Complex sentence: With its proximity to France the island also had a number of observation stations and transmitters, and was the starting-point for one of the earlier Operation Pluto pipelines to feed fuel to the Normandy landings.
Split into simpler sentences: With its proximity to France the island had a number of observation stations and transmitters. It was the starting-point for one of the earlier Operation Pluto pipelines to feed fuel to the Normandy landings.