Filming D-Day
On 6 June 1944, Sergeant Ian Grant was among the thousands of men landing on Sword Beach in Normandy on D Day, armed only with a revolver and a cine camera. He was part of the Army Film and Photographic Unit (AFPU) and captured this incredible mute footage of the landings. Fewer than a dozen men filmed the D Day landings and this extraordinary record is now held exclusively by the Imperial War Museum. Film curator Michelle Kirby introduces us to this film.
Michelle Kirby, Film Curator, IWM: "This combat footage is from a group of films of British and Canadian troops landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. These films only exist because a small number of cameraman risked their lives to film them. The only hint of the man behind the camera is the quick flash of a name chalked up on a slate board Sergeant Ian Grant. But it's thanks to him that we have this particular footage of a group of Lord Lovat's Royal Marine Commandos steaming through the very choppy channel towards Sword Beach on June 6th 1944.
Sergeant Grant was part of the Army Film and Photographic Unit set up in the Second World War by the War Office for propaganda training and the historic record. They were a team of serving British Army soldiers armed with a cine camera and a revolver. They were trained at Pinewood Studios before embedding themselves among Allied troops in order to film and take photos right on the front line.
Sergeant Grant had served years before at Dunkirk with the Royal Scots so would have recognised the danger on D-Day was very real. Fewer than a dozen men of the number 5 section of the AFPU, including Sergeant Grant, filmed troops going ashore at Normandy on D-Day, some going in with the very first wave. They filmed and photographed events unfolding on Sword, Gold and Juno Beaches and the array of images that they captured as a team are an extraordinary record.
Sergeant Grant later recalled the massive noise of battle as the commandos landed: the sound of rockets guns firing from allied ships, machine gun fire from the enemy. He even heard Lord Lovat's personal piper, Bill Millin, playing his bagpipes. And yet the film is mute.
Cameramen simply couldn't carry any more bulky equipment. One of the cameramen on the same beach as Sergeant Grant filmed four minutes of striking footage before being seriously injured from a mortar shell, while another of his AFPU colleagues was wounded in the elbow by machine-gun fire.
In total, 25 members of the Army Film and Photographic Unit were killed in action across the whole of the Second World War. The legacy of that unit's footage still lives on and now the stories behind the names on the chalkboards which started each wheel of film are beginning to be told. Thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed seeing our archive footage. Just a reminder, please do subscribe to IWM's YouTube channel for more archive films and lots more."
