Today marks the 65th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy. Too often Americans tend to think of it as the American invasion of Normandy–witness the accidental oversight regarding the invitation of Queen Elizabeth II (the only current head of state who actually served in the military during World War II) to the Franco-American commemoration ceremony by Presidents Obama and Sarkozy, not to mention the absence of the British from recent films and television series about the invasion, such as Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Oh, of course, the Brits were featured in Cornelius Ryan’s 1962 film The Longest Day, but the centerpiece of the film was the airborne assault on St. Mere Eglise, General Norman Cota clearing the way on Omaha Beach, and Teddy Roosevelt Jr. deciding to start the war from wherever they had landed on Utah Beach. As compared to that, Peter Lawford as Lord Lovat strolling into battle with his favorite shotgun and personal piper is almost a cameo appearance.

From all that, it is no surprise that most Americans do not know that there were more British soldiers than Americans on the beach that morning, and that all the Americans were under the command of a British general, Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery. The Americans had two beaches, the British had three (Sword, Gold and Juno–the latter formally assigned to the Canadians, but with more than half of the troops actually British). The Americans used two airborne divisions, but the British used their 6th Airborne Division (the Red Devils) to secure the left flank of the Allied beachhead, including a daredevil coup de main against a bridge over the Caen Canal, as recounted in The Longest Day as well as Stephen Ambrose’s Pegasus Bridge (after the badge of the British Parachute Regiment). It was all done rather matter-of-factly, with a minimum of fuss and bother, and as a result, it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the near catastrophe of Omaha Beach or the dog’s lunch that was the U.S. airborne operation.