Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  We all moved up closer. I was astride the door, looking down, and I hoped to see some of the task force, some of the armada, but I didn’t see any ships at all, just the speckly wave tops of the sea below me. Suddenly I saw the parallel lines of waves coming ashore on the dark yellow beach and then a cliff and woods and copses and hedgerows, only about eight hundred feet below me.

  Warrant Officer George Oliver

  Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF

  The bomb-aimer, down in the bomb-aiming compartment, he had a good view of the ground and he guided us in. I had to fly the aircraft at the exact airspeed and keep my height so I was fully occupied doing that. The bomb-aimer was giving us directions. He’d say, ‘Left, left,’ and I’d veer a little bit to the left and he’d say, ‘Steady.’ Then he might say, ‘Right,’ and I’d go a bit to the right and then he’d say, ‘Steady. Steady. Steady. Steady. Steady.’ Green light. I was concentrating so much. I remember shouting, ‘Good luck, fellas!’ but I don’t think they heard me.

  Private Ron Dixon

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  First was the company commander, Major Stephens. He said – I can see it now – ‘Flak coming up at us!’ and you could see it outside, banging. Then it was green light on, ‘Go!’ and he was out and I was next.

  Sapper Wilfred Robert Jones

  3rd Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers

  What we thought were pretty lights – later we discovered they were tracers – were coming up from the ground. Some people got hit. A bloke called Matheson, from York, he didn’t survive the jump. When he was found he was still in his parachute harness. We’d been in the boys’ service together. He’d been training to be a blacksmith.

  Private Philip Crofts

  7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  B Company carried rubber dinghies with two paddles in a kit bag on their leg. The kit bag was so heavy: not only did you have a rubber dinghy and paddles in there, you had your weapon and your small pack all on top. And when the time came to jump, about all we could do was move the leg into the hole and fall out after it. As soon as I fell out of the plane, my chute opened, the ackack was coming up, I pulled the quick release and the kit bag was so heavy that it just broke away and all I could see was a white-painted kit bag vanishing below me.

  Private Anthony Leake

  8th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  The first man, an officer, jumped. His batman, who was No 2, fell down in the doorway so there was a delay while they got him to his feet and pushed him out. I was No 16. Number 15, he turned round in the doorway and said, ‘I’m not hooked up!’ I said, ‘You are,’ and I pushed him out. Hooked up or not we couldn’t wait any longer. It sounds a bit hard but I knew he’d be hooked up because it had all been checked and double-checked, but somehow he got into this panic.

  Private James Baty

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We had a dog and a dog handler, Jack Corteil, and he was to go No 1 and I was to go No 2. The dog was trained; he had his own parachute and he had a little red light on the back as a guiding light for the dog handler and he was trained to stand still as soon as he hit the ground. Of course, he loved jumping. But when we came over Normandy with all the flak coming up – no door on, you could see it all coming up – he wouldn’t jump. Course, it took Jack Corteil and myself all our time to throw him out and nobody else could go because everybody was all hooked up. The dog went out and Jack Corteil went out as the handler. And as I was in the door to go out the plane banked and went off at a different tangent, it threw me right back to the other side of the fuselage. Course, couldn’t get up. The RAF dispatcher and the next chap behind me managed to lift me up and get me to the door and I jumped.

  Jack Corteil, incidentally, was only nineteen. His mother was English and his father was French and he was a bit of a wag. He came from London and he loved the countryside and when he was in Bulford he used to nip off and do a bit of poaching. And he was caught one day so naturally was up on a charge and that’s how he got the job of handler.

  He was marched up to the company commander, Major Allen Parry – who, incidentally, was a real gentleman and a nice man, he always put his men before himself – and he said, ‘Corteil, what the devil have you been up to?’ He said, ‘Sorry, sir.’ ‘Right, there’s the charge sheet. Would you like to accept my punishment?’ He said, ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘We are going to have a dog, an Alsatian, and you can be the handler. It’s at present down at Bulford field’ – that’s about a mile away from the barracks – ‘go down there and report to the head kennel man and he’ll give you the dog and all the bumf.’ So he went down there and from that day he loved that dog. He said it meant more to him than a fiancée. It was a beautiful animal and he called it Glen and he trained it and they were inseparable.

  I got to know the dog and he got to know me because I was used as a sort of hideaway with different scents and that and the dog had to come and find me. I think, actually, it became a game for the dog, and I enjoyed it because he was a beautiful animal. He loved jumping on exercises, on training jumps; he loved it. He was a marvellous dog, really. Everybody loved him. Naturally he was the pet of the battalion. I don’t know whether dogs are colour blind or not but he knew anybody with a red beret on. But nobody was allowed to feed him or pet him. You weren’t allowed to go ‘Good dog’ or ‘Lovely fella’ or anything like that. He wasn’t allowed to get too friendly with anybody. You didn’t want him to lose his potential, to get too soft or too friendly.

  Later I did hear that Brigadier Hill had landed in the same DZ as the dog and dog handler and for their reward they were bombed by the RAF and the dog handler and dog were killed. It was sad. A young lad really enjoying his job got killed at nineteen.

