Before a single Allied soldier set foot on Normandy, before the battleships opened fire, before the paratroopers jumped, before any of it, a fleet of small ships sailed alone into the darkness toward the most heavily mined waters in the world.
Nobody talks about the minesweepers.
They should.
By June 1944, the Germans had laid over 6,000 mines across the approaches to the Normandy coast. Contact mines that detonated on impact. Magnetic mines triggered by a ship's hull. Pressure mines activated by the wake of a passing vessel. And some of the most sinister weapons ever devised: mines fitted with ship counters, designed to let several vessels pass safely overhead before exploding under the one that followed. You could sweep a channel, declare it clean, and still die.
The entire D-Day plan rested on one brutal fact: 6,939 ships could not reach the beaches without someone going first to clear the way.
That job fell to 350 minesweepers.
On the night of June 5, hours before the invasion fleet moved, the minesweepers sailed. No escort. No cover. Just small ships pushing into the dark, dragging wire sweeps through the water, cutting the cables of moored mines and listening for the sound of their own death.
They swept 10 separate channels, each 400 yards wide, all the way from England to the coast of France. They were operating within range of German shore batteries. In complete darkness. In rough seas with strong currents constantly pushing them off course, forcing sweeps to be repeated. Keeping formation in those conditions, in the dark, without lights, was nearly impossible.
The Germans never detected them.
Think about what that means. Hundreds of ships, running without lights, dragging equipment through the water, close enough to the French coast to be well within range of shore batteries, and the Germans had no idea they were there.
By 3:30 in the morning, all 10 channels were clear.
The price was paid. USS Osprey struck a mine on June 5 and went down in minutes, killing 6 men. They were the first casualties of the entire D-Day operation, killed before the invasion had officially begun, their names barely known to history. USS Corry struck a mine off Utah Beach and sank so fast her crew barely had time to abandon ship.
These men knew exactly what they were sailing into. Minesweepers do not have the armor of a destroyer or the firepower of a cruiser. They are small. They are slow. They go first because someone has to, and they go knowing that the mine that kills them is one they simply never found.
When the great armada finally moved, when 6,939 ships began crossing the Channel toward France, every single one of them sailed through corridors those men had cut in the dark.
Every landing craft that reached the beach. Every tank that came ashore. Every soldier who stepped onto Normandy and lived. They all passed through water that had been cleared, in silence, in darkness, hours before dawn, by men most people have never heard of.
The liberation of Europe sailed in their wake.
Ray Lambert had already been shot twice and blown up once before he ever set foot on Omaha Beach.
He had survived the invasion of North Africa in 1943. Then Sicily. Each time he had been wounded. Each time he had gone back. By June 6th, 1944, the 23-year-old Staff Sergeant and head medic of the 16th Infantry Regiment's 2nd Battalion was on his third invasion in two years. He had already won a Silver Star for running through German lines in North Africa to drag wounded men out.
He was not supposed to survive a third one.
Lambert landed in the first wave at Omaha Beach. Of the 31 men in his landing craft, only 7 survived the day. The other 24 were killed before they even reached the sand.
He started working immediately.
The first bullet hit his right arm and shattered the bone. He kept going. A second round tore through his right elbow as he was pulling a wounded soldier through the surf. He kept going. Something hit his leg and opened it down to the bone. He put a tourniquet on himself, injected himself with morphine from his own kit, and kept going.
He found a slab of concrete on the beach that offered a few inches of cover. He set up a treatment zone behind it, dragging men out of the water and working on them one by one under constant fire. That piece of concrete is still there today. People who visit Omaha Beach call it Ray's Rock.
Then a loose landing craft ramp swung loose in the surf and slammed into him. It broke his back.
He kept going.
Lambert lost count of how many men he treated. The official record credits him with saving at least 15 lives that morning. Other accounts say closer to two dozen. He worked until his body physically stopped, collapsing unconscious at the edge of the surf, bleeding from multiple wounds, his back broken, still in the water.
A doctor spotted him. A landing craft pulled him out.
Here is the part that does not feel real.
Lambert's brother, Euel, had also been wounded at Normandy that day. The two brothers were loaded onto the same evacuation landing craft. They were placed in the same wheeled ambulance. They were taken to the same tent hospital in England. They were brought into the same operating room at the same time.
Lambert spent almost a full year recovering before he could walk properly again.
He went home. He lived quietly for decades, rarely talking about what happened. In 2019, at the age of 98, he went back to Normandy and stood on the beach again. He published a memoir called Every Man a Hero. It became a New York Times bestseller.
In 2021, Ray Lambert died peacefully at home. He was 100 years old.
He had three invasions, four serious wounds, a broken back, a Silver Star, multiple Bronze Stars, multiple Purple Hearts, and two dozen men who came home because he refused to stop moving on the worst morning in American military history.
Today is June 6th.
Remember him.
Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch on why Starmer must resign, Donald Trump, Israel, Nigel Farage, Brexit and more - the FULL interview right here👇
@KemiBadenoch | @piersmorgan
Some people collect stamps, some collect train numbers, some collect rare coins, some collect miniature wargames figures.
Reform politicians collect community notes calling out their lies.
And it’s quite an impressive collection!
So it turns out the 999 call that was released wasn't the full call. This is the full call which is 12 minutes long, the version that was released had a lot of bits taken out. Now why would they do that 🤔. Notice the emphasis on it being an attack on a brown person and they want immediate action. Also the mention that they were restraining Henry. The call handler also says that an ambulance is on its way due to Henry bleeding from his mouth. I've had to share it in 3 parts as it wont let me share the full length version. Part 1 👇
🚨 It’s not just “two-tier policing” or DEI — it’s the total paralysis of our police.
