ABSTRACT
The bocage country of the Calvados and Manche Departments of Normandy is an artefactual landscape, with its origins nowadays assigned to late medieval times. During and after the Second World War it gained unwonted notoriety as a conflict landscape, due to the bitter fighting that occurred in it following the 1944 D-Day landings. This chapter investigates the impact of the terrain on the British soldiers who fought in it and the legacy of their experiences in terms of memory and historiography. The unique nature of the battles fought in the bocage between June and August 1944 by Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was quickly established in the immediate post-war literature on the campaign. In general terms, the Norman bocage was very far from being the most difficult terrain fought over by British and Empire troops during the Second World War. Normandy had neither high mountains nor jungle.
