- 17 minutes ago
American pilots in Normandy were not just hunting German tanks — they were attacking the horses that kept the German army moving. Over roads packed with retreating columns, Thunderbolts often flew past the armor and opened fire on the lead teams, because in 1944 the horse-drawn transport was the real weak point of the German war machine.
This military history story follows the logic behind that brutal choice, from German strength returns that listed more horses than most viewers would expect to the air war over Normandy, Mortain, and the Falaise pocket. It explains how armed reconnaissance, tactical air support, and low-level fighter-bomber attacks turned roads, wagons, artillery limbers, and supply columns into targets of opportunity. The result was not just destroyed vehicles, but broken mobility, stranded guns, and armies that could not keep moving in daylight.
If you enjoy WW2 stories, Second World War documentary-style narration, and battlefield analysis that reveals how air power actually worked, this story connects the dots between horses, artillery, fuel, and the collapse of German transport in France. It is a powerful listen for military history fans, WW2 history searches, and anyone interested in tactical air warfare, Normandy combat, and forgotten details of the Western Front.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history narration, Normandy battle analysis, German army transport history, tactical air power, and World War 2 documentary storytelling. Ideal for history fans, battlefield breakdowns, and long-form war history listening with a focus on the real targets of American fighter-bombers.
This military history story follows the logic behind that brutal choice, from German strength returns that listed more horses than most viewers would expect to the air war over Normandy, Mortain, and the Falaise pocket. It explains how armed reconnaissance, tactical air support, and low-level fighter-bomber attacks turned roads, wagons, artillery limbers, and supply columns into targets of opportunity. The result was not just destroyed vehicles, but broken mobility, stranded guns, and armies that could not keep moving in daylight.
If you enjoy WW2 stories, Second World War documentary-style narration, and battlefield analysis that reveals how air power actually worked, this story connects the dots between horses, artillery, fuel, and the collapse of German transport in France. It is a powerful listen for military history fans, WW2 history searches, and anyone interested in tactical air warfare, Normandy combat, and forgotten details of the Western Front.
Created for listeners searching for WW2 stories, military history narration, Normandy battle analysis, German army transport history, tactical air power, and World War 2 documentary storytelling. Ideal for history fans, battlefield breakdowns, and long-form war history listening with a focus on the real targets of American fighter-bombers.
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LearningTranscript
00:00August 18, 1944
00:03The road between Thon and Chambois, in the Norman department of Orne.
00:07A flight of American thunderbolts came down out of the north at 4,000 feet,
00:12and the pilot in front saw something no gunnery school had prepared him for.
00:17Below him, packed into a mile of narrow French road, was a retreating army.
00:22But there was no dust cloud, there were no exhaust plumes,
00:26nothing down there glittered or lurched or threw up the heat shimmer of engines under load.
00:31The column was moving at the speed of a walking man,
00:35and it was made of wagons, hundreds of wagons,
00:38and harnessed in front of every one of them stood horses.
00:42There was armor in that column, there nearly always was.
00:45A self-propelled gun, a half-track, somewhere a tank with a black cross on its flank,
00:51the machine four years of newsreels had taught the world to fear.
00:55The pilot could see it.
00:57He flew past it.
00:58He put his nose down on the head of the column, where the lead teams were,
01:01and opened up with eight .50 caliber machine guns.
01:06Now I want you to stop on that, because it is genuinely strange.
01:10The United States had spent a fortune building the finest ground attack aircraft of the war,
01:15and putting a young man barely out of flight school inside it.
01:19And in the summer of 1944, that pilot's first target, again and again, was not a German tank.
01:27It was a German horse.
01:29This was not one man's decision, and it was not cruelty.
01:33It was policy, and it was written down.
01:36American tactical air summaries that year carried horse-drawn vehicles as a category of their own,
01:42counted and totaled alongside locomotives and trucks.
01:46Over the course of the war, Thunderbolt units would run that particular line of the ledger into the tens of
01:51thousands.
01:53So here is the question this whole story turns on, and I would ask you to hold on to it,
01:58because we are going to come back to it more than once.
02:00Why did American pilots go after the horses first?
02:03Why put a farm animal ahead of a tiger on the target list?
02:07And why, when Allied analysts finally walked that ground with notebooks and measuring tapes,
02:13did it turn out to be the most destructive decision the Ninth Air Force made all summer?
02:18If this is the kind of history you come here for, like the video and subscribe.
02:23It helps these stories reach people who want to understand what American airmen actually did in 1944.
02:30To see why that flight over Tongue mattered, you need to know where that road was
02:35and what American air power had become by that August.
02:39That stretch of country lay inside the closing Falaise pocket.
02:43The German 7th Army was trying to squeeze itself out through a gap a few miles wide,
02:48and every road inside the ring was carrying the whole weight of an army in one direction.
02:55Waiting above it was something new.
02:58The Ninth Air Force was no longer an escort service.
03:01It was, in practical terms, the longest-ranged artillery any army had ever owned.
03:08Its fighter groups flew what was called armed reconnaissance,
03:11four or eight thunderbolts assigned not a target but a stretch of road,
03:16with orders to find whatever was on it and destroy it.
03:40There was an easy answer to why, and I want to put it in front of you now so that
03:47we can take it apart later.
03:48The easy answer is that a horse is soft and a tank is not.
03:54Eight .50 caliber guns will tear apart anything made of flesh and do almost nothing to 80 millimeters of armor
04:02plate.
04:02So the pilots shot what they could actually kill.
04:06That answer is not false.
04:08Pilots said it themselves, in exactly those words.
04:11But it is the shallowest possible reading of what was happening over those roads,
04:16and by the end of this, you will see that the men who offered that explanation
04:19were selling themselves short by an enormous margin.
04:23They were not settling for the easy target.
04:26They had walked straight into the load-bearing wall of the German army,
04:30and most of them did not yet know it.
04:33Because the answer does not begin in a cockpit.
04:36It begins with a piece of paper.
04:38In March of 1944, three months before the landings,
04:42the German High Command in the West compiled a routine strength return
04:46for its forces in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
04:50Routine documents are usually the honest ones.
04:53Nobody is trying to impress anybody in a strength return.
04:56And there were two figures on that page that mattered more than everything else on it.
05:01The first was the number of men.
05:03The second was the number of horses.
05:06Set side by side, those two numbers describe an army
05:09that almost nobody watching a newsreel in 1944 would have recognized.
