Wartime prime minister Winston Churchill had been planning D-Day ever since he came to power in 1940 . . . and when it came it was a total surprise to Germany...

THE soldiers marched down to Southampton's docks through a sea of faces showing disparate emotions.

In days they would be fighting - and many dying in abject terror - as they took part in the D-Day landings.

So the women of the town wanted to give the men a stirring send-off as they marched down Above Bar destined for the traumatic oblivion of war.

The girls tossed flowers and blew kisses as the ranks of military personnel passed by, a supportive gesture tinged with romanticism.

But, to Southampton's older women, it was a sight that made them openly weep.

They had seen it all before - and knew how it could end.

At the beginning of the First World War there had been many such marches by Britain's precious young flesh, along roads that ultimately led to wretched slaughter on the Western Front.

What the women could not have known on those first days of June 1944 was that D-Day would ultimately prove a success, an audacious, meticulously-planned mass assault which would catch Nazi Germany unprepared and Hitler, literally, asleep.

Churchill had begun planning this invasion as soon as he had become prime minister in 1940.

From the scheme's inception it was shrouded in secrecy.

And that was the way it remained right until the moment the allied armada appeared over the horizon to the horror of German soldiers guarding the Atlantic Wall.

This was vital.

The Dieppe raid of August 1942 had cost thousands of British and Canadian lives because the enemy had been tipped off and were waiting for them.

Thus allied spies toiled relentlessly to give the enemy the impression the invasion, when it came, would be at Calais.

Meanwhile the French Resistance had been briefed through coded radio broadcasts and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had parachuted in extra agents to assist in the creation of chaos for occupying German forces.

German General Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel was so confident the assault was weeks away that he'd even gone home to surprise his wife on her 50th birthday.

And so it all proved worthwhile.

D-Day and the weeks that followed eventually resulted in the liberation of France from the tyranny of the Nazi regime and victory for allied forces, primarily as a result of countless examples of selfless courage.

But it came with a high price, paid in many pints of youthful blood.

Soon after the assault was launched under moonlight just after midnight soldiers, sailors and airmen began dying in what would prove the final turning point of the Second World War.

As the bombs rained down and the bullets flew around their surviving colleagues, casualties were often buried near where they fell in fields and orchards scattered around the Calvados region.

Then, after the end of the war, they were re-interned in cemeteries, such as Ranville.

Immaculately maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the sight of row-upon-row of white grave stones at large cemeteries such as Bayeux, where 4,656 men are buried, is deeply sobering.

It has the capacity to reduce veterans and non-veterans alike to tears.

Talking to those who fought in the Battle of Normandy is a humbling experience.

They are matter-of-fact and modest when retelling their experiences.

"You made me out to be some kind of hero when I was just doing my job," rebuked one crossly, after a piece was run about how he fought on the beaches.

And then there are those who have the capacity to render you speechless with their memories.

Like Sidney Vines who, in this weekend's magazine, will tell how an incident on Gold beach has stayed with him ever since.

Landmark anniversaries of events which define how future generations live provide people with a chance to thank those who fought there for what they did.

But they also give us the opportunity to remember the dead, those who have spent the last 60 years buried in long lines below the grass rather than living their lives to the full, marrying, raising families and enjoying fruitful careers.

Southampton was one of the main embarkation points for the 176,000 men involved in the initial landings.

Recently the city has been widely criticised for the paucity of its 60th anniversary plans.

They chiefly comprise a drumhead service in Mayflower Park and an exhibition of rare wartime photographs.

The service, on Southampton's waterfront, will be held at 3pm on Sunday, June 6, during which a Spitfire, built at the Supermarine factory in Woolston, and a B17G Boeing Flying Fortress will fly overhead, signalling the start and finish of a minute's silence.

A landing craft will lay wreaths on the water while the Band of the Adjutant General Corps beats the retreat.

The exhibition, held at Southampton City Art Gallery, will be opened by Winston Churchill's great-grandson Jack on June 3.

Among the displays will be rarely-seen work by photographer Robert Capa, perhaps the best-known photo-journalist of the 1930s and 40s.

Down the coast in Portsmouth, another major embarkation point for Normandy, the major ceremony will be a March Past of Veterans at which HRH The Prince of Wales will take the salute on Southsea Common on June 3 at 4pm.

There will also be a concert at the same venue on the 5th and a commemorative service and parade of veterans the following day.

Over in Normandy there will be literally hundreds of events to mark the anniversary, not only of D-Day itself but the date when each village or town was liberated.

The largest, the official international ceremony, attended by an estimated 11 heads of state including the Queen, is to be held on June 6 on the cliff-top above Arromanches, followed by the official British ceremony at 5.30pm that afternoon.

Among those in Calvados next weekend will be Frank Clinton, who landed at 7.20am on June 6, then went on to found the war cemetery at Hermanville-sur-Mer with the bodies he collected from Sword beach.

Frank will visit Hermanville once more and stand again in front of the grave of the German officer he shot on Sword beach that morning.

Remembering.

"I deprived a German lady of her husband and two German boys of their dad," he said.

"I always go to his grave and stand and bow my head because war is terrible and that's the worst side of war."

This week's Daily Echo Saturday magazine includes two more stories from Normandy veterans.

And there will be coverage from our editorial team in France as events unfold there.