NEWS bulletins from “Radio D-Day”, which were first compiled for the fiftieth anniversary of the Normandy landings, have been re-released.

To mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day, there is a new opportunity to listen to radio news bulletins that report exactly what was happening in Dorset and elsewhere in the historic days leading up to the Normandy landings.

The news bulletins were originally sponsored by the Bournemouth Echo and include things people could not have known at the time because of secrecy and censorship.

They were researched and recorded by broadcast journalist Mel Bray for Radio D-Day, a special station that went on air for a month in 1994. The novel station ran from a sandbagged bunker in the Bournemouth International Centre and featured news, eyewitness accounts and all the nostalgic music that civilians and the armed forces would have been listening to at the time.

Mel said: “Radio D-Day was an incredible project and we wanted local people to know what was actually happening in Dorset and the New Forest in the tense days leading up to the landings.

“I included hundreds of forgotten local details like bombing raids, gas mask practice in Christchurch Bargates and a man being accidentally shot by a sentry outside a local army camp. It was a momentous time and I tried to reflect that. As it is the 70th anniversary it seems a good idea to let people listen again.”

The daily bulletins are now listed at