The poem that signalled D-Day

Eighty years ago today, on Tuesday 6 June 1944, the World War 2 allied invasion of Normandy began. Codenamed Operation Neptune, it is often referred to as D-Day. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history and began the liberation of France.

Preparations for the invasion began in 1943. The British and US sent agents to France to prepare the French Resistance, including the Maquis, for the D-Day invasion. Supplies, training and radios flowed surreptitiously into France

Seemingly random messages

Most important was the very secret pad of codes. These explained the hidden meaning of often seemingly random radio messages broadcast by the BBC’s British Overseas Service most nights. While the French resistance knew when to listen and were able to decipher the meaning, Nazi Germany had to guess about what each code meant.

Mike Mayhew lived in Oulton Broad as a child. Aged 8 in 1944, he often listened to his grand-mother’s short wave radio and vividly remembers a poem being read over the air waves. He told East Anglia Bylines:

I recall the words, something akin to ‘My heart aches with languor’. Later, we learnt it was the signal that D-Day was to commence.

Chanson d’automne

In fact, this was the second part of Chanson d’automne to be broadcast. Previously, on 1 June, the BBC had broadcast the first three lines of this famous French poem by Paul Verlaine, published in 1866:

Les sanglots longs
Des violons 
De l’automne

Arthur Symons poetically translates the lines as When a sighing begins in the violins of the autumn-song.

These lines were a coded order from the Special Operation Executive (SOE) to the French resistance in Nazi occupied France. For one resistance cell, it was the signal for the saboteurs to stand by and be ready to disrupt the French railways. For other groups, these words indicated that the D-Day invasion would begin within two weeks.

Four days later, on 5 June, the BBC broadcast the lines Mayhew remembers. This was the order to begin cutting railway lines.

Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone

Arthur Symons translates these lines as, My heart is drowned in the slow sound, languorous and long.

D-Day

Just a few hours later, shortly after midnight on the morning of 6 June, the invasion began. 24,000 American, British and Canadian paratroopers dropped from the skies. There was extensive aerial and naval bombardment. Then, early in the morning, the allied amphibious landings began across the target 50 mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast – code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Mayhew reminisced:

I remember there was a large temporary barracks near where I lived. My mother used to do the washing for the troops. Suddenly it was a ghost town. The departing soldiers had taken what they could carry and left everything else behind – the canteen, their accommodation, mess halls and their dirty washing – no doubt expecting to return.

Many of those taking part in D-Day never returned. German casualties have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.

Although the operation was not an immediate success, it is recognised that the Germans defending their positions were compromised as a result of the sabotaging of the railways, initiated by a few lines of a famous French poem.

Chanson d’automne - translated by Arthur Symons
When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long
Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.
And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

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