  Warrant Officer George Oliver

  Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF

  There were hundreds of aircraft around. You couldn’t always miss the slipstreams and the aircraft was heavy because it had all these soldiers in it. And we had to fly at a definite height because if you flew any old height the people above would be dropping their parachutists on top of you and if you were too high you’d drop yours in amongst the aircraft below. So we all tried to keep the same height but it wasn’t that easy in those days because our barometric pressure altimeters weren’t a precision instrument like they’ve got today. You couldn’t see that far but you could see the dim outlines of the aircraft and this kind of thing. How we didn’t have any collisions is beyond me. But as I was turning around after the drop there was flak around and I noticed a Stirling on fire, plunging down.

  Pilot Officer Ron Minchin

  Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF

  Some of the guys were not as good pilots as others and they weren’t controlling the aircraft at the right height. So suddenly you’d find paratroopers that were nearly above you and we had a hell of a time trying to miss paratroopers in the air that were dropped too high. In fact some of the guys brought back shrouds embedded in their wings, near the engine, meaning that they’d killed a paratrooper.

  I was horrified to find, after we had done the drop, that I was suddenly having to accelerate like mad to get above a group of chaps. Fortunately they were shown up by an aircraft blowing up – if the aircraft hadn’t blown up we’d have never seen them and we’d have gone right into them – but we only just missed them. They would have seen us, these four great rings, the red rings of the engine, coming towards them. It must have been horrifying.

  Private William John Le Cheminant

  7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I saw a plane cut a parachute and the occupant in half. It went right through his parachute and dragged him to the wingtip and snapped him off. The chap went down and landed and burst into flames because he was carrying phosphorus grenades.

  Warrant Officer George Oliver. A Stirling pilot with 196 Squadron, RAF, he was one of many Australian airmen to take part in D-Day.
r />   Captain David Tibbs

  Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I was jumping No 1, standing at the door of the aircraft, when suddenly I saw to my horror another plane heading absolutely for us. The visibility was not very good so it must have been very close, it was a four-engined Stirling, which was one of the planes also involved in parachute dropping and glider tugging, and what it was doing there I don’t know, but we were clearly going to hit. At that point our pilot heeled right over to take evasive action and this plane did and by some miracle we did not hit each other. I glanced back at the men in the plane behind me and they had all been thrown to the floor, heavily laden men with parachutes all sprawling on the floor, and one realised the difficulty they would have in getting out of the plane. The plane righted itself and immediately the green light came on warning us to jump. There was nothing I could do, I couldn’t help the men behind me, so I jumped. But one didn’t realise fully at the time the consequence of this. These men couldn’t get upright with their heavy loads, they had to crawl to the door of the aircraft. And so, instead of jumping out one a second, because the aircraft was covering the ground at sixty yards a second they were spread out over a mile or two because they would be dropping every ten seconds, struggling to get out of the aircraft. So, as a consequence, many of these men we didn’t see again. Only about five turned up on the dropping zone with me. Some were captured; others we didn’t ever hear what had happened to them; others made their way back.

  Private Sidney Capon

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I had a beautiful landing, the best ever landing I’ve ever had. I landed in a field right near a hedgerow with a road running parallel and a dwelling opposite. I wasn’t interested in the dwelling. You was always taught: ‘There’s only one objective. No private battles.’ I released my chute. I felt most dejected: there was nobody around. I saw the plane go round, along and away and all of a sudden another parachute came down about two or three yards from me. We took the cover of the hedgerow, then we met another chap, and off we went, three of us now, and carried on another hundred yards and we met Lieutenant Dowling from B Company. He had about six people with him and he was trying to find his bearings and was slaying these stinging nettles. A lorry came along with some Germans on it but we laid and we hid in the hedgerow, not forgetting: ‘No private warfare.’

  Company Sergeant Major Barney Ross

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I fell right on to the dropping zone. There was a little hut in the middle of the dropping zone and I dropped within twenty yards of that. Not many got to the dropping zone. The first person I saw when I landed was a medical officer. We were quacking away at each other: we had these little quacker things so that you knew who it was if someone was coming along; you could find out whether they were a Jerry or not. Don’t forget it was pitch black at night. I actually thought I was the only one in France at one time ’cause I didn’t see anybody and you’re expecting a whole mass of blokes to be all around.

  Sergeant Bill French

  7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I got myself together and I picked up one of my mates and we eventually found another one and the three of us got together. And we hadn’t been on the ground ten minutes and Jerry opened fire on us. We heard a tank go along the road and he must have seen us as he opened fire, but none of us was hit. Then we found a sunken road and got into it and I met another lad from Bradford, Reg Ball, and he came with us. Then we saw somebody walking up the sunken road towards us. We asked him for the password and he said, ‘Bloody hell, I’ve forgotten it.’ That was our platoon commander.