05:14They explain, better than any tactical manual ever written,
05:18why an American pilot would fly straight over a German tank
05:21to get at a wagon team a quarter of a mile ahead of it.
05:25I will give you both numbers shortly.
05:28Guess first.
05:29Picture the German army of 1944,
05:32the panzers, the half-tracks,
05:34the motorized columns of the propaganda films,
05:37and ask yourself,
05:38how many horses an army like that could possibly still need.
05:43Whatever number you just thought of is almost certainly too low.
05:46Here are the two numbers.
05:47In March of 1944,
05:50the German command in the West reported roughly
05:521,600,000 men under its authority,
05:56from the Dutch coast to the Spanish border.
05:58In the same period,
06:00it reported 1,100,000 horses.
06:04Read that again,
06:06because the arithmetic is the whole story.
06:09For every three men in German uniform waiting for the invasion,
06:12there were two horses.
06:14Not two horses somewhere in a remount depot in eastern Poland.
06:18Two horses on strength,
06:21in units,
06:22in harness,
06:23eating every single day.
06:25This was not an emergency measure.
06:27It was how the German army had always been built.
06:30And it went far deeper than most people realize.
06:34When the war began,
06:35the Reich had something like
06:373,800,000 horses inside its borders.
06:40And the army called up
06:42885,000 of them almost immediately.
06:45When that was not enough,
06:46it took them from the countries it conquered.
06:49Poland first,
06:50then France,
06:51then the Soviet Union.
06:52Hundreds of thousands more.
06:55Whole regions stripped of the animals that plowed them.
06:59And it still was not enough.
07:02Look at what a standard German infantry division
07:04actually consisted of.
07:06On paper,
07:07it held about 5,000 horses,
07:10roughly 1,100 horse-drawn wagons and carts,
07:13and somewhere around 950 motor vehicles.
07:17Five and a half horses for every engine it owned.
07:21The men who wrote that establishment table
07:23were not romantics.
07:25They simply did not have the fuel
07:27or the factories to do anything else.
07:29Now, here is the fact I want you to keep,
07:32because it runs against everything instinct tells you
07:35about how wars work.
07:38Armies are supposed to modernize as a war goes on.
07:41The German army in 1944 went the other way.
07:45When its divisions were reorganized that year,
07:47the number of horses on the books actually fell
07:50to around 3,200.
07:52But the number of trucks was cut by roughly 40%
07:56at the same time.
07:57Fewer horses,
07:59far fewer engines,
08:00same amount of ammunition and food to move.
08:04The share of the division's daily tonnage
08:06that traveled on hooves
08:07went up by about 30%.
08:09The German army did not ride into 1944.
08:13It walked.
08:15And it walked slower every month.
08:18I want you to see what that meant
08:19on one specific piece of equipment,
08:22because everything that follows in this story
08:24hangs on it.
08:25The standard German divisional gun
08:27was the Light Field Howitzer,
08:30a 10 and a half centimeter piece.
08:32It weighed close to two tons ready to fire.
08:35It was the weapon that killed attacking American infantry,
08:38more than any tank,
08:40more than any machine gun.
08:42Artillery accounted for the majority of casualties
08:44on every front of that war.
08:46And this was the gun that did it.
08:48To move it,
08:49you hitched a limber,
08:50and to the limber,
08:51you hitched six horses
08:52in three pairs.
08:54A driver rode the left-hand horse of each pair.
08:58That was the entire propulsion system.
09:00There was no engine anywhere in the sequence.
09:04A gun crew of eight men
09:05could not push that howitzer up a wet slope,
09:08could not drag it out of a shell hole,
09:10could not get it across a field.
09:12Six animals did that,
09:14or nothing did.
09:16Picture a battery displacing at night
09:18on a Norman Lane.
09:19The order comes down,
09:21and it takes minutes,
09:23not seconds.
09:24The teams are brought up
09:25from wherever they were tethered undercover.
09:28Each pair is backed into position and hooked.
09:31The trail is lifted onto the limber hook by hand.
09:34Then four guns,
09:3624 horses,
09:37and 12 drivers
09:38move off between hedgerows at a fast walk,
09:41and the entire firepower
09:43of that sector of the front
09:44is stretched out along 200 yards of road,
09:47with nothing over it but sky.
09:50Hold on to that word,
09:52displace.
09:53Artillery survives by moving.
09:55A battery that cannot displace
09:57is a battery that will be found,
09:59and being found,
10:00in the summer of 1944,
10:02meant something specific,
10:04and very final.
10:06Now go back to that pilot
10:08over the road to Chambois,
10:09and look at what he was really doing.
10:12When he came down the length of a column,
10:14and put his fire into the lead team,
10:16rather than the armor behind it,
10:17he was not shooting an animal.
10:20He was reaching into an artillery regiment,
10:23and removing its ability to exist anywhere
10:25except where it was standing at that moment.
10:28But here is the thing that makes this story worth telling,
10:31and it is the reason I am not going to let you accept
10:34the neat version of it yet.
10:36In June of 1944,
10:39no American fighter pilot in Normandy
10:41thought about any of this.
10:43Not one.
10:45They had been trained to kill tanks.
10:48They wanted to kill tanks.
10:50They had been given rockets and bombs,
10:52and eight heavy machine guns,
10:53specifically so they could kill tanks.
10:56And every claim they filed,
10:58and every ribbon they were promised,
11:00pointed in that direction.
11:02Then, on the 7th of August,
11:04the 9th Air Force got exactly the day
11:06it had been asking for.
11:08A German armored counterattack.
11:10In the open.
11:11In daylight.
11:13With the whole of American tactical aviation
11:15free to fall on it.
11:16They went in with everything they had.
11:19And when the survey teams
11:21walked that battlefield afterwards
11:22and counted what was actually lying in the fields,
11:25the result was so far below
11:27what the pilots believed they had done
11:29that it forced a reckoning
11:31inside the American Air Command.
11:33And changed, permanently,
11:35what a Thunderbolt pilot looked for
11:37when he rolled in on a road.
11:39August 7th, 1944.
11:41Hill 314.
11:43A bare, rocky shoulder
11:45standing over the town of Morten in Normandy.
11:492nd Lieutenant Robert Weiss
11:51was a forward observer
11:52with the 230th Field Artillery Battalion.
11:55His whole job
11:56was to lie on a piece of high ground
11:58with a radio
11:59and tell the guns behind him
12:01where to put their shells.
12:03On that hill,
12:05he had a partner
12:05doing the same work,
12:07Lieutenant Charles Bartz.
