Nazi bunker is opened for first time since war

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Described as a "military historian's Aladdin's cave", it includes a German .47 mm Pak 32 field gun which was used throughout the Second World War.

The concrete bunker has been hidden under mounds of debris and sand at Le Portel, close to Boulogne. The port was the target of a British bombing raid in September 1943 intended to fool the Germans into thinking D-Day would centre on the Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy. When British and Canadian troops entered the town in the summer of 1944, engineers laid charges in the bunker, but again it survived.

Now, as the 65th anniversary of D-Day approaches on 6 June, the bunker's doors have been forced open for the first time since the war. "The great mystery is how this bunker survived a savage British bombing raid, and also an attempt by the British Army to blow it up," said a spokesman for the excavators, who are funded by the local council.