Albert WilliamsD-DAY MEMORIES: This weekend is the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. A historic moment that anyone alive in 1944 will never forget.

Gazette reporters have spoken to veterans and others with special memories to try and recapture the significance of the event for those in France and those left behind.

TODAY the term D-Day is used to denote any day when a specific decision has to be made.

The term derives, of course, from that momentous decision that the Allied commanders had to make in June 1944 in a once-and-for-all endeavour to halt the Nazi bid for European supremacy.

General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the Allied invasion of Europe, was the man with the final say.

Working closely with the British commander, Viscount (then Field Marshal) Montgomery of Alamein, Eisenhower was the man who had to time when the time was right to invade Europe. Hitler's troops had swept through France, Belgium and Holland and it was only the English Channel that prevented them reaching England.

The Allied commanders knew they had to turn back the Nazi tide and the only way to do this was with a massive invasion.

Months of secret planning went into scheming how to get more than 180,000 troops into Europe and Wiltshire, with its many airfields, was to play a key role.

The D-Day planning was one of the closest kept secrets in military history with only a handful of Allied commanders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt being in on them.

The objective was to get huge reinforcements into Europe to relieve the beleaguered forces holding back the Nazi army.

The D-Day invasion on June 6 1944 took the Nazis by complete surprise even though by that time the Allied intelligence knew all about German operations and movements because British boffins had cracked the enemy's secret Enigma code. D-Day was officially planned as Operation Overlord. It was originally planned for May 1944 and preparations included leaking false information to the enemy about invasion points. This misled the Germans to scatter troops across Europe to the supposed invasion points.

The final preparations for D-Day got under way in earnest in May 1944 with a build up of American, Canadian and other Allied troops in Britain. Everyone knew that preparation was in hand for a major invasion of Europe but only the top handful of generals knew when and where. In villages like Aldbourne and Ramsbury the build up of troops and the arrival of bombers and other aircraft at the wartime air bases could not fail to be noticed.

The big question on everyone's lips was when would the invasion take place, and where would the troops land?

Although the public was not to know it until later, the invasion was due to take place on June 5 but just as with any other event in Britain the weather played a part.

Eisenhower and Churchill took a gamble and delayed the invasion by 25 hours to a date that is now a part of Britain's and world history. The greatest invasion fleet in history poured across the Channel. More than 6,000 ships, warships, merchantmen, landing craft and barges, sailed across the channel in marked lanes cleared by minesweepers.

Through a night of high winds and driving rain the vast armada, 50 miles wide and protected on both sides by torpedo boats, steamed for the French coast.

D-Day was the turning point of the war, the day when the Third Reich went on the run instead of being the aggressor. The history books record that the Germans were literally caught napping; Hitler himself did not learn of the invasion until 9am.

See this week's 4 page 60th Anniversary of D-Day special in the Gazette & Herald