The Forgotten Dead (The True Story Of Exercise Tiger 1944 - The Disastrous Rehearsal For D-Day) PDF
Preview The Forgotten Dead (The True Story Of Exercise Tiger 1944 - The Disastrous Rehearsal For D-Day)
The night of 27 April 1944.
Off the coast of Slapton Sands on a darker then normal night, off the coast of Devon, England.
An American Landing craft training Exercise, 'Exercise Tiger', is now well underway off the coastline as part of the buildup for the planned invasion of France - Operation Overlord - when disaster strikes.
A force of well trained, highly proficient Kriegsmarine S-Boats cross paths with the US force of Landing ships and associated naval units while out hunting for inshore convoys to attack.
Bedlam ensues.
Survivors are instructed to not to discuss what took place.
Inevitably tales some discount as fiction or wartime 'wild stories' start to leak out, rumours of night time explosions, naval gunfire and bodies washing ashore are soon common throughout the area.
Quietly and in complete secrecy the matter is 'hushed up' by the Allied High Command, with those whose bodies washed ashore quickly being buried in local cemeteries, and along with those missing who were never recovered, all were quietly forgotten and almost never talked about for decades after the war.
That is, until Ken Small discovered the story quite by chance, and decided to dedicate the rest of his life to honouring the brave men who perished in such a disastrous manner, only to have their sacrifice forgotten by history. Later becoming the driving force and assisting in the recovery of a Sherman tank from the seabed lost on that night during that attack, Ken went onto create a memorial to those who died and started to share their stories and the stories of the Kriegsmarine Seamen that attacked them so effectively, as widely as he could so that all their actions that night could never be forgotten.
This expanded and updated edition of the long out of print bestselling classic by Mark Rogerson, is a gripping tale of wartime disaster and rescue in the words of the soldiers and sailors who were there, of their German Enemy's attack methods, and of one man's curiosity that turned into a fight to ensure that all of them would receive the justice and recognition that they all so justly deserved.
The Author Ken Small first discovered the existence of 'Exercise Tiger' after he took up beachcombing in 1969. From there, Ken dedicated the next 35 years of his life to honouring those involved and those who perished in the disastrous exercise. Pulling a Sherman tank out of the ocean, Ken created a memorial to those who died and started to share their story, and his, with the world. The Forgotten Dead was originally published in 1988, bringing both 'Exercise Tiger' and Ken's own efforts to light.
Ken sadly passed away in 2004 after a long and painful struggle with cancer.
Today, people from all over the world travel to Torcross to see Ken's tank as its still referred to locally, and remember the tragedy and loss of those involved in 'Exercise Tiger'.
Mark Rogerson who assisted in putting together this expanded edition (without credit) is a communications specialist and former BBC television journalist. As well as collaborating with Ken Small on The Forgotten Dead, he is the author of Home Banking - A Commercial Proposition? (Lafferty Publications), one of the first examinations of the impact of technology on branch banking and The Dali Scandal (Gollancz), an investigation into the billion dollar world-wide trade in fakes of the Spanish surrealist's work.
He now lives in southwestern France.
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