Story of D-Day to be told through Twitter 70 years on

5 Jun 2014 10:27 AM

This week our @ukwarcabinet Twitter feed will tell the story of the landings on the Normandy beaches using official government and military documents from the time.

From Thursday June 5 until Sunday June 8 documents held at The National Archives will be used to describe events 'as they happened.'

Featured documents

Documents include:

• army unit war diaries (including those from Canadian battalions)
• RAF squadron records
• Admiralty ship logs
• Government Cabinet Papers
• messages sent to Prime Minister Winston Churchill

Some tweets will also be illustrated with D-Day photographs from The National Archives' extensive image library and digital versions of the documents.

The @ukwarcabinet feed has been telling the story of the Second World War on a day-by-day basis throughWar Cabinet Papers for the past five years. The tweets from Thursday 5 June until Sunday 8 June will offer far more detail. The extra documents will give an insight into decision making and actions of British and Commonwealth forces during the successful attempt to liberate Western Europe.

'A real sense of what was going on'

Simon Demissie, Contemporary Records Specialist at The National Archives, said: 'The war diary extracts give a real sense of what was going on as the Allies fought to secure the beaches and are written in really expressive language. We will also continue to tweet details from the War Cabinet minutes outlining what the key British decision makers were debating at the time.'