special Coverage Unit chief George Stevens

will document the entire Battle of Normandy

and will be the first to enter Paris

on August 25th 1944 -

the only ones to shoot colour footage

of the liberation of the French capital.

For his role as chief cameraman of the OSS,

film legend John Ford was awarded

the Purple Heart and the Legion of Merit.

One of the most prestigious military decorations,

it is bestowed for exceptional conduct during wartime.

As for Sergeant Richard Taylor

of the 165th Signal Photographic Company,

he returned to France after injuring his arm during D-Day

and continued his mission as a cameraman

alongside Allied troops in Europe.

On his return home, he was awarded the Silver Star,

the third-highest military decoration

in the US Armed Forces,

for gallantry in action.

At the time, his name and photo appeared

in several press articles and news stories,

praising his courage

for being the only cameraman to shoot footage on the beach

at Bloody Omaha.

After the war,

the images and photos that documented the D-Day landings

would spread around the world,

and the names of the men behind the lens

would gradually be forgotten.

The photographers were anonymous.

They weren't doing it for fame.

They were doing it for the mission.

Nobody knows them.

And how would we know about anything that happened

if they weren't the ones filming it?

Every single shot you see,

every single foot of footage,

was shot by someone

who put himself in danger.

The war correspondents, the photographers -

I think they are heroes.

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