The excavations

Trenches were put in at Point 54 to get cross sections of the defences and command post. A section was also dug across what appeared to be an anti-tank gun platform. Various rounds of ammunition were found belonging to British, German and French weapons, together with fragments of mortar ammunition and some communications cable.

Further behind Point 54, Time Team supervisor Kerry Ely unearthed a post-battle dump of mixed ammunition which had been buried in the field. 'This is what they called battlefield clear-up,' said Kerry. 'All the material left lying around would be rounded up and buried.'

The Puits d'Herode excavations uncovered a network of communication trenches linking the small concrete bunker sections. Particularly nasty looking 'close knot' barbed wire was also uncovered, which would have constituted part of the position's defences.

A second area was opened up further down the slope by Phil Harding over a geophysics anomaly thought to be the site of another anti-tank gun. Pre-formed concrete blocks, the foundation base for a sizable concrete casemate for a large-calibre 88mm gun, indicated that the site had been found.

It appears that just prior to D-Day extra troops were brought into the valley at St Come du Fresne and a programme of strengthening and consolidation was under way but interrupted by the events of 6 June. The positions of the guns and emplacements turned the valley, a natural route inland from the sea, into a killing zone. Each emplacement, able to cover each other with fields of fire, would have been able to completely control access to and through the valley.

Given a few extra weeks of preparation – or, even more so, a winter to consolidate – the story of this site may have been different. Fortunately for the Allies, and for the soldiers whose job it was to take these positions, D-Day arrived not a moment too soon.

One of the many evocative pieces of evidence uncovered during Time Team's excavations was the piece of decaying communications cable found in a trench at Point 54. One can only imagine what messages were shouted down that cable 60 years ago, in the early hours of 6 June 1944, when the soldiers in their positions first recognised the massive armada of Allied ships on the horizon.