"Casualties to the Germans were insignificant. The wreckage to Caen was, of course, considerable. So it could not be called a success", admitted the late
Sir Charles Richardson, then a brigadier on General Montgomery's staff, about the desperate British and Canadian attempts to capture the French town in 1944. Tens of thousands of Allied and German troops and thousands of French citizens died before the German army was effectively destroyed in France. In the process many of Normandy's historic towns and villages were destroyed, too. The conclusion of Charles Wheeler's two-part documentary tells the story of the bloody campaign to liberate western Europe as experienced by those who fought on both sides.