Dorothea Barron watched over men who tested portable harbors for D-Day

By DANICA KIRKA
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Dorothea Barron got a sneak preview of the Normandy landings from a watchtower on the coast of Scotland. During the spring and summer of 1943, she and her colleagues kept watch over the troops who tested the prototypes for two prefabricated harbors that would be constructed in the hours after D-Day to ease the delivery of men and equipment to the battlefield. Whenever someone got into trouble, Barron would unfurl her semaphore flags and signal for help. She told The Associated Press, “We were watching over them, shall we say.”