The Dorset Ports

In the weeks before D-Day, 1st US Division, were confined to camp for security reasons during their final briefing. In the last days of May, Big Red One was on the move toward their marshalling areas around Weymouth, Portland and Poole, where they would wait their turn to be called forward to board their landing craft.

On 2 June 1944, they finally started to move to the embarkation ports. Many of the locals were used to the coming and going of troops and vehicles initially assumed that this was just another exercise. Infantry, tanks and guns arrived for loading in the reverse order to which they would be landed. Embarkation was a slow and complex operation, which in its self is a marvel of military planning, with the roads around these ports packed with transport and men. Once in the port or on the specially constructed embarkation hards, tanks were reversed through the bows of landing craft and men were crammed into the landing ships in closely packed triple or even quadruple bunks.

By 2 June, the Americans were aboard their transport, waiting for the word to go. D-Day had originally been planned for 5 June but the weather was too stormy for the landing or airborne operations. However, a 'window' spotted in a succession of Atlantic frontal weather systems allowed the greatest invasion fleet ever assembled to sail. On the evening of 5 June, with little ceremony, the ships of all sizes bearing 1st US Infantry Division slipped their anchorages and shortly after dawn on 6 June, the infantry headed towards the French coast and Omaha Beach. The liberation of Europe had begun.

One Dorset resident recalled that in the months, they were in Dorset the soldiers 'became used to warm British ale, while we learned to Jitter Bug and to straighten the seams of our new nylon stockings'. Their stay was not to be long: 'One day they were here and the next they were gone, along with all their ships in Weymouth and Portland harbours. I eventually learned they landed on Omaha. I sometimes sadly wonder how many of our friends survived.'

The departure of 1st US Infantry Division was, however, not the end of the Dorset ports' part in the war. During the following months, a million troops and material crossed the Channel from the county to build up and sustain the Allied armies in Normandy.

During the summer of 1944, coming back from the battlefields, on the empty ships, were wounded Americans, many of whom were treated at the US hospitals near Blandford and Shaftsbury, before returning to battle or being repatriated to the US. In addition to the American wounded, lead coffins containing the bodies of US Servicemen for repatriation to the US, also came through Dorset's ports and were loaded onto trains to Liverpool in great secrecy.

Some 35,000 German prisoners of war also transited through the county on their way to camps.

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