Showing results by narrator "Geraint Jones" in All Categories

In July 2009 Geraint (Gez) Jones was sitting in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, with the rest of The Firm - Danny, Jay, Toby and Jake, his four closest friends, all junior NCOs and combat-hardened infantrymen. Thanks to the mangled remains of a Jackal vehicle left tactlessly outside their tent, IEDs were never far from their mind. Within days they’d be on the ground in Musa Qala with the rest of 3 Platoon - a mixed bunch of men Gez would die for.

D-Day was bloody, chaotic and frequently terrifying. Its outcome was far from certain. And at its epicentre were tens of thousands of young men, many seeing their first active service. It was a single day that changed millions of lives. A critical turning point of the Second World War. Using audio interviews with British, American, Canadian and German veterans, as well as French civilians, this immersive new oral history describes what it was actually like to take part in the landings on 6 June 1944 and the weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy that followed.

February, 1945. Eight months have passed since the D-Day landings, when the Allies gained their foothold in North-West Europe. Since then the British Army has fought near continuously against the German military. Now, they stand ready for their greatest test: the battle for the German homeland. Drawing on the archive of the Imperial War Museums, this often-overlooked period of the war is brought vividly to life in the words of British soldiers who were there, from war-weary men who have survived many months of combat to new recruits facing Hitler's fanatic Panzer divisions for the first time.