Story By: Dr Peter Caddick-Adams
Across Britain, excited families jumped at the chance to send in their French holiday snaps after a call-out on the wireless. Many immediately hunted through boxes stuffed with photos of happy families posing on beaches as kids built sandcastles - but they had no idea their beloved pictures would prove instrumental in the D-Day landings. The request came in 1942, with Brits desperate to help the war effort sending in 30,000 packs of pictures of the French coast within just 36 hours. Incredibly, by 1944, 10 million holiday snaps and postcards, hotel brochures, letters and guidebooks had arrived by post. The best were pinned to a board in a top-secret planning room, so army bosses could study every inch of the beaches and landing areas where the Normandy invasion would go on to take place 75 years ago today. Those thrilled families enjoying the biggest treat of their lives had no idea of the horror that was about to unfold on those beaches - and, to look at them now, the innocent snaps are achingly poignant. Major Maddock along with hundreds of others used these postcards of the Normandy Coast to help plan the 1944 invasion of France. Many of these postcards were used in briefings with officers, land craft operators and other infantry soldier to study and orient themselves based on their drop locations of the building and landmarks in these photos.