Officers are thrown to the wolves over the tiniest thing.
• A drunk woman runs from police, falls down the stairs… and the cop gets investigated for simply stating “that’s what happens when you run away.”
• Another gets sent straight to the IOPC for “incorrectly picking a person up off the floor while they were in cuffs.”
Supervisors are terrified: one wrong call, it lands on their head and kills their promotion. So the message trickles down — play it safe, cover your arse, do the bare minimum.
Result? Cops can’t police anymore.
Any interaction with the public risks a complaint that goes straight to PSD or the IOPC.
See someone acting sus? Your gut screams “stop and search”? Nah. Not worth months of investigation, paperwork, and stress if they cry foul.
This destroyed me personally. It pushed me to the point of suicidal thoughts. Constant investigations over months, only to get the same result every single time: “no case to answer.”
The system doesn’t just stop us doing our jobs — it breaks the officers who still try.
We’ve created a system where the public is protected from the police… and the criminals are laughing.
This isn’t public safety. This is the slow death of actual law and order.
Time to stop protecting officers from doing their job — and start protecting the public from the chaos.
#TwoTierPolicing #BackTheBlue #UKPolice #PoliceMentalHealth
The female plant on Question Time got her wish as Andy turns up to fit her new boiler!
No doubt "sexist" Rob Kenyon will be called later to fix the mess made by Andy Burnham.
@RobKenyonReform@reformparty_uk
And yet another community note for Zia "Goebbels" Yusuf.
Reform supporters - ask yourself: Do you really want to vote for party that lies so consistently to you?
Kemi Badenoch put diversity quotas into British courts.
Justice has to be blind. The moment the Conservatives started filling courtrooms based on race and background rather than ability, they corrupted the entire system. And we are living with the consequences.
A few weeks ago, our UK media and Nigel Farage were clamouring to 'Get Starmer Out'.
Remember that? They were using it as their slogan for Matt GPT's disastrous by-election campaign. They claimed that it was a 'referendum on Starmer's leadership'.
It didn't quite go to plan. Starmer outplayed them all on that occasion.
Here's something that we need to remember though, when JD Vance came to the UK in July of 2025, he held a series of meetings in the Cotswolds with some British politicians.
Nigel Farage.
Robert Jenrick [Tory then, Reform now].
Danny Kruger [Tory then, Reform now].
James Orr [Tory then, Reform now].
Donald Trump is a destabilising force, but I don't really think he knows why. 😵💫
JD Vance is far more malign. He is wrapped, head-to-toe, in the Christian Nationalism/Project 2025 movement that Farage et al. are desperately trying to bring to our shores.
Reform will lose the Makerfield by-election, they picked a lame, three-legged donkey to run the Grand National. But they started this campaign the same as the last 'Get Starmer Out', before suddenly dropping it as the realisation dawned.
OK, this has gone a bit higgledy-piggledy, so what I'm trying to get to, is that any intervention by JD Vance in UK politics, is likely at the behest of Nigel Farage.
Farage is desperate, clawing at the floor while the daemon of scrutiny drags him backwards to the pitch dark basement of obscurity.
His only possible hope of survival is an early General Election, and to have that happen, he needs Starmer on the ropes.
Cue, JD Vance with a targetted intervention about:
migrants ✅
elites ✅
inciting anger ✅
Henry Nowak ✅
death of our civilization [sic] ✅
A tirade worthy of only one man … Nigel Farage.
The man who has sought to weaponise this tragedy and incited rioting only five days ago. The man who has gone against Henry's father's own wish that the tragedy should not be used as a weapon of hatred.
Nigel Farage is a dangerous force with the backing of, probably, the next President of the USA. Both are trying to destabilise and turn our societies into fascist visions of the far-right.
Don't let them.
Have a lovely weekend. 😊
This is an outright lie, It does **not** introduce quotas, targets, or race-based appointments. Judicial roles remain strictly merit-based via the independent Judicial Appointments Commission. No evidence Conservatives “filled courtrooms based on race over ability.” Similar outreach efforts predate her involvement by years. She has since opposed quotas in public hiring.
Today we remember the sacrifice and bravery of the British and Allied forces who stormed the beaches of Normandy 82 years ago.
They fought for freedom, duty, and our values.
We will never forget their sacrifice.
She is a very special girl indeed is Marilyn Monroe.
It takes a lot to break a dog but she was very nearly there. She is utterly exhausted.
Time to start changing her life
🚨No, it’s not “foreign governments telling the UK how to govern itself” 😂
Sovereignty – the thing Reform/Restore actually bangs on about – just means Britain decides its own laws and borders.
Not Brussels overriding Parliament, not the ECHR blocking deportations, none of that EU-style meddling – unlike the EU, which regulated the curvature of bananas sold in the single market.
JD Vance (or any US official) tweeting about the murder and linking it to migration? That’s just an ally speaking his mind. It’s free speech, not an order. No one’s forcing laws on us. He’s pointing out the obvious: uncontrolled mass migration has been tied to rising crime here and across Europe for years.
Home Office stats, ONS figures – it’s all there if people want to look. Reform/Restore supporters aren’t trying to shut anyone up.
We just want the government to stop gaslighting us and pretending none of this is happening.
Starmer’s team calling it “stirring division” is the real deflection – they’re slagging off the messenger instead of fixing the open-border mess.
If a foreign voice highlighting the results of your policies bothers you more than the actual results… maybe sovereignty was never the issue in the first place.
@WesternColumn@CrewkerneMan@TatenokaiGael@michaelgove@KemiBadenoch actually Maggie turned it around mid-seventies, or union hold on our country would never have been diluted during in the following decade, infighting then occurred and she was stabbed in the back with the same sword the Cameron fell on, new coat of paint doesn't come into it