12:09And between them,
12:10they had the finest view in Normandy
12:12of something no American
12:14had expected to see again.
12:17Below them,
12:18in the dark
12:19and the river fog,
12:20German armor
12:21was moving forward.
12:23Two SS Panzer divisions
12:25were driving west,
12:27straight at the narrow neck of ground
12:29at Avranches,
12:30through which the entire
12:31American breakout
12:32was being fed.
12:34If they reached it,
12:35they cut Patton's 3rd Army
12:37off from its supplies.
12:39Weiss and Bartz called it in,
12:40and the American guns went to work.
12:42And by the time
12:43the sun climbed high enough
12:45to burn the fog
12:46off the valleys,
12:47the German columns
12:48were caught in daylight,
12:49in open country.
12:51For the American air forces,
12:53this was the day
12:54they had been waiting for
12:55since Normandy began.
12:57Armor.
12:58In the open.
13:00Moving.
13:01Nothing to hide behind.
13:03They came in everything they had.
13:06Aircraft under the 19th Tactical Air Command
13:08flew something on the order
13:09of 400 sorties
13:11over that battle area
13:13on the 7th alone.
13:15Rocket-armed thunderbolts
13:16of the 406th Fighter Group
13:18went in against the panzers
13:19and fired roughly 600 rockets.
13:22British typhoons
13:24worked the same roads.
13:26From dawn to dusk,
13:27the sky over Mortem
13:28belonged entirely to the Allies,
13:30and every man in it
13:32knew exactly
13:32what he was there for.
13:33Now,
13:34I am going to give you
13:35two numbers,
13:36and I want you to take
13:37the first one seriously
13:38before I give you the second,
13:40because the men who filed it
13:42believed it completely.
13:44That night,
13:45the claims went in.
13:46The 9th Air Force
13:48reported 112 German tanks destroyed.
13:51The British 2nd Tactical Air Force
13:54reported 140.
13:57252 tanks
13:58killed from the air
13:59in a single day.
14:00Here is the second number.
14:02When Allied operational
14:04research teams
14:05walked that battlefield
14:06afterwards with notebooks,
14:08counting hulls,
14:09examining penetrations,
14:10working out what had
14:11actually killed each machine,
14:13they established
14:14that the Germans
14:15had committed
14:17177 tanks
14:18and assault guns
14:19to the entire attack.
14:21The Air Forces
14:22had claimed more tanks
14:23than the Germans
14:24had brought.
14:25It gets harder.
14:27Of those 177 machines,
14:2946 were lost,
14:31and of those 46,
14:33the number the analysts
14:34could attribute
14:34to attack from the air
14:35was 9.
14:379.
14:39Against 252 claimed.
14:42Roughly 4%.
14:44I want to be careful here,
14:46because it would be easy
14:47to turn that into a story
14:48about American pilots
14:49exaggerating,
14:50and that is not what happened.
14:52Nobody was lying.
14:53A pilot rolling in
14:54at 400 miles an hour
14:56has about 2 seconds
14:57over the target.
14:57He sees a hit,
14:59he sees flame,
15:00he pulls off
15:01with the ground coming up
15:02and the flak coming at him,
15:03and he honestly reports
15:05a burning tank.
15:06What he usually saw burning
15:08was a half-track,
15:09an ammunition truck,
15:10or a tank crew's stack
15:11of jerry cans.
15:13And underneath that
15:14lay something simpler
15:15and colder
15:16that the whole
15:17American fighter-bomber force
15:18had to swallow
15:19that August.
15:20The weapons
15:21did not work on armor.
15:238 .50 caliber machine guns
15:25are a magnificent thing to have.
15:27They will take a truck apart,
15:30dismount a gun crew,
15:31set a fuel dump alight.
15:32What they will not do
15:34is get through
15:34the front of a Panther.
15:36The rockets were worse
15:38in a different way.
15:40Unguided,
15:41thrown from a diving aircraft,
15:43scattering across a field.
15:45Seven Thunderbolts
15:46fired 600 of them
15:47at Mortin.
15:49Count the confirmed Panzers.
15:51So the honest reading
15:52of the 7th of August
15:54is this.
15:54The most powerful
15:56tactical air force
15:57ever assembled
15:58spent a full day
15:59attacking German tanks
16:01in the open,
16:02in perfect conditions,
16:03and destroyed
16:04almost none of them.
16:06And yet,
16:07the German attack failed.
16:08It failed with Weiss
16:10and Barts
16:10still on that hill,
16:12calling fire
16:13down onto the roads
16:14for five days,
16:15while around 700 Americans
16:17held the summit
16:18without food
16:19and nearly without ammunition
16:21until relief reached them
16:22on the 12th.
16:23It failed because
16:24German columns
16:25that had to move
16:26in daylight
16:27now could not move
16:28at all,
16:29and because everything
16:30those tanks needed
16:31to keep fighting,
16:32fuel,
16:33shells,
16:34rations,
16:35had to come up
16:36the same roads
16:37that were being torn open
16:38from the air,
16:39hour after hour,
16:41on transport
16:41that had no armor
16:42on it whatsoever.
16:44That is the moment
16:45the whole thing turns.
16:47The lesson the American
16:49fighter groups
16:49took out of Morton
16:50was not
16:51we cannot kill tanks.
16:52It was far more useful
16:54than that
16:54and far more ruthless.
16:56It was that killing
16:57the tank
16:57was never the point.
16:59The tank was the hardest,
17:01best protected,
17:02least important thing
17:04on that road.
17:05Everything that made
17:06the tank dangerous
17:07was traveling behind it,
17:09unarmored,
17:09at walking pace.
17:11But knowing that
17:13in principle
17:13is not the same
17:14as knowing how
17:15to do it.
17:16Morton was fought
17:17over open fields.
17:19Most of Normandy
17:20is not open.
17:21Most of Normandy
17:22is a maze of lanes
17:23cut down between
17:24earth banks,
17:25so narrow that
17:26two vehicles cannot pass,
17:28so deep that
17:29a man standing in one
17:30cannot see over the sides.
17:32And it was in one
17:33of those lanes
17:33that American pilots
17:34discovered a way
17:35to stop an entire
17:36German division
17:37in its tracks
17:38with a single burst,
17:40a thing 600 rockets
17:42at Morton
17:42had completely failed to do.
17:44July 25, 1944.
17:47The country south
17:48of St. Lowe,
17:49where the American army
17:50finally tore open
17:51the German front
17:52and began to move.
