D-Day Overlord: A Bolt Action Campaign Book

Known by its planners as Operation Neptune (the first phase of the overall plan to liberate Fortress Europe: Overlord), was a combined operation of truly gargantuan proportions the likes of which we may never see again. It was the fruit of years of planning, training and preparation. A bringing together of the best military, scientific, and engineering minds to overcome what was seen as one of the greatest manmade bulwarks ever created; the Atlantic Wall. In the two years prior to D-Day the Allies amassed stockpiles of material in preparation for the invasion. Aircraft, ships, landing craft, artillery, and tanks in the tens of thousands, five million tons of invasion supplies, while a million and a half servicemen were stationed in England ready to take on Hitler’s armies in France.

The logistics of the operation were astounding. The invasion fleets themselves numbered over 7,000 craft, while the tactical and strategic aircraft supporting the invasion were around 8,000 in number. The 150,000 ground troops carried aboard the ships of the invasion fleet as well as a further 20,000 involved in the airborne assault on D-Day, would pry open Hitler’s Atlantic Wall creating a foothold the Allies would exploit with their superiority in material and manpower.

This book, as with all Bolt Action Campaign book, provides wargamers with a focus on the specific conflict, injecting their Bolt Action games with additional and specific flavour. The book is filled with the heroic deeds of the soldiers who battled to forge a second front on the day of June 6th 1944, and allows players to replicate the amphibious landings of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches as well as the nighttime landings of the US airborne and the German response. Such was the scope of the landings that this book is entirely concerned with events of June 6th.

In the hours before the Allied invasion of Hitler’s Europe was to begin at Normandy, a number of key points had to be neutralised lest the Allied troops be thrown back into the sea and to give the Allies the opportunity to disrupt German reinforcements heading towards the landing beaches.

One of these vital targets was the swing bridge over the canal at Bénouville.

In the early hours of 6th June 1944, the men of D Company, 2nd Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, led by Major John Howard, landed by glider – the first British troops to land on D-Day.

Their primary objective was to capture the two road bridges over the River Orne and the Caen Canal

The Bénouville bridge was guarded by machine gun posts, an anti-tank gun emplacement and a machine gun bunker, but the pinpoint glider assault caught the German defenders unprepared. After a vicious firefight, the highly-trained British soldiers captured the bridge and prepared defences for the inevitable German counter-attack, which they successfully repelled. The victorious British 6th Airborne Division could now protect the eastern flank of the Allied landings.

To recognise their bravery and sacrifice, the Caen Canal Bridge was renamed ‘Pegasus Bridge’ by the local population, inspired by the distinctive divisional badge of the 6th Airborne Division.