Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  Ordinary Seaman Don Reynolds

  HMS Virago (Royal Navy destroyer)

  A ship’s siren blasted. There’d been an attack, I think it was a U-boat attack, and one of our destroyers, the Svenner, a Norwegian one, was lost. We did a quick reshuffle so that if any U-boat or anything had got us lined up we were all working at different angles.

  Petty Officer Lawrence Alfred Moorcroft

  HMS Urania (Royal Navy destroyer), off Gold Beach

  We arrived in the early hours of the morning of 6 June and we actually went up through candlelight to our desired anchor position. There were tins with holes cut and with a candle in that the front men had put with little anchors, weights, keeping them in position. They were in an alleyway. Ships went in and where they widened out you counted the number of candles so you moved left or right, port or starboard, to your anchoring position.

  Petty Officer Reginald Samuel Francis Coaker

  HMS Urania (Royal Navy destroyer), off Gold Beach

  Things got strangely quiet on the bridge. Something odd, this. Because on a bridge of a destroyer in wartime you’ve got this perpetual ‘Ping! Ping!’ going on the whole time, the Asdic thing, and of course there’s the usual chatter of ‘Port tens!’ and ‘Steady!’ and all this. But when the first signs of dawn are starting to appear, you’re approaching an enemy coast and you get a dark outline of the enemy coast, voices somehow seem to drop on the bridge; voices almost take on a whisper. ‘Don’t speak too loudly, otherwise they might hear us coming.’ That sort of thing.

  Commander Felix Lloyd-Davies

  HMS Glasgow (Royal Navy cruiser), off Omaha Beach

  We arrived off the approaches to Normandy and Glasgow was then told to take the head of the line of the force going into Omaha Beach. As we steamed down the line the padre said to me, ‘Shouldn’t we say a prayer?’ and so I said, ‘Why not say Nelson’s Prayer?’ because it was exactly right for this day. So he started to read Nelson’s Prayer and as we passed the Texas all their ship’s company took off their helmets, they were at their guns, as they heard us reading the Prayer, going in.*

  FINAL TOUCHES

  Flight Lieutenant Arthur Poore

  Lancaster bomber pilot, 617 Squadron, RAF

  In the very early hours of D-Day, the squadron – we had assiduously practised this for many weeks before – flew in line abreast, about two thousand feet up, over the narrow part of the Channel between Kent and the Pas de Calais dropping this tin-foil strip, code-named window, and doing exact turns to fly in a reciprocal direction back towards England and turn again and fly maybe half a mile back towards the French coast and then turn again and back. Meanwhile, fast motor torpedo boats were doing the same thing down on the surface of the sea. This had the effect on the German radar of an invasion force about to invade the Pas de Calais area. In other words: a spoof invasion.

  Flying Officer Malcolm Hamilton

  Lancaster bomber pilot, 617 Squadron, RAF

  The navigator had to work out the exact course, we did it with stopwatches, and we’d go down towards Calais and each time we’d go eight seconds further than the last time and then you’d go round and back up your course, dropping window. Then you’d turn round and come down and each time you extended the leg a little bit further. The weather was filthy, it was drizzling with rain, there were high winds, so the navigator had to work very hard to keep you on course.

  Flying Officer Thomas Bennett

  Lancaster bomber navigator, 617 Squadron, RAF

  The crews had all been doubled up because it was assumed to be a four-hour operation, but when the operation order came through it had been decided that eight aircraft would go off in the initial phase and would be relieved after two hours by the second eight. And of course this handover business had never been practised in the training period at all. We had no idea that this was going to spring on us and that caused a bit of a hiatus at the beginning. We had to give the second wave start times on the English coast and they would fly down and pick up the aircraft they were relieving and do their last circuit with them. The aircraft that was windowing would be at three thousand feet; the relieving aircraft would come along at three thousand five hundred, pick them up and do their last circuit with them. The first aircraft would then fly off back to base and in the turn the second aircraft would drop to three thousand feet and pick up the sequence. But this had to be done within a tolerance of ninety seconds, otherwise the whole of that segment of the convoy would disappear from the radar screens and of course that would mean the Germans would immediately suspect the veracity of this thing. So this was something that concerned us very greatly but in the event the handover, the takeover, went off beautifully.

  Warrant Officer George Oliver

  Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF

  There were a lot of precautions taken to try and fool the Germans as to whether it was the main thing or whether it was just a one-nighter, just a bit of a raid. One of them was somewhere quite well away from the landing place, up north, and they dropped a lot of dummy paratroopers. These dummy paratroops had gimmicks all over, which exploded so it sounded like gunfire. That was one deception plan to give the Germans something to think about.

  Ordinary Seaman Sidney Taylor

  HMS Seagull (Royal Navy minesweeper)

  We arrived on the other side at 9pm on the fifth. Our job was to sweep back and forth along from Le Havre and when the enemy’s radar came on we could jam it: we were there to sweep a passage for the Warspite and all the American battle wagons and things to stand off and shell. When we got there it was absolutely pitch black, we could just discern the shoreline, and a searchlight came on. And as soon as it did, I don’t know where it came from, but a fighter, a Spitfire I suppose, shot the light out and we just carried on sweeping back and forth.