17:54To understand
17:55what happened next,
17:56you have to understand
17:57the ground,
17:58because the ground
17:58did half the work.
18:00The Norman bocage
18:01is not countryside
18:02in the way an American
18:04or a Kansan
18:05would use the word.
18:06The fields are small,
18:07and the lanes
18:08between them
18:08are not laid
18:09on top of the land.
18:10They are cut down
18:11into it.
18:13Centuries of cartwheels
18:14and rain
18:15had worn them
18:15into trenches.
18:17On either side
18:18rises a bank
18:19of packed earth
18:20and old roots,
18:21six feet high,
18:22sometimes ten,
18:23with a hedge
18:24growing out
18:25of the top of it.
18:26The lane itself
18:27is one vehicle wide.
18:29Not one vehicle
18:30and a margin.
18:31One vehicle.
18:32There is no shoulder.
18:34There is nowhere
18:35to pull off.
18:36There is no way
18:37to turn a wagon around.
18:39Now put a German
18:40artillery column
18:41into that lane.
18:42Four guns,
18:43their limbers,
18:44ammunition carts behind,
18:46a hundred men,
18:47and out in front
18:48of each load
18:48a team of six horses,
18:50each animal weighing
18:51better than half a ton,
18:53all of them fastened
18:54together and to the vehicle
18:55by leather.
18:57And now send one thunderbolt
18:58down the length of it.
19:00He does not need
19:01to hit the guns.
19:02He does not need
19:02to hit the men.
19:03He puts his burst
19:05into the first team,
19:06and in the space
19:07of a second and a half,
19:08the lead pair
19:09goes down in harness,
19:10still hooked to the limber,
19:12still hooked
19:12to the four horses
19:13behind them.
19:15Think carefully
19:15about what has just
19:16happened to that road,
19:17because this is the mechanism
19:19at the center
19:20of the entire story.
19:21There is no engine
19:23anywhere in that column.
19:25Nothing in it
19:25can tow anything.
19:27To clear the lane,
19:28men have to run forward
19:29under an open sky,
19:31get in among a thousand
19:32pounds of dead
19:33and thrashing animals,
19:35cut leather
19:35that is under tension
19:36and drag the carcasses
19:38out of the way
19:39by hand,
19:39into banks
19:40they cannot climb,
19:42in a lane
19:42with nowhere to put them.
19:44That takes not minutes,
19:46but the better part
19:47of an hour.
19:48And the horses,
19:49still standing
19:50in the traces behind,
19:51will not go quietly
19:52past what is lying
19:53in front of them.
19:55A truck column
19:56in the same lane
19:57has a bad morning.
19:58Another truck
19:59shoves the wreck aside
20:01and the column moves.
20:02A horse column
20:04in that lane
20:04has stopped
20:05being a column.
20:06It has become
20:07a line of stationary targets
20:09a mile long,
20:10parked in a ditch,
20:11in daylight,
20:12in 1944.
20:14And the aircraft
20:15will come back.
20:16That was the part
20:17the Germans
20:18came to dread most.
20:19The first pass
20:20did not destroy the column.
20:22The first pass
20:23made sure the column
20:24would still be there
20:25when the next flight arrived.
20:26Hold that idea
20:27because it inverts
20:28everything you think
20:29you know about attacking
20:30an army from the air.
20:32The pilot was not
20:33trying to destroy
20:34what was on the road.
20:35He was trying to make sure
20:36it could not leave.
20:38Now consider the scale
20:40of what that meant
20:40in Normandy.
20:42The German 7th Army,
20:43the formation
20:44fighting the Americans
20:45through the hedgerows
20:46and later trapped
20:47at Falaise,
20:48had something on the order
20:49of 43,000 horses
20:51assigned to it.
20:5343,000 animals
20:54in a country
20:55made entirely
20:56of one vehicle lanes
20:57under a sky
20:58that belonged
20:59to somebody else.
21:01The Americans,
21:02meanwhile,
21:02were building something
21:03the Germans
21:04had no answer to
21:05at all.
21:06Major General Elwood
21:07Quesada
21:08commanded the 9th
21:09Tactical Air Command
21:10and he had spent
21:11the Normandy fighting
21:12increasingly unwilling
21:13to accept
21:14that airmen
21:14and soldiers
21:15had to talk
21:15to each other
21:16through a chain
21:17of headquarters.
21:18That July,
21:20he did something
21:20nobody had done before.
21:22He had Air Force
21:23VHF radios,
21:24aircraft radios,
21:26installed directly
21:27into American tanks
21:29and he put a fighter pilot
21:30inside the tank
21:31to work them.
21:33Picture that man.
21:34He's a pilot.
21:36He belongs
21:373,000 feet up.
21:39Instead,
21:39he's sitting in a Sherman
21:41in a column of armor,
21:42filthy,
21:43deafened,
21:44with the hatch open,
21:45holding a microphone
21:46and talking to four thunderbolts
21:48stacked over his head.
21:50Men he trained with,
21:52whose voices he knows.
21:54They stayed there.
21:55Four to eight aircraft
21:57over the column,
21:58continuously,
21:59all day,
22:00handed off,
22:01flight by flight.
22:02And the man in the tank
22:03did not ask them
22:04to fight the battle
22:05in front of him.
22:06He asked them
22:07about the road
22:08a mile ahead.
22:10That is the thing
22:11the Germans never matched.
22:12And it is where
22:13the answer to our question
22:14really begins
22:15to take shape.
22:17American armor
22:18and American aircraft
22:19had become one machine
22:21with two altitudes.
22:22And the job
22:23of the altitude on top
22:24was not to kill tanks.
22:26It was to make certain
22:27that,
22:27when the American column
22:29arrived at the next village,
22:30whatever the Germans
22:31had tried to move there
22:32was still lying in a lane
22:34four miles back
22:35with its harness cut.
22:37The Germans worked this out.
22:38They were not slow
22:40and they were not fools.
22:41And within weeks,
22:42they had an answer
22:43that genuinely worked.
22:44They simply stopped
22:46using the roads
22:47in daylight.
22:48Whole armies began
22:49living nocturnally,
22:50moving from dusk,
22:52hiding from dawn,
22:53gone from the sky's view
22:55entirely.
22:56Their daylight losses fell.
22:58And more German horses
22:59died in the six months
23:01that followed
23:01than in the two years
23:02before it.
23:03Not from machine guns.
23:05The Americans had found
23:07the two moments
23:08a night march cannot avoid.
