This AV documentary was created by Mollie McConaghy of Bangor, Co.Down. Narration is by Austin Lynas.

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If you are unable to use or get the Flash Player, below are some pictures and text which give an outline of the story.

Many of the pilots didn't know where they were due to thick cloud. Paratroopers were dropped over a much wider era than planned. Many were drowned or shot on landing.	Commemorative stone at Ste Mere Eglise, the first town to be freed during the Normandy assault.

Monument to Paratrooper John Steele who's parachute tangled on the church. He hung there all night pretending to be dead. He was rescued next morning by 82nd A.D.	In the church at Ste Mere Eglise there are now stained-glass windows depicting the paratroopers landing.

The town is littered with memorials to the events which took place there, including the Zero Kilometre stone, the first step on the road to liberty.	There is also a commorative stone to the Generals, Ridgeway and Gavin who commanded the battle for the town.

The Merderet River had been flooded by the Germans and as the troops came down many landed in the water and were drowned, weighed down by their heavy equiment.	This bridge over the Merderet was an important objective and it took two full days of fierce battle to secure it.

Beside the Merderet river the French have erected a statue, commemorating the American servicemen and the huge loss of life that they suffered in this place.	At Utah beach there is now a museum which has been designed to resemble a gun emplacement.

Road names around the Utah beach are all called after servicemen who fell on D-Day. Names that will not be forgotten.	Many of the commemorative sites have been left just as they were in 1944... strong visual reminders of what took place there.

This German battery at Crisbecq survived tremendous bombardment for 6 days and still stands today, a dark and brooding place, filled with the ghost of those who served within it.	At Pointe du Hoc a party of Rangers scaled these cliffs in the teeth of gunfire, mortars and grenades. A third of its men were killed here. The area was sucessfully secured.

Omaha beach. This was the scene for the bloodiest battle of the D-Day operation. Over 3000 troops were killed in just one day. 4Km of golden sand shows no evidence except...	...for the rusting remains of a "Higgins" boat. The landing craft used by the Allied Forces to deliver thousands of troops onto the Normandy beaches.

The American graveyard behind Omaha beach. Thousands of alabaster crosses stretch in all directions almost as far as the eye can see.	Only a couple of miles away the German cemetary, with its black granite crosses and mourning figures. 20,000 Germans are buried here.

Original Photography and AV production by Mollie McConaghy.

In 1955 Mollie, originally from Co. Antrim, attended a language course in the University of Caen where her tutor was a young man called Andre Heintz. He had been a resistance worker in his native city of Caen and had been responsible for the reception of the various signals warning about D-Day. His crystal set, embedded in a spinach tin is now in the museum and he himself has been featured in a number of D-Day documentaries.

Andre was passionate about the fact that most people couldn't comprehend the enormous sacrifices made, so he made sure that his students were taken to all the sites from Pegasus Bridge in the East to Carentan and explained the details of Operation Overlord. Of course at that time the scars of war were still very visible and few of the present day memorials had even been thought of. The whole experience inspired in Mollie a fascination with the period and the area which is still very much alive.

A few relevant websites... If you enter D-Day into your search engine you'll soon discover that there is a seemingly endless resource online on this topic. Here below are just a very few of those we've found. Please note that the BBC is not responsible for content on external sites.

BBC Newsline D-Day Remembered - series of special reports
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/bbcnewsline/special_report_dday.shtml

BBC WWII History site
www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwtwo/index_special.shtml

BBC News D-Day 60th
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/world/2004/d-day/default.stm

D-Day 60 UK
http://www.d-day60.co.uk

United States Army in World War II: US Army forces in Northern Ireland - Stations of Units
www.army.mil/cmh-pg/reference/ireland/nistat.htm

US National D-Day Memorial Foundation
www.dday.org

Britannica.com learning resource on Normandy
http://search.eb.com/normandy

Dday.Co.Uk
www.dday.co.uk

D-Day, Normandy & beyond, eyewitness WWII
www.normandy1944.info

D-Day Overlord.com
www.dday-overlord.com/indexeng.htm

The Normandy Invasion 1944
www.army.mil/cmh/reference/Normandy/Normandy.htm

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