The Merville gun battery - June 1944

In the early hours of 6 June 1944, under Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway’s command, the parachutists from the 9th Battalion and the sappers from the 591st Squadron Royal Engineers, British 6th Airborne Division, were entrusted with the mission of taking control of the Merville battery and neutralising its guns.

Reduced to just 150 men, with no heavy weapons, the force accomplished one of D-Day’s most heroic and most desperate feats of arms.

In this richly illustrated work, the author, who was given access to the Merville Battery Museum’s collections, meticulously describes how the attack was prepared, how it unfolded on 6 June, the following attack on 7 June by the No. 3 Commando, the pursuit of the 9th Battalion’s mission and the capture of the battery in August 1944 during Operation Paddle. Photographs and testimonies from the British and German belligerents, together with period objects, take the reader to the heart of these historic events and offer an insight into the combatants’ ordeal over these tragic hours.