23:09And the one place
23:10on any route in France
23:12where a column
23:13can neither scatter
23:14nor hide
23:15nor turn around.
23:16The German night
23:17began at dusk
23:18and it was a masterpiece
23:19of discipline.
23:21No lights.
23:22No smoking.
23:24Wagons wrapped
23:25where metal
23:25could ring against metal.
23:27Drivers walking
23:28at the head of their teams
23:29rather than riding
23:30because a man on foot
23:32can feel the road.
23:34Columns broken into
23:35small serials
23:36with gaps between them
23:37so that if something
23:38did find them
23:39it would only find
23:40part of them.
23:41Officers standing
23:42at crossroads
23:43with shielded torches
23:45counting units through.
23:47And before first light
23:48all of it
23:49off the road
23:50and into whatever cover
23:51the country offered.
23:53An orchard,
23:54a barn,
23:55a sunken lane
23:56with the hedges
23:57meeting overhead.
23:58By sunrise
23:59there was nothing
24:00to see
24:00from 3,000 feet
24:02but Normandy.
24:04It worked.
24:05That is the part
24:06people leave out.
24:08German daylight losses
24:09on the roads fell
24:10and the men
24:11who organized
24:12those marches
24:12had every right
24:13to believe
24:14they had solved
24:15the problem.
24:16They had solved
24:17the wrong problem.
24:19Because a night march
24:20has two ends
24:22and the enemy
24:23owns both of them.
24:24At the far end
24:25of the night
24:25a column is tired
24:27strung out
24:28and behind schedule
24:29and it is still
24:30on the road
24:31at first light
24:32because horse columns
24:33are always
24:34behind schedule.
24:36American fighter groups
24:37knew this.
24:38Their aircraft
24:39were over the roads
24:40at dawn
24:40in that gray
24:42half hour
24:42when a German
24:43column commander
24:44is looking at his watch
24:45and looking at a stretch
24:46of open country
24:47and making the worst
24:49decision of his life.
24:51Push on
24:52for 20 more minutes
24:53or stop where he is
24:55with no cover at all.
24:57And the night itself
24:58stopped being safe.
25:00The 9th Air Force
25:01put A-20 attack aircraft
25:03and P-61 night fighters
25:05over the same roads
25:06in darkness
25:07working the motor parks
25:08and the traffic
25:09and the rail yards.
25:11A column that could not
25:12move by day
25:13and could not be certain
25:14of the dark
25:15had run out of hours.
25:17Then came the second thing
25:19and it is the harder one.
25:21A column in open country
25:23can scatter.
25:24It cannot scatter
25:26at a river.
25:27Every route in France
25:29funnels.
25:29Roads converge
25:30on bridges and fords
25:32and there
25:33they narrow
25:33to a single point
25:34that cannot be moved,
25:36cannot be hidden,
25:37and cannot be improvised around.
25:39Not by a formation
25:41whose vehicles
25:41are pulled by animals
25:42that must be led
25:43down a bank,
25:44through water,
25:45and up the far side
25:47one team at a time.
25:49In the third week
25:50of August 1944,
25:52the entire German 7th Army
25:54had to cross
25:55the River Dive.
25:55The pocket around Falaise
25:58had closed to a mouth
25:59a few miles wide
26:00and everything inside it
26:02men,
26:03guns,
26:04wagons,
26:05staff cars,
26:06the last of the armor
26:07and tens of thousands
26:08of horses
26:09was pushed
26:10into a handful
26:11of crossings
26:12around the villages
26:12of Saint-Lambert-sur-Dive
26:14and Chambois.
26:16On the 18th of August,
26:18the Allied air forces
26:19flew their heaviest effort
26:20of the whole battle
26:21over that ground.
26:23The roads down
26:24to the Dive
26:25were, by then,
26:26not roads.
26:27They were queues.
26:29I want you to hold
26:30two pictures
26:31side by side here.
26:32The first is
26:33what a pilot saw.
26:34A line of wagons
26:36a mile long
26:36stopped,
26:37nose to tail,
26:39on a slope
26:39leading down to a river,
26:41with nowhere to go forward
26:42and an army behind it
26:44pressing to get on.
26:46The second is
26:47what American infantry
26:48found when they got there.
26:50On the 19th of August,
26:52the 2nd Battalion
26:52of the 359th Infantry
26:54of the 90th Infantry Division
26:56fought its way
26:58into Chambois
26:59and met Polish armor
27:00in the center of the town.
27:02That handshake
27:03shut the pocket.
27:04And what those Americans
27:06had walked through
27:07to reach it
27:07was described afterwards
27:08by men
27:09who could not find
27:10civilian words for it.
27:12Lanes filled
27:13bank to bank
27:14with wrecked transport,
27:16guns still limbered,
27:17ammunition carts
27:18on their sides,
27:19and among all of it,
27:21scores upon scores
27:22of dead horses,
27:24the teams that had been
27:25pulling the guns
27:26and the shells.
27:28Soldiers drove
27:28over the wreckage
27:29because there was
27:30no way around it.
27:31Eisenhower walked
27:32that ground
27:33two days after
27:33the gap closed
27:34and wrote that
27:35it was possible
27:36to walk for hundreds
27:37of yards
27:38stepping on nothing
27:39but dead
27:40and decaying flesh.
27:42Now come back
27:43to our question
27:44because at the Deve
27:45it is visible
27:46in one place
27:47for the first time.
27:49This was not an army
27:50that had lost
27:51a battle of tanks.
27:52Look at what is
27:53actually lying
27:54in those lanes.
27:56It is the transport.
27:57It is the artillery
27:58still attached
28:00to the animals
28:00that were supposed
28:01to move it.
28:02The German 7th Army
28:04did not run out
28:05of guns at Falaise.
28:06It ran out of the ability
28:08to take them anywhere.
28:09And that had been happening
28:10road by road,
28:12dawn by dawn,
28:13for six weeks
28:14before anybody
28:15stood in Chambroix
28:16and saw the result
28:17piled up in one valley.
28:20But here is where
28:21the story stops being
28:22about machine guns
28:23altogether,
28:24and it is the part
28:25I find genuinely
28:26difficult to look at.
28:28Add up every horse
28:29an American pilot
28:30could plausibly have killed
28:32over Normandy
28:32that summer.
28:33Gun camera film,
28:34claim sheets,
28:35the counted wreckage
28:36in the lanes,
28:37you get thousands.
