Their Lives Changed Forever:D-Day:The Unheard Tapes.

"I remember the people of Normandy. Their country was ravaged, their lives changed forever. I remember the dead enemy soldiers who had once been alive and young and as fearful as we. My thoughts were of all the troops who had died that we were leaving behind. Suddenly I felt I was all alone. We came with so many and we were leaving with so few" - Tom Porcella

When Tom Porcella went to fight in Normandy on D-Day he went with sixteen of his buddies. He was the only one of the seventeen to return. He'd experienced a world of fear, uncertainty, exhaustion, blood, blown up houses, destroyed villages, obliterated cities, people being shot in the head, beaches strewn with human corpses, and death upon death upon death.

A hell on Earth in which over one hundred thousand people were killed. D-Day:The Unheard Tapes (BBC2/iPlayer) tells Porcella's, and others', stories over three hour long episodes and though it took me a while to be moved by the story (not because I'm Rishi Sunak and don't care about D-Day, but because it's actually quite dry and matter of fact in places) by the end I couldn't stop the tears from coming.

The juxtaposition of the extreme inhumanity (a dead human body used as a trash can) with the extreme humanity (the love and respect between colleagues, the cheering crowds of civilians in Normandy) was what finally set me off and, as one soldier says towards the end, the sheer waste of human life. Damage that lasted, and continues to last, for generations. Damage some would blithely return to.

D-Day:The Unheard Tapes uses young actors to lip-synch the real worlds of actual real soldiers that served in Normandy. British soldiers from Liverpool and London (some as young as seventeen, some with pregnant wives back home), American GIs, and even former Wehrmacht members as well as French civilians and members of the resistance. Alongside them, providing exposition, there are military historians and journalists and, of course, there are dramatic reconstructions too.

We hear how the five beaches of Normandy were divided up between the allies, identified, and named (Utah and Omaha for the US forces, Juno for the Canadians, Gold and Sword for the Brits) and we get lots of logistical details regarding campaigns to control and liberate Caen and Cherbourg. Escoville, Lion-sur-mer, and the Benouville (now Pegasus) bridge feature heavily.

Nothing on the scale of D-Day/the Normandy landings/Operation Neptune had ever been attempted before in human history and those planning it knew how dangerous it was. The allies expected, and the young soldiers were told, that about 30% of those involved were expected to lose their lives. Not far short of a kamikaze mission. Made worse by the officer class's almost complete indifference to the death and suffering.

Black American soldiers had it even worse as they were given the most dangerous, and most demeaning, jobs and still suffered segregation even as they fought for the same country, and the same freedoms, as their white countrymen and their European comrades.

The gliders arrived in France first and, soon, the ships followed it. Some of the men describe the experience as exciting, exhilarating, technicolour, and even psychedelic but it wasn't long before many of them were dying in each other's arms. One solider put in years of training only to die within thirty seconds of going into combat. He never got to see his then unborn son.

At Omaha, the German soldiers (not all of them Nazis but all of them fighting for the Nazis) picked off US soldiers at will - as if playing a computer game. It was kill or be killed and the makers of the programme don't shy away from horrific descriptions of the grisly ends some met. An infantryman whose head is no longer attached to his body is just the first of many to undergo that grim experience.

Elsewhere, we hear of Nazis cutting dead soldiers penises and testicles off and forcing them into their dead mouths. The dreadful behaviour that one human can enact upon another can surely only come about when they've been conditioned to dehumanise others. That's why we should never do that and that's why D-Day:The Unheard Tapes is worth watching. As a reminder.

I was moved, negatively, by the sheer horror but I was also moved, positively, by the fact that fascism was ultimately defeated and I hope it stays that way. With the rise of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National in France, the Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany, and Nigel Farage and Richard Tice's grifting Reform UK party in the UK we can't take freedom from fascism for granted. We should stop it now - peacefully - before our children have to fight, and die, for future freedoms once again.