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Five hundred and twenty-seven Canadian paratroopers jumped into Normandy in the opening minutes of D-Day. By the time they hit the ground, the drop had gone catastrophically wrong — men scattered across ninety kilometres of French countryside, most of their heavy weapons lost, their commanding officer stuck in a marsh two miles from the rally point. By any military standard, the battalion was finished before it started.
But the German reports filing into headquarters that night told a completely different story. They described a massive, coordinated airborne assault — possibly an entire division. They sent reserves chasing phantom forces. They lowered their alert level at the exact moment Canadian paratroopers were storming a fortified chateau. And by morning, every single objective had been taken.
What the Germans reported — and what was actually happening while they wrote it down — is one of the most extraordinary mismatches between perception and reality in the entire war.
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