The Memorial Day edition of The Scotsman contains this piece of news:
ANGRY D-Day war veterans last night branded BBC Scotland "fools" for not producing a single programme to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.BBC Scotland may forget, but we have not. Let us start by taking a look at Lord Lovat's commandos.Scottish troops played a key role in events of June 6, 1944, including the taking of Pegasus Bridge by Royal Marines under the command of Lord Lovat.
Veterans of "the longest day" said they were stunned that the broadcaster had not followed the rest of the BBC which is broadcasting five hours of prime time drama and 16 hours of documentary and live coverage of events on the Normandy coast....
A spokeswoman for BBC Scotland confirmed there would be no commemorative Scottish D-Day programmes: "There's nothing coming from up here in Scotland."
One thing you probably don't know about Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade is that D-Day wasn't their first amphibious assault. They did so well at Sword Beach in part because they'd been involved in a disaster. Operation Jubilee was "intended to determine the practicalities of seizing an enemy-held port by direct assault, as well as forcing the Germans to divert troops to the defence of Occupied Europe. The assault force comprised 4,961 Canadians from 4th and 6th Canadian Brigades, 1,057 British Army and Royal Marine Commandos, and 50 US Rangers." The Allies threw six thousand of their finest into 'the Grim Gap of Death' just to see if it would work. The notion was to land the commandos first, to silence the big coastal guns at Dieppe in advance of the Canadians' landing. Pretty much the only part of this assault that went as planned was Lord Lovat's end, where his Commandos quickly took the batteries to which they'd been assigned. Cameron Highlanders assigned to support him advanced two miles inland to prevent the German positions being reinforced.
Nothing else went close to plan, and the Canadian forces suffered 68% losses in the assault. The retreat to sea accomplished, the survivors brought back lessons for D-Day: the need for artificial harbors, to avoid the necessity of capturing one of the so-well defended natural ports.
When D-Day finally came some two years later, Lord Lovat and his men were returned to the fray. Elements of the 1st Special Service Brigade (under the command of Free French fighter Cpt. Phillipe Kieffer) landed at Sword Beach with the 22nd Dragoon Guards, who wore green berets to the landing because "helmets were not manly." The 22nd had been raised from a combination of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoons ("Quis Separabit?" or "Who shall separate [Ireland from the UK]?") and the Royal Inniskilling Dragoons ("Vestigia nulla retrorsum!" or "No Steps Backwards!"). They advanced to the bagpipes.
The Scots were, on this occasion, filling the role the poor Canadians had held in Jubilee. Rather than being tasked with commando raids to silence the batteries, they were themselves the assault force. Fortunately, the team assigned their old role did the job just as well as they had done in 1942. A team of paratroopers rushed the German positions just before the landing, managing to do--in the face of superior German defenders--what 4,000 pounds of bombs had failed to do: silence the guns. The paras were killed, and two of the guns repaired; but their work gave the Scots breathing space.
Lord Lovat's remaining forces landed at Ouistreham, clearing the town and taking the Pegasus bridge. This you will have seen in "The Longest Day," which also featured the living piper from the invasion itself.
Worth noting in the history is the Kieffer prayer, a bold devotional offered on the morn of the assault:
Lord, I shall be very busy today. I may forget about You, but do not Thou forget about me.In this they recalled the fighters of the Bannockburn, which the Archdeacon of Aberdeen remembered in his writings of 1330:
The Scottismen commonallyQuotes enough. But if you would have more, I refer you to a Scot patriot-poet, who wrote "The Piper of D-Day."
Kneelt all doun, to God to pray,
And a short prayer, there made they,
To God to help them in that ficht.
And when the English king had sicht
Of them kneeland, he said in hy:
'Yon folk kneel to ask mercy.'
Sir Ingram said: 'Ye say sooth now,
They ask mercy, but not of you.'
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