By Tira Shubart, for News Decoder, a global educational service
With the 156,000 allied troops who came ashore at Normandy on D-Day were 500 news reporters armed only with pens, paper, cameras and recording equipment.

On 6 June 1944, the biggest seabourne invasion in history was launched across the English Channel towards the French coast to establish a base and retake occupied Europe from Nazi Germany.

Known as D-Day — and codenamed Operation Overlord — more than 5000 ships and landing craft ferried 156,000 Allied troops to storm the Normandy beaches guarded by well-entrenched German soldiers.

Pictured above: While hundreds of others move towards the beach in landing craft, American assault troops, with full equipment, move onto Omaha Beach in Northern France, 6 June 1944. Image: US National Archives and Record Administration

The Nazi command had long been expecting an invasion and fought fiercely using their artillery, tanks and infantry units in the face of wave after wave of Allied troops.

Embedded with the invading forces were more than 500 journalists. They had no special treatment and were dropped off the landing crafts alongside the troops. As the soldiers stormed ashore with their weapons, the journalists were armed only with notebooks, cameras and typewriters. 

They splashed ashore under fire trying to keep their kit dry—but not always succeeding.

A few hours earlier, just before dawn, a handful of reporters had been dropped by parachute behind the lines with 18,000 paratroopers who aimed to divert German firepower away from the approaching Allied ships.

Recording history as it happened

The BBC had created a special reporting unit to cover the invasion and dispatched 17 of their journalists who joined the landing forces on D-Day. The radio reporters all landed with engineers who operated the (misleadingly named) Midget recording devices which used portable gramophone technology. The Midget weighed 18 kg (40 lb), but it captured sound in the field more clearly than the audience had ever heard.

A number of the journalists had covered the amphibious landings in Italy in Sicily and Anzio. 

Other American and British reporters had flown missions over Germany with Allied aircrews to report on the bombing raids against German cities and Nazi military targets and attacks from enemy fighter planes.

Nearly all the journalists had experienced the Blitz as waves of German bombs were dropped on British cities. But few of the journalists had ever experienced the level of firepower directed at the soldiers trying to fight their way onto the Normandy beaches.

One of the few experienced combat journalists was Robert Capa. His years of photographing the Spanish Civil War had made him justly famous.

Working for the popular American magazine Life, Capa landed with the first wave of US troops in some of the heaviest fighting on Omaha Beach. Carrying two 35mm cameras, he shot more than 100 images, but when his film was shipped back to London only 11 of his photos survived a mishap in the developing room. They remain among the most iconic images of D-Day.

No freedom for press during war

All reporters had to be accredited and follow strict procedures. Whether they were writers, photographers or sound engineers operating the bulky recording machinery, journalists had to wear military kit which identified them as a ‘War Correspondent.’

Newspapers also had to agree to strict censorship rules before reports could be published. 

Reporters couldn’t mention the exact location of troops or even the weather conditions — anything that might help the enemy. Even radio reports from the BBC and US stations were careful to never include details of battle groups, numbers of soldiers or casualties. 

That is why the initial reports issued by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in London blandly announced D-Day as “landings on the northern coast of France.”

NBC Radio News added more details on the troops “leaving their landing barges, fighting their way up the beaches to the fortress of Nazi Europe … under a mammoth cloud of fighter planes under a ceiling of screaming shells from Allied warships.”

The German positions were overrun by the overwhelming air and naval superiority of the Allies by the end of the day, but at the expense of more than 4000 killed on the Allied side and up to double that figure for the German troops.

Considering that the speculation on when the Allies would launch the big push into Europe was at fever pitch, the date and the place of the landings remained secret. The restrictions on the media, and the self-censorship, were universally accepted and enforced.

Another restriction imposed on the journalists was a ban against female reporters at the frontline. Women, the Allied Command said, “did not know how to dig latrines.” Although this excuse was laughed off, all journalists depended on the military for transport. There were no freelancers getting around the rules.

Capturing iconic images

Martha Gellhorn had reported on the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler in Germany and wasn’t going to be left behind at the invasion of Normandy. When her press credentials were rejected she snuck onto a hospital ship in London then rode a water ambulance to shore. 

She helped medics get the wounded back to the ship, then interviewed them.

American journalist Lee Miller had rare US military accreditation to report from the field — only granted to four women — and arrived in Normandy several weeks after D-Day with her typewriter and camera.

Miller was an expert photographer, having been part of the surrealist and abstract art movement in 1930s Paris after an early career as a fashion model.

Miller’s report, “Unarmed Warriors”, about the American evacuation hospital near the landing site of Omaha Beach remains one of the most famous descriptions of the aftermath of the assault: “For an hour or so I watched lives and limbs being saved, by skill, devotion and endurance. Grave faces and tired feet passed up and down the tent aisles.”

She had been accredited as the correspondent from British Vogue who had not expected such a hard-hitting report, but they ran it in full along with a dozen of her photographs.

Some weeks later, Miller found herself reporting the battle of St. Malo, further up the French coast.

Women were strictly not allowed to cover combat, but she had been mistakenly assigned to visit what was thought to be a liberated French town. Miller was the only reporter there and took full advantage of her scoop with her powerful reporting and frontline photographs.

Though she was later placed under "temporary arrest" by Allied command, they quickly relented and Miller accompanied the troops through the liberation of Paris — her long-time home — and the discovery of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.

The D-Day landings that began 6 June 1944 are now celebrated as the iconic moment when the tide turned against Nazi Germany. It was also the date when hundreds of reporters began to accompany Allied soldiers across Europe.

Tira Shubart is a freelance journalist and media trainer based in London. She has produced television news and trained journalists across four continents for international broadcasters, including BBC News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Al Jazeera, over several decades.