  Flight Sergeant Jack Nissenthall

  Radar specialist, RAF

  Two hundred ships were each equipped with two to three kilowatts of Mandrel jammers which were used on that one night and of course that’s what got us in on D-Day. When Eisenhower said, ‘Go,’ everybody onboard their ships, wherever they were, threw this big master switch. It was really a Mandrel jammer, which we’d told nobody about. When you threw this switch and you were in Salcombe or wherever you were going to come from, it didn’t affect the German radar at all. But as you approached the coast of France, all the German radar operators would see is some hash on that bearing, which could be a faulty tube, a faulty valve, and it would get worse and worse. And they’d be tired and fed up and waiting to go off duty and it would be getting worse and worse and finally they’d say, ‘Oh, to hell with it. Let’s not touch it tonight. Let’s wait until the mechanic comes on duty and he’ll replace the tube and everything will be all right.’ But by the time morning came all the capital ships were in position, some of them three or four or five miles offshore with their big guns. They were all lined up there.

  * In October 1805, on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson wrote in his diary:

  May the great God, whom I worship, grant to my country and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory: and may no misconduct, in any one, tarnish it: and may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet.

  For myself individually, I commit my life to Him who made me and may His blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my country faithfully.

  To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend.

  Amen. Amen. Amen.

  Airborne Assault

  There was flashes all over the place, there was tracer coming up and I think ‘Get out the plane!’ was the main thought.

  That’s it: ‘Get out!’

  On the evening of 5 June 1944, thousands of British and American airborne troops assembled and took off from airfields across southern England and flew south, across the Channel, to open the Allied invasion of Normandy. Their aim was to secure the east and west
flanks of the fifty-mile stretch of coastline due to be assaulted after dawn from the sea. Two American divisions – the 82nd and the 101st – were to land in the west. Major General Richard Gale’s British 6th Airborne Division was assigned the task of securing the eastern flank.

  Selected for a daring spearhead role – what became known as the Pegasus Bridge coup de main mission – was a small glider-borne force of 180 British soldiers under the command of Major John Howard of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. The first company-strength Allied unit to land in Normandy, it had orders to capture two adjacent bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne – parallel watercourses running north to the sea – and then hold on against German counter-attacks. Securing these crossing points promised to hamper German attempts to strike at the expected beachheads from the east and, if the seaborne troops could get ashore and push inland, facilitate future Allied advances.

  Minutes after Howard’s force landed, and as the American airborne assault opened simultaneously in the west, thousands of men from two British parachute brigades – comprising five battalions of the Parachute Regiment, a Canadian parachute battalion and a host of support troops, from medics and engineers to naval liaison teams – began landing by parachute and glider on a series of pre-planned zones. High winds and enemy ack-ack – anti-aircraft fire – caused problems, however, and the drop was badly scattered. Many men found themselves miles adrift. Several drowned after dropping into a wide area that the Germans had deliberately flooded as a counter-invasion measure. Everywhere, as it began to go about its allotted tasks, the 6th Airborne found itself under-strength.

  Captain John Sim

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  The evening came, the evening of 5 June, when we got into our lorries and were transported to the airfield. We collected our chutes and the lorries took us around the perimeter, miles away into the country where our aircraft had been dispersed. The aircraft that we, the battalion, were going to jump out of was the Stirling, which had been coughed up by Bomber Command for us to use. We were right out in the countryside, a peaceful June evening, lovely and calm. We just sat and talked for a while amongst ourselves and then the padre came whipping up in his jeep and we had a little prayer. He wished us well and then he dashed off again to another aircraft.

  Major Kenneth Darling

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We had a marvellous padre, Joe Jenkins, a Welshman. He had a great sense of humour, he knew his job from A to Z, every man in the battalion knew him and he knew every man. On the morning of 5 June we had a sort of drumhead service, which became our normal practice later on in our various battles, with the battalion sitting on the grass around him in a big circle, and he conducted a short and very moving service.

  What I would like to recall is an extraordinary scene. At the end of the service, after he’d given the blessing, he casually mentioned that he had a pile of small pocket bibles, which were about two to three inches long, I suppose, very small, which had been produced for the army. And he said, ‘If any man would like to pick up one before you go away, you are welcome to do so.’ There then occurred the most extraordinary scene. The men surged towards where he was standing and scrambled for these bibles. If he’d said, ‘There’s a pile of hundred pound notes there,’ I don’t think you’d have seen a greater keenness to get to them. It was quite extraordinary. But I think it did exemplify how human beings probably have, we all probably have, a certain degree or fund of faith, but there are times when that faith needs kindling and Joe Jenkins had done just that that morning. The sad part was of course that within a week or so many of the men who were present had been killed. But it’s a scene I shall never forget.

