Gold Beach on D-Day: A Conversation with British Historian Tim Saunders

Join us for a very special Greatest Generation Live livestream event as we dive deep into the history of Gold Beach on D-Day with acclaimed British military historian Tim Saunders MBE MA, co-hosted by Scott Masters, educator and founder of the Crestwood Oral History Project in Toronto, and Glenn Flickinger of the Veterans Breakfast Club.

We’ll also have D-Day veteran Ken Cooke sharing his story. Ken received his draft notice in 1943, after his 18th birthday. On D-Day he crossed the English Channel, after reveille awoke him at 3:00 AM.  Ken landed in the second wave on Gold Beach in 6″ of water and was bothered that his socks were wet!  Ken’s 50th Division, 6th Battalion cleared villages and marched another 8-9 miles. He was wounded July 4, 1944 from a shell explosion in Hottot-les-Bagues, France where he received shrapnel in his back.  He was transported to a first-aid station, and then to a field hospital in Bayeux.  Ken boarded a ship for England and was treated at a Scottish hospital, where he was put in a plaster cast from his neck to his waist. He rehabilitated for five months in Scotland.  He was given two weeks leave after which he flew from Leeds to Brussels where he joined the Highland Light Infantry.  They crossed the Rhine to Bremen.  He sustained psychoneurosis during another Bren-Gun-Carrier explosion event and recovered in a Brussels hospital. He was discharged and was transported by the Dakota Air Ambulance.  May 8, 1945 at age 19, Ken was demobilized and returned home.

On the morning of June 6, 1944, British forces of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division stormed ashore at Gold Beach, one of five Allied landing zones in Normandy. Their objective: break through Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, link up with Canadian forces landing at Juno Beach to the east and U.S. troops at Omaha to the west, and push inland to seize the key city of Bayeux and cut the vital Caen–Bayeux road.

Despite heavy resistance, flooded terrain, and daunting German fortifications, British troops overcame the odds, making Gold Beach one of the most successful landing zones on D-Day. But the victory came at a cost—and with stories still waiting to be told.

Tim Saunders served over 30 years in the British Army before dedicating his life to military history. A decorated officer in the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment and later The Rifles, Tim brings an insider’s understanding of battlefield tactics and soldiering to his work as an author, filmmaker, and battlefield guide. He has written over 20 books, many on D-Day and the Normandy Campaign, and produced historical documentaries with Battlefield History TV and Pen & Sword Digital. He lives on the edge of Salisbury Plain, where the sounds of training tanks still echo as he writes.

Scott Masters, one of Canada’s most celebrated educators, is the founder of the Crestwood Oral History Project, an extraordinary archive of hundreds of interviews with veterans, Holocaust survivors, and other witnesses to history. His award-winning work—recognized by the Governor General’s History Award and the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence—has transformed how young people engage with the past and honor those who lived it.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!