28:38You might,
28:39if you are generous
28:40with the claims,
28:41get tens of thousands.
28:42Now open the German
28:44Army's own
28:45transport returns
28:46for the month
28:47of August 1944.
28:49The figure in them
28:50is a quarter
28:51of a million.
28:53Nobody strafed
28:54a quarter
28:54of a million horses.
28:56Something else
28:56was killing them.
28:58Something the
28:58fighter-bomber groups
28:59had set in motion
29:00and never once
29:02saw happen.
29:03Nobody strafed
29:03a quarter of a million horses.
29:06The fighter-bomber groups
29:07never came close
29:08to that,
29:08and no honest man
29:09in the 9th Air Force
29:10would have claimed it.
29:12What the aircraft did
29:13was far worse,
29:14and it happened
29:15almost entirely
29:15on days when they
29:16did not appear at all.
29:18To see it,
29:19you have to stop thinking
29:20about a horse
29:21as a vehicle,
29:22because that is the mistake,
29:24and it is the mistake
29:25the entire German
29:26transport system
29:27was built on top of.
29:28A truck that is parked
29:30for 18 hours
29:31costs nothing.
29:32It sits.
29:33It waits.
29:34At the end of 18 hours,
29:36it is exactly
29:36the truck it was.
29:38A horse that has spent
29:39nine hours in the dark
29:41dragging a two-ton gun
29:42over a metalled road
29:43is a system in deficit,
29:45and everything it needs
29:46to recover
29:47has to be given back
29:48to it in daylight.
29:49It needs water,
29:50not a canteen,
29:52gallons of it,
29:53led to a stream
29:54or a trough
29:55and allowed to drink properly.
29:56It needs grain.
29:57A hard-working draft horse
29:59in that army
30:00needed something like
30:0112 pounds of oats a day,
30:03on top of hay.
30:04And this is the part
30:05that surprises people.
30:06You cannot simply turn
30:09a working horse
30:09out to grass.
30:11Grazing alone
30:12will not sustain
30:13an animal doing that work.
30:15It renders it unfit
30:17within days.
30:18The grain had to be brought up,
30:20which meant fodder
30:21made up an enormous share
30:23of the very supply trains
30:24that were being torn apart
30:26on the roads.
30:27It needs the harness off.
30:29It needs its shoulders
30:31looked at
30:31because a collar
30:32left on a wet,
30:33hot animal for a day
30:35rubs the skin off
30:36and an open collar,
30:38sore,
30:39takes a horse
30:39out of the traces
30:40as surely as a bullet.
30:43It needs its feet picked out
30:45and its shoes
30:45checked by a farrier.
30:47All of that needs time,
30:49space,
30:51daylight,
30:51and calm.
30:53Now put the sky over it.
30:55The column reaches its hide
30:57at four in the morning,
30:59exhausted
30:59and late.
31:01It must be invisible
31:02before the light comes.
31:04The stream is 400 yards away
31:06across an open meadow,
31:07and taking 80 horses
31:09out onto that meadow
31:10in daylight
31:11in August 1944
31:13is a decision
31:14that gets men killed.
31:16The field where they might graze
31:18is in full view.
31:19The fodder wagons
31:21are two days behind
31:22because a thunderbolt
31:23caught them on a bend
31:24near Argentin.
31:26And nobody dares
31:27strip the harness
31:28because if aircraft
31:29find the orchard,
31:31the column has to be gone
31:32in minutes,
31:32and you cannot hitch
31:34six teams in minutes.
31:36So the horses stand,
31:38in harness,
31:40thirsty,
31:41on short rations,
31:43day after day
31:44after day.
31:46That is the killing,
31:48not the .50 caliber,
31:50the standing,
31:52sores that turn septic,
31:54lameness that nobody
31:55has time to shoo out.
31:58Colic from bad water
31:59and broken feeding.
32:01Animals that simply stop,
32:03in the traces,
32:05and go down on a road
32:06at three in the morning
32:07and cannot be got up again.
32:09And the system meant
32:11to catch all of this
32:12had already broken.
32:13A German divisional veterinary company
32:15was built to handle
32:16around 500 horses.
32:18In that period,
32:20they were receiving
32:21two and three thousand
32:22at a time.
32:24The horse hospitals
32:25had beds,
32:26if you want to call them that,
32:27for about 150 sick animals,
32:30with a reserve
32:31of some 130 healthy ones
32:33to hand back
32:33as replacements.
32:35Set that against
32:36an army bleeding animals
32:38in the tens of thousands,
32:39and you can see
32:40the shape of the collapse.
32:42This was not new,
32:44and I want you to notice that,
32:45because it tells you
32:46how structural it was.
32:49On the eastern front,
32:50in the winter of 1941,
32:52Army Group Center
32:53had been losing horses
32:54at something like
32:55a thousand a day.
32:57The German army
32:58knew exactly
32:59how fragile this was.
33:01What was new in 1944
33:03in the West
33:04was that somebody else
33:05owned the daylight.
33:07Here is the figure
33:08I promised you.
33:10German army returns
33:11for the single month
33:12of August 1944
33:14record a loss
33:15of roughly
33:17254,000 horses.
33:20Sit with the scale of that.
33:22A full-strength
33:23German infantry division
33:25ran on about
33:265,000 animals.
33:28In 31 days,
33:30the German army
33:31lost the entire draft power
33:32of something like
33:3450 divisions.
33:35And there was nowhere
33:37left to get more.
33:39Germany had already
33:40combed out its own farms.
33:42It had already stripped
33:43Poland, France,
33:44and the Western Soviet Union.
33:46And by that summer,
33:48the eastern territories
33:49it had been stripping
33:50were being taken back
33:51from it.
33:52The horses could not
33:53be manufactured.
33:55There was no
33:56willow run for horses.
33:58Which brings us
33:59all the way back
34:00to our question.
34:01And now you can see
34:03the real shape
34:03of the answer.
34:05kill a German tank
34:07and you have removed
34:08one tank.
34:10Break a German horse column
34:12and you have started
34:13something that goes on
34:14killing for weeks
34:15after you have landed,
34:17refueled,
34:18and gone to bed.
34:19It takes the artillery
34:21with it.
34:22It takes the ammunition,
34:23the rations,
34:24the field kitchens,
34:25and the wounded,
34:26and it cannot be replaced
34:27from any factory
34:28on earth.
34:30The Americans
34:31who reached that ground
34:32saw the end state of it.