  Captain David Tibbs

  Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  There was a system of passwords and you had to give the appropriate reply. You might say ‘B’ and they would say ‘Bulldog’ in return. There was some confusion over this because each day had a different password; and of course the day before we had been geared up for the attack and now some people were still using the password for that day. In fact, I met, during the hours of darkness, one rather distressed journalist, because several journalists dropped with us, who’d got two Sten bullets in his neck. Fortunately he wasn’t too badly hurt; they were just lodged under the skin. He had apparently given the wrong password or been misunderstood and been shot by our own men.

  Sergeant William Higgs

  Glider Pilot Regiment

  Along came a Frenchman on a bike with a long loaf under his arm and he stopped immediately he saw us because we had those funny hats like the Germans and wings on our breasts. We looked like Germans. He pulled out his identity card to show us and I said, ‘Je suis Anglais.’ He said, ‘Anglais?’ I said, ‘Vous allez.’ He went down the lane to a farm. All of a sudden we heard him shout out and we saw all the cows moving in. He was sensing trouble and getting his cows in.

  Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway

  Commanding Officer, 9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We met two rather stout German soldiers on bicycles, who we stopped. When we told them we were British troops they said they were rather sick and tired of the SS dressing up in British uniforms and doing exercises and could they please get back to barracks. We did convince them we were British troops, we took their rifles and threw them into the marshy water and we told them to get on their bikes, literally, and get the hell out of it, which they did, rather thankfully. I often wonder what happened to them.

  Lance Corporal Ron Phelps

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  All of a sudden I heard the sound of marching feet and I thought, ‘Cor, that must be Germans.’ I dived behind cover and I watched our medics go by, marching in threes down this road, just like as if it was an exercise, to set up a field hospital. And I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps it’s not a war. Perhaps it’s an exercise.’ I couldn’t understand how they could march along there. I suppose there was about twenty or thirty marching along in threes as if without a care in the world.

  Captain Guy Radmore

  Brigade Signals Officer, 5th Parachute Brigade

  When we were milling around in the dark I heard a vehicle and told some chaps to get their grenades out – I thought it was an armoured car – and it was two parachute sailors* in a vehicle. I stopped them and I said, ‘Get out. What are you doing?’ They said, ‘Well, in the Navy no one taught us how to march so we bumped off these Germans and we’re going to motor to the rendezvous.’ I said, ‘You’re going to walk from now on.’ The terrible arrogance of the senior service! But I thought it was absolutely marvellous. These chaps, so matter-of-fact.

  Captain John Sim

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  Having got out of my harness I reckoned that I’d been dropped on the right spot and I shouted for any men who happened to be landing around me and could hear me. I gathered up a little group of four and together with my compass we marched off westwards towards the rendezvous. The 7th Battalion had a bugle to rendezvous their lads in the copse on the edge of the dropping zone. The 13th Battalion had a hunting horn. But we, the 12th, had a red light. I got on to a little hillock on the dropping zone and flashed my torch around the area, hoping that our men would see the light and come towards me and then I’d despatch them to the battalion rendezvous in the quarry. Very few people came in during the hour that I was there.

  Captain Guy Radmore

  Brigade Signals Officer, 5th Parachute Brigade

  I met up with the intelligence officer and said, ‘Where are we?’ and he said, ‘I’ve no idea.’ We came to a signpost – by now we’d got a few soldiers round us – and I said, ‘Well, let’s cheat.’ He swarmed up on to my shoulders and we shone a torch at the signpost.

  Major Kenneth Darling

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  Having been in England for the last few years we weren’t accustomed to signposts, because, certainly in southern England, t
hey had all been removed. The stupidly efficient Germans had made every preparation to resist our arrival but they had forgotten to take down all the bloody signposts as we’d done in England four years earlier.

  Private Victor Newcomb

  Medical Orderly, 224 Parachute Field Ambulance

  I found myself hanging in a tree, not very far above the ground. I released myself from my parachute and just dropped the extra few feet to find that I was up to my ankles in bog. The accuracy of the drop didn’t match the confidence of the briefing that we had got earlier. I was somewhere that I couldn’t identify at all except by the presence of a large number of croaking frogs. I knew it was marshland. Therefore I knew fairly well that it was well to the south of where we had expected to be dropped.

  I released myself from my harness. I rescued the bag of medical equipment that I had been carrying and moved to where I could hear low voices in another part of this rather swampy area and found two or three other members of other groups. Not the group that had been dropped with me; I seemed to have drifted slightly away from them.

  We formed a small group and then found our way to the nearest road and to the nearest farmhouse where we were able with maps and so forth to identify exactly where we were with the local farmers. Our reception was a somewhat joyous one. They were only too anxious to tell us everything that they could about where we were and where there might have been members of the German army. They offered us a little bit of hospitality but I don’t think we were in the mood for either eating or drinking.

  Private James Baty

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  I landed in water, much to my fright. The Germans had flooded a vast area and it was all sticky mud underneath. I was wet, soaking wet. My boots and my legs were more muddy than anything else. I seemed to have landed on a patch of ground in the water where there was a rise and naturally I just felt with my feet all the way along until I got out of the water. But I was very, very lucky: there was no-end odd drowned. If they didn’t release their chutes in time or if they were loaded with gear, they went straight down.