  Captain Guy Radmore

  Brigade Signals Officer, 5th Parachute Brigade

  We had a very impressive service given by our padre, Parry, who was the son of the Bishop of Liverpool. He was the padre for the 7th Battalion. He was an absolutely super chap and he was killed, actually, in the first hours of D-Day. I always remember how we’d all blacked our faces and you could just see the white of his dog collar sticking up above his tunic.

  Private Gordon Newton

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  There was an air of excitement, coupled with anxiety, as a lieutenant read out a statement from Eisenhower, telling us we were all fighting for freedom, making history and all this stuff. We were very subdued. There was no clapping or anything. We were all pretty tensed up.

  Lieutenant Hubert Pond

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I think at that sort of age – I was, what, twenty, I suppose – fear doesn’t really come into it. You get a tremendous excitement and you wonder what it’s going to be like. None of us had any experience of battle at all. We’d seen crummy films in black and white, we’d seen shells exploding and we’d seen All Quiet on the Western Front and so on. But it really did not sink into our young brains. It was an excitement and an adventure, something we’d never done before, and I suppose you could say that everybody looked forward to it. The danger and that sort of thing didn’t really come into it and I think that applied to most people.

  British paratroopers apply camouflage cream at Harwell airfield, Oxfordshire, on the afternoon of 5 June.

  Each soldier was issued with a parachutist’s knife, a rifle and bayonet, two 36 fragmentation grenades, two 77 grenades, which I think were smoke grenades, and everybody had a bandolier of fifty rounds of ammunition. If he thought he could carry more, he was allowed to carry more. We also had a Hawkins grenade, two Bren gun magazines and concentrated rations for two days and we were allowed spare underpants and spare vests and socks and that sort of thing, a waterproof gas cape, one morphine syringe, six benzedrine tablets to try and keep us awake and we had our field and shell dressings. So we were fairly well loaded. The first thing I did was to get rid of my revolver and take a Sten gun because I thought a revolver was a pretty pointless thing to have when everybody else was firing much heavier ammunition and more accurately too.

  Sapper Wilfred Robert Jones

  3rd Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers

  I was the mortar bloke for the troop. I was jumping No 6 with a rifle and a two-inch mortar. In addition, I was carrying 110 rounds of .303, two pounds of PE, which is plastic explosive, two 36 grenades, one Gammon bomb and two magazines for the Bren, some two-inch mortar bombs, a change of clothing and twenty No 27 detonators and two ration packs.

  Private Gordon Newton

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We were issued with 117-pound lifebuoy flame-throwers which we carried on our backs: the big boys carried these. A dreadful weapon it was. It had a container which could hold two types of fluid. One was a flash fluid, which gave a flash of fire and then retracted. The other one, which we were going to use, was a fluid laced with petroleum jelly, which was sticky. It didn’t come out in a flash, a flame, it came out in squirts. The idea was to approach your target and wet them with dry squirts and then set off a live squirt to set fire to everything that had been squirted. Dreadful things.

  Private John Weathers

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  Every man had a parachute on his back of course, a helmet, personal weapons; I had a radio as well in a kit bag fixed to my leg. As part of our training we’d had to get used to jumping with a kit bag because prior to that they had used these canisters with everybody’s equipment in. A lot of it used to get lost of course on being dropped, the canisters with all the gear, so they introduced these kit bags so that every man took his own wireless set or bit of his mortar or whatever.

  Private Anthony Leake

  8th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  When you’ve got your chute on with all your ammunition and everything else, you’re carrying about a hundred pounds’ weight of kit. The chute itself weighed about twenty-three pounds.

  The kit bag was a big padded army kit bag and you could put things in
it like the barrel of a machine gun or parts of a two-inch mortar, heavy equipment, and you jumped with this on your leg. There was a recess in this bag and you put your leg in it and it had two quick release straps, which you pulled out, and a cord attached with one end to your parachute harness, the other end to the kit bag. The cord was about twenty feet long. The idea was, as soon as your chute opened, you released your kit bag and so the kit bag landed before you did. Not only that, you would have an easier landing yourself, because not only were you not carrying so much weight but also the kit bag had the effect of slowing you down at the last minute while you landed.

  Not everybody had kit bags. The light machine guns and rifles with which we were equipped were put in what they called a rifle valise, which was a thick felt sleeved thing like a big sock, and you shoved it in that and that had a cord attached like the kit bag. Also, unless you were carrying a Bren gun, which was about twenty-three pounds – a rifle weighed about nine pounds – you had to carry a pick or a shovel as well, a full size one, strapped to it.

  Private Victor Newcomb

  Medical Orderly, 224 Parachute Field Ambulance

  Bandages and dressings and bottles of antiseptic, things of this kind were thrust into every pocket and pouch around our uniform. In addition to this, some of us were expected to carry into action a stretcher. The stretcher was a specially designed collapsible stretcher but nonetheless it stood, when collapsed, something like five foot high. You jumped out of the aircraft clutching it to you and then released it or dropped it as soon as the parachute had opened, so it was floating down independently of you.