34:34Engineers came into
34:35the Falaise Valley
34:36with bulldozers
34:37and dug pits
34:37and pushed flesh
34:39and metal into them
34:40together
34:40because there was no way
34:42to separate the two.
34:43The smell reached villages
34:45dozens of kilometers away.
34:47The flies came in clouds.
34:49That clearing work
34:50went on into November.
34:52But all of this
34:53was still,
34:54in the minds
34:54of the men who flew,
34:55a feeling
34:56rather than a fact.
34:58They believed
34:59they were killing tanks.
35:00The proof came
35:01from a small team
35:02of Allied scientists
35:04walking that wreckage
35:05with measuring tapes.
35:06And what they wrote down
35:08demolished
35:09the Air Force's claims
35:10and,
35:10in the same breath,
35:12showed that the pilots
35:13had won something
35:14far bigger
35:14than the thing
35:15they had been counting.
35:16The last week of August,
35:181944.
35:20The valley of the Divé
35:21and the roads
35:22running east from it
35:23towards the Seine.
35:25While the fighting
35:26moved on,
35:27a very odd sort of unit
35:28came the other way.
35:30Allied operational
35:31research teams,
35:32scientists in battle dress,
35:35men who in 1939
35:36had been zoologists
35:38and mathematicians
35:39and physicists,
35:40walked into that wreckage
35:42with notebooks,
35:43cameras,
35:43and measuring tapes.
35:45Their job
35:46was to count,
35:48and then to ask
35:49of every single
35:50wrecked machine
35:51one question.
35:52What actually killed this?
35:55They were very good at it.
35:57A rocket leaves a signature
35:59you cannot mistake.
36:01A shaped charge
36:02from a bazooka
36:03or a panzerfaust
36:04leaves another.
36:06A high-velocity
36:07anti-tank round
36:08leaves a clean,
36:10punched hole
36:10with a rim
36:11you can measure.
36:13And a tank
36:14that is burnt out
36:15but shows no penetration
36:16anywhere on it
36:17was not killed
36:19by an enemy at all.
36:20It was killed
36:21by its own crew
36:22or by fire
36:24after they walked away.
36:26Here is what they counted
36:28in the pocket itself.
36:30187 tanks
36:31and self-propelled guns.
36:34157 lightly armored vehicles.
36:371,778 lorries.
36:42669 cars.
36:44And 252 artillery pieces.
36:48Out beyond the pocket
36:49along the roads
36:50running east
36:51towards the river
36:51in the stretch
36:53the Allies took
36:53to calling
36:54the Shambles
36:55they counted
36:565,644
36:58German vehicles
37:00destroyed,
37:00damaged
37:01or simply left.
37:03358 of them
37:04tanks
37:05and self-propelled guns.
37:07And then came
37:08the finding
37:09that rewrote
37:10what everybody
37:11thought they had been
37:12doing all summer.
37:13The soft transport
37:15had been shot
37:15to pieces.
37:17Lorries,
37:18carts,
37:18wagons,
37:19staff cars
37:20ripped open
37:21by cannon
37:21and machine gun fire
37:23exactly as you would
37:24expect from an aircraft
37:25coming down a road
37:26at 400 miles an hour.
37:28The armor
37:29had not.
37:31Comparatively few
37:32of the armored vehicles
37:33carried the marks
37:34of rocket strikes
37:35at all.
37:36Machine after machine
37:37stood there
37:37essentially intact,
37:39not penetrated,
37:41not burned
37:41by any weapon
37:42fired at it,
37:43simply abandoned
37:44where it stopped.
37:46It matched
37:47what the same teams
37:48had already found
37:49at Mortein,
37:49where the air forces
37:50had claimed 252 tanks
37:53in a day
37:53and the ground
37:54could account for nine.
37:56The Germans
37:57said it themselves.
37:58General Heinrich
37:59Eberbach,
38:00who commanded
38:01panzer forces
38:02in that battle,
38:03put it flatly
38:04afterwards.
38:05The loss of tanks
38:06through lack of fuel
38:08was greater
38:09than the loss
38:09to all the enemy's
38:11weapons combined.
38:13Now go back
38:14over that count
38:14because one figure
38:16on it should
38:16stop you cold
38:17and it is not
38:19any of the tank numbers.
38:22252 artillery pieces.
38:25Armies do not
38:26abandon guns.
38:28A gun is the last
38:29thing an artillery man
38:30leaves.
38:31His entire
38:32professional existence
38:33is organized around
38:34not leaving it.
38:36Those 252 pieces
38:38were not blown up
38:39in a bombardment.
38:39They were standing
38:40in fields and lanes,
38:42most of them
38:42serviceable,
38:43with their limbers
38:44and their ammunition
38:45carts beside them.
38:47They were left
38:48because there was
38:48nothing alive
38:49at the front of them.
38:50That is the fingerprint.
38:52That is the whole
38:53summer's work
38:54by American
38:54fighter-bomber pilots,
38:56written down
38:57in a scientific survey
38:58by men
38:59who were not
38:59even looking for it.
39:01Eisenhower
39:02walked that ground
39:03himself,
39:03two days after
39:04the gap was shut.
39:06He had been a soldier
39:07since 1915,
39:08and he could not
39:09find ordinary language
39:10for it.
39:11He wrote that it was
39:12literally possible
39:13to walk for hundreds
39:14of yards at a time,
39:15stepping on nothing
39:16but dead and decaying
39:18flesh.
39:19He was describing men,
39:21and he was describing
39:22horses,
39:23because in those lanes
39:24you could not tell
39:25where one ended
39:26and the other began.
39:27So here,
39:29finally,
39:29is the answer
39:30to the question
39:31we started with.
39:32American pilots
39:33went after
39:34the horses first
39:35because the German
39:36army in the west
39:37was never the army
39:38in the newsreels.
39:39It was an animal army
39:40with a thin crust
39:42of machines
39:42on the front of it,
39:43and the machines
39:44could not fight
39:45for a single day
39:45without the animals
39:46behind them.
39:4850 caliber guns
39:49could not kill
39:50the crust.
39:51They could destroy
39:52the thing underneath
39:52it completely,
39:53and once you had
39:54destroyed that,
39:55you got the tanks
39:56anyway,
39:57for nothing.
39:58The Germans
39:59handed them over
40:00themselves,
40:01intact,
40:01out of fuel
40:02at the roadside,
40:03because the fuel
40:04had been on a wagon,
40:05and the wagon
40:06had been on a road,
40:07and the road
40:08had been visited
40:09at first light.
