Normandy June 44

The artificial port of Arromanches, codename ‘Mulberry B’, was a great British invention designed to bring to Normandy the equipment required by the Allied armies to Normandy following the D-Day landings. Jimmy, a British engineer and specialist in designing ports, experiences the whole operation from its conception in England to its installation in France despite the setbacks including the storm that nearly destroyed it. Jimmy recounts the whole story in a book written in 1944. Jimmy speaks not only of the doubters from ordinary soldiers to men of genius, but also the fishermen and sailors of Port-en-Bessin who helped construct the artificial port even when all looked lost. Today, all these decades later, this book also brings us to the Museum of Arromanches where Linda, an English teenager, on reading Jimmy’s book, begins to understand the significance of this operation, and in the story of the invasion, we discover how the story of her family crosses that of this great historical event…