It was on 14 June 1944, D+8, that the tanks of the 144th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps began to disembark on Gold Beach during the Normandy landings. Delayed in going ashore, the regiment’s tanks had been sorely missed by the infantry - and consequently the men of the 144th soon found themselves in action. It was the start of a long and bitter campaign that would take them across North West Europe into the heart of Germany. During that advance the regiment took part in a number of important actions. These included Operation Pomegranate (July 1944), Operation Totalize, an innovative night attack which was one of the final steps to breaking out of the Caen bridgehead (7/8 August 1944), the siege and capture of Le Havre, the fighting in Holland during late 1944, the crossing of the Rhine (by which time the regiment had been equipped with amphibious Buffaloes and during which it carried the flag which accompanied the first British tanks to cross the Rhine after the end of the First World War), and the capture of Bremen just before the end of the war in Europe. AUTHOR: Charles More has a PhD from the London School of Economics and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He taught at the University of Gloucestershire where he published numerous books and articles. Since retiring he has also published Black Gold: Britain and Oil in the Twentieth Century (Continuum 2009).
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