40:10The panzers at Falaise
40:12were not shot to death.
40:13They were starved to death
40:15by pilots
40:16who thought they had failed.
40:18There was a bitter joke
40:20buried in that,
40:20and I want to name it
40:21before we finish.
40:23For decades afterwards,
40:25the American air forces
40:26argued about tank kill claims,
40:28defending numbers
40:29the ground
40:29had already disproved.
40:31They were fighting
40:32over the wrong column
40:33of the ledger.
40:34The victory was sitting
40:35in the line
40:36nobody boasted about,
40:37horse-drawn vehicles
40:38destroyed,
40:40and in 252 guns
40:42standing in Norman fields
40:43with nothing to pull them.
40:45The scientists measured
40:47everything that could be measured.
40:48They measured penetrations
40:50and burn patterns
40:51and the diameter of holes.
40:53There was one thing
40:54in that valley
40:55they had no instrument for,
40:56and it did not belong
40:57to the Germans.
40:59It belonged to the young Americans
41:00who had done this.
41:02And one of them,
41:03half a century later,
41:04would say out loud
41:06what it had cost him.
41:07Go back,
41:08one last time,
41:09to that road
41:09between Thon and Chamboy.
41:11You know now
41:12what the pilot was looking at
41:13when he flew past the tank.
41:15He was looking at
41:16the load-bearing wall
41:17of the German army.
41:19The teams at the head
41:20of the column,
41:21the animals that moved
41:22the guns that killed
41:23American infantry,
41:24the animals that carried
41:26the shells and the fuel
41:27and the bread.
41:28He had two seconds to decide,
41:30and he made the decision
41:32that would take
41:32an entire artillery regiment
41:34out of the war
41:35and leave its guns
41:36standing in a field
41:37for a British scientist
41:39to count a week later.
41:41And he hated doing it.
41:44Tom Glenn flew Thunderbolts
41:46with the 36th Fighter Group
41:47of the 9th Air Force.
41:49Long after the war,
41:50he wrote a book
41:51about the men
41:51who did that flying,
41:52and when he was asked
41:54about it,
41:54he did not talk about
41:55tanks or trains
41:56or the marshalling yards.
41:58He talked about the horses.
42:00He said it was one
42:01of the saddest duties he had.
42:03The horses were not
42:05our enemy, he said,
42:06but our assignment
42:07was to prevent those columns
42:09from harming our troops.
42:11There is something
42:12in that sentence
42:13I would ask you
42:15not to move past
42:16too quickly.
42:17The men flying
42:19those aircraft
42:19were, most of them,
42:2122 and 23 years old.
42:23And America,
42:24in 1944,
42:26was still a country
42:27where a great many of them
42:29had grown up
42:29around working animals.
42:31They knew exactly
42:32what they were shooting at.
42:34They did not need it,
42:35explained.
42:36And there was no reward in it.
42:39Nobody was decorated
42:40for a wagon team.
42:41The claim sheets
42:43counted locomotives
42:44and tanks
42:45and trucks.
42:45And the horse-drawn column
42:47of that ledger
42:48was the one
42:49nobody put in a citation.
42:52Meanwhile,
42:53the men filling it in
42:54were doing the most
42:55dangerous flying in Europe,
42:57down in the small arms
42:58and light flack,
42:59at treetop height,
43:01where it was not
43:02the Luftwaffe
43:03that killed
43:03fighter-bomber pilots,
43:04but the ground itself.
43:06They took the risk,
43:08they took the memory home,
43:09and they got no credit
43:11for the thing
43:12they had actually achieved.
43:14Because they had achieved it.
43:16From D-Day
43:17to the German surrender,
43:19Thunderbolt units
43:19accounted for something
43:20like 86,000 railway cars,
43:239,000 locomotives,
43:2568,000 trucks,
43:27and 6,000 armored vehicles.
43:30And,
43:30in that unglamorous line
43:32at the bottom,
43:33tens of thousands
43:34of horse-drawn vehicles.
43:37Germany never recovered
43:39from what happened
43:39to its animals
43:40in the summer and autumn
43:41of 1944.
43:43It could not.
43:46It fought on to the end,
43:48with more than a million horses
43:49still on strength,
43:51still hauling guns
43:52through the snow of the Ardennes
43:53and back across the Rhine,
43:56an army that could still stand
43:57and fight
43:58anywhere it was already standing,
44:00and could never again
44:01arrive anywhere in time.
44:05So here is the whole thing
44:06in one sentence.
44:09American pilots hunted the horses
44:11before the tanks
44:12because in that war,
44:13on those roads,
44:15the horses were the German army,
44:17and everything else out there
44:19was just cargo.
44:21But I don't want to leave you
44:22with a strategic conclusion,
44:23because that is not what this was.
44:26Think about Hill 314 at Mortain.
44:29700 Americans
44:30on a bare rock,
44:32no food,
44:33almost no ammunition,
44:35five days,
44:36with two young artillery observers
44:38on the summit
44:39calling fire
44:40onto the roads below,
44:41and no certainty at all
44:43that anyone was coming.
44:45What kept the Germans
44:46off that hill
44:47was that the Germans
44:48could not bring up
44:49what they needed
44:49to take it.
44:51The pilot over the Ton Road
44:52never met those men.
44:54He never knew their names,
44:56never heard of that hill,
44:57never learned
44:58what his gun camera film
44:59had bought.
45:01That is what he was doing
45:02when he flew past the tank
45:04and went for the horses.
45:06He was doing something
45:07he would remember
45:07for the rest of his life,
45:10so that American infantry
45:11he would never meet
45:12could still be alive
45:13at the end of the week.
45:16Thank you for staying
45:17with this one
45:18all the way to the end.
45:19If it gave you something
45:20you hadn't come across before,
45:21press the like button.
45:23It genuinely decides
45:24whether a story like this
45:25reaches other people
45:26who want to understand
45:28what American airmen
45:29and American infantry
45:30actually did in 1944.
45:34Subscribe
45:34and turn on the bell
45:36so the next one
45:37finds you when it goes up.
45:39And tell me two things
45:40in the comments.
45:41First,
45:42where you're watching from.
45:43This channel reaches
45:45far more countries
45:46than I ever expected it to.
45:48Second,
45:49if your father,
45:50your grandfather,
45:51or your uncle
45:52served in the Second World War,
45:53tell me his name
45:55and his unit.
45:56I read them,
45:57every one,
45:58and so do a lot of the people
45:59watching alongside you.
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