James Holladay's

James Holladay, scholar 1939 and fellow in Ancient History 1949–82, was well-known in Oxford. For many years he lived in Marriott House with his wife Cecily, and together they held court in the King’s Arms every evening. James is remembered warmly by his former pupils as an inspiring and devoted teacher, and his name is commemorated in the James and Cecily Holladay Prize.

After James’s death in 1989, Cecily deposited in the Archive a small hardback notebook, the sort which an undergraduate might have used for lecture notes. Headed TOP SECRET – “Overlord”, it contains James’s record of his part in Operation Overlord, otherwise the Battle of Normandy – the cross-channel invasion which launched the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis on 6 June 1944: D-Day.

After a First in Mods in 1941, James left Oxford for officer training in the Royal Artillery. May 1944 found him in Oban in Western Scotland, stationed aboard the SS Empire Bunting, an American-built cargo ship and veteran of numerous transatlantic convoys, equipped now with one Bofors 40mm and two Oerlikon 20mm anti-aircraft guns. The seven days from Oban to Normandy was to be her final voyage.

At the front of his notebook, James carefully recorded the names of the 28 gunners and bombardiers under his command, and his operational orders. They were to form part of ‘Gooseberry 4’: a semicircle of concrete-filled ‘block ships’ and other vessels scuttled just off-shore, their task to give protective fire cover while providing a breakwater for landing craft supplying equipment and reinforcements to the beach.

At the back of the notebook, James kept a diary. His scrawled entries give a vivid and highly personal account of the invasion: the excitement, terror, drama, friendships, tedium – the sheer awfulness, in all senses – of war.  James wrote daily from 31 May to 6 November 1944, by which time he and his men had fought their way to Brussels. It is a gripping read.