Historic D Day planning done at Bristol School
Clifton College was home to US General Bradley's Headquarters from 1942
As the people from around the world come together to mark the 80th anniversary of D Day, the allied invasion of German occupied France in 1944, which turned the tide of World War II, did you know that much of the planning was done at a school in Bristol?
In early 1941 all pupils and staff moved to Bude in Cornwall to avoid German bombs in the Blitz, at which point the site in Clifton was taken over by the military. In 1942 the school then became the headquarters of US First Army General Omar Bradley.
General Bradley was tasked with planning how the US military would land on the Normandy Beaches codenamed Utar and Omaha, including the role airborne forces would play in securing key sites in land.
Hits Radio recently paid a visit to Clifton College to find out more about the history.
How did the school become a military base?
Simon Tate, a history teacher at Clifton gave us a tour of the site.
He said: "(In) the raids on Bristol in late 1940, part of the Blitz, Bristol was targeted because it was a very important dock and it had of course the aircraft factory at Filton.
"Those two things made it a really prime target for the Luftwaffe and they came over Bristol and the dropped bombs over Bristol, and bombs fell here on the school, two just over here on the Close (a playing field by the school) and then more seriously, two fell near two of our boarding houses.
"Being a boarding school the pupils were actually in the shelters that night and it must've really scared the authorities in the school leadership team."
Within a week it was decided the entire school should be evacuated out of the city, at which point a swap was agreed with the British Army, with the school taking over military facilities in Bude in Cornwall, while an officer training facility moved to Bristol.
The following year the school became a base for American units and eventually the headquarters of General Bradley.
Clifton and D Day
Planning for the allied invasion of Europe began in 1943, as Nazi Germany was increasingly put on the back foot by the entrance of America into the war.
The school's library became the central base of the planning.
"They had clerks working in here mapping out and planning out every landing craft," Simon said.
"The number of men that would be on board, the equipment they would carry. All that was done, in the last few months anyway, when they got to that stage of the planning operation."
Meanwhile as that was happening, top secret documents sent from Bletchley Park, where Germany's Enigma code had been broken, were arriving in what is the school's Wilson Tower.
"At the top of there, what's called the Crow's Nest, is where the top secret codes that had been broken at Bletchley, were being fed back here so the Americans could take that intelligence and apply it to their planning.
Bradley's "War Room"
Taking all this in, General Bradley based his War Room in what is now the entrance to the school library, where he and his staff would finalise the landing plans.
"Their key maps would be up on the wall and they would be looking at the broad plans themselves and then farming out that work, the detailed work to all the various clerks who would be in either the main library area or in the classrooms around us now," Simon said.
"This is it. This is the nerve centre of the American landings in D Day, 1944.
"This school really was the centre of the American planning for both Omaha and Utah...
Signs of the history
Today the school still boasts various momentos from the time, for example the American flag which flew over the school while it was used as a military base, was presented by General Bradley to staff and is now framed on the wall in Clifton College Prep School's main hall.
Meanwhile Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D Eisenhower, who went on to become the 34th President of the United States, presented Clifton with a signed copy of his autobiography detailing his time during the war and the table which was used by General Bradley in his War Room to plan D Day, now sits in the upper school's Newbolt Room.
Covered with a white table cloth, it is now used to serve tea and coffee during school meetings.
The importance of remembering
This year, as we mark the 80th anniversary of D Day, many surviving veterans of the landings are beyond 100 years old.
As such, Simon says it is increasingly important that we hear their stories while they are still with us.
He said: "I think we saw that with the last veterans of the First World War, we lost that connection, that human connection with those that had been there and fought in the war, but actually remembering that war became even more important in the years that followed.
"I think we're about to enter that same phase with the Second World War...
"This is probably the last occasion, the 80th anniversary, when we will have those veterans who will actually be able to walk on the beaches and talk to them and hear their experiences.
"So it's even more important today that we record those memories, that we listen carefully to their stories and then once that generation is no longer with us, that we keep those memories alive."
It's thought nearly two and a half thousand American serviceman were killed on D Day, with around 2,000 casualties (killed and injured) on Omaha Beach.
It's thought the other allied nations suffered a collective death toll of just under 2,000 on D Day.
In total it's thought the Battle of Normandy caused around 425,000 casualties, killed, wounded or missing, among both the Allied and German military.