[pooroldjoe]

Sixty years ago today, I was in a Signals Office "somewhere in England" as the saying was at the time. Actually it was in a concrete bunker under the War Office in Whitehall.
The main means of communication at the time was by Morse Code, and there was a room full of Radio operators, both men and women, transcribing the incoming traffic. There wasn't much from the beaches on the first day, most of the messages were by voice to the support ships, which were then retransmitted in morse back to Command.
Initially the messages were situation reports, some quite encouraging, but later in the day casualty counts started coming in. Although of course messages should have been encoded, in the heat of battle this was not always posible, and many of the reports were in clear.
My most vivid memory of the day was of a young girl, an ATS radio operator, busy transcribing away page after page, with tears streaming down her face. Her supervisor ordered her to take a break, but she refused so as not to let the side down. Eventially she had to be forcibly removed from her station and taken to the Sick Bay to recover.

As has already been mentioned, we must not forget that all the services were involved, Navy, Army, Air Force, and especially the Merchant Navy who's contribution to the War is so often overlooked and unrecognised.