Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  Private Leslie Perry

  1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment

  On top of this pillbox was one of our chaps. I think he must’ve been a South Lanc. He’d run up on top of this pillbox with a Bren gun and was firing at the Germans in the fields and someone got him right between the eyes, there was a little hole in his forehead and a trickle of blood. And he was laying down with his arms outstretched and his feet towards the top and his head towards the beach and I looked and I thought, ‘My God, a little hole like that and he’s dead.’ I felt strange. I can’t say I was frightened. When I saw him up there I must admit it hit me, but to me it was just like being on an exercise. I felt lonely, more than anything; though I had mates all around me, I felt lonely. I felt everyone was firing at me.

  Lieutenant Commander Edward Gueritz

  Beachmaster

  There were of course people who found the landing very stressful. I remember there was a group of military policemen lurking behind an armoured vehicle and I encouraged them to go off about their business. I also met two men – and I’ve never seen this before or after – who were blue with fear. Again they had to be encouraged to take a grip of themselves. It was no worse for them than it was for anybody else.

  Marine Derrick Cakebread

  45 (Royal Marine) Commando

  It was shocking really. What can I say? It was rough. All the mortars going and the shells and the people who landed before us, the East Yorks, to clear the beach – a lot of those were dead and floating. First time I saw a dead person, and it shakes you. There is no doubt about it, you’re scared: the noise and seeing men falling in front of you and the people already gone.

  Able Seaman Kenneth Oakley

  Beachmaster’s bodyguard

  Mortar fire seemed to be passing over us and it seemed that we were so close that he could not depress to cover our area, which was fortunate for us. After a while, along came a DD tank and the hatch opened and a voice shouted, ‘Where’s the fire?’ I pointed to the right and shouted, ‘Two hundred yards, forty-five degrees!’ Bang went the turret door; crash went the projectile; one shot finished the mortar fire. It must have ploughed right along their trench.

  Film still of men of 4 Commando moving off Sword Beach. Cautious of enemy fire and carrying heavy kit, they are keeping well down.

  Corporal George Sidney Kenneth Agnew

  Sherman Crab flail tank commander, 22nd Dragoons

  I ran slap-bang into an 88-millimetre gun emplacement which didn’t take long to neutralise my tank. I was hit twice: one up the side and into the engine and one on the turret. The next thing we knew, we were standing in flames. The whole tank burst into flames. The only thing I could do was swing the turret round to make sure the driver and the co-driver could get out and I shouted, ‘Bail out!’ and we bailed out. I went along the sand dunes and there was another tank from another squadron and the commander had been sniped through the head. I came behind the tank and I shouted, ‘Shove him out!’ They shoved the body out and I got into that tank and went on.

  Midshipman Rene Le Roy

  Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Unit

  4 Commando came in, in five LCIs, with Bergen rucksacks which were all full of equipment, and they realised more than anybody as they were approaching the beach that the beach hadn’t been taken and they thought, ‘We attack.’ So they came in and they passed through a wave of men on the beach, ditching their rucksacks and immediately firing their way forward. They came up in lines, straight up, passing us, passing through, attacking the pillboxes, attacking any buildings and within a period of ten minutes they’d disappeared and the beach organisation started to get up and move. It was quite incredible. Their role wasn’t to capture the beach but that role had been greatly assisted by the commando advance.

  Private Reginald Barnes

  4 Commando

  We made an immediate move to clear the beach and not to dig in or stay there. The first obstacles we came across was a sign saying ‘Minen’ and a whole lot of barbed wire, etc. There was suddenly a halt and Lovat shouted out, ‘Come on, boys, what’s keeping you? What’s the matter? Move!’ And a friend of mine, who had been specially trained for this type of thing, he ran forward. He knew he shouldn’t cut those wires in case they were mined and would blow up so what he did, he threw a jacket on, threw himself on and let the boys jump over. And once two or three got through we knew it was clear, we broke away and we all filed through.

  Piper Bill Millin

  HQ 1st Special Service Brigade

  Lovat looked round and seen me standing and said, ‘Aw, give us a tune.’ The whole idea was ridiculous, ’cause people were shell-firing and all kinds of things were going on at the time. It was mad enough the three of us standing there; we shouldn’t have been standing, really, we should’ve been lying down. The whole thing was ridiculous and I thought I might as well be ridiculous as well. I said, ‘What tune would you like, sir?’ and he said, ‘Well, play The Road to the Isles.’ I said, ‘Would you like me to march up and down?’ and he said, ‘Yes, yes, march up and down. That’ll be lovely.’ So the whole thing was ridiculous, in that the bodies lying in the water were going back and forward with the tide and I started off piping and going a few paces along. And the next thing there’s a hand on my shoulder and a voice said, ‘Listen, boy,’ and I looked round. It was this sergeant I recognised and he says, ‘What are you fucking playing at, you mad bastard? You’re attracting all the German attention. Every German in France knows we’re here now, you silly bastard.’ Anyway, I walked away and of course there are other people up on the wall going, ‘Hooray!’ Cheering, you know.

  Corporal Jim Spearman

  4 Commando

  Domineering the whole place were these tremendous big pillboxes. No matter where you went, you couldn’t get out of range of them; they covered the beach very well. The fortifications were excellent. If you think of a pillbox, you can go up to it, go to a slit and drop a grenade in, but these bloody defences they had on the beach there had about a dozen slits in them. They were tremendous things.

  Our job wasn’t to stop and put them out of action, our job was to get off the beach, although of course some of our people did try to put some of these things out of action on the way. I remember one Lieutenant Carr. Terribly thin man but a very good officer. He deliberately went up to one pillbox and threw a couple of grenades in and I thought that was a very brave deed.

  Nobody can know what it’s like to be on a beach where you can do nothing, you’re under severe fire and you’ve got to get off. It’s only a person who’s been through it a number of times can know you’ve either got to stay and die or get off and live. People doing it for the first time, no matter how many times you tell them, they don’t realise it and nobody got off the beach. Of course, if you elongate yourself on a beach underneath cliffs or underneath a high road, you’re much easier to hit. Standing up, you present much less of a target than somebody laying down.

  I was shocked by the number of bodies, dead bodies, living bodies, and all the blood in the water giving the appearance they were drowning in their own blood for the want of moving. The whole place was littered like it. But having seen all the bodies on the beach doubled our determination. No matter what happened, we had to get off the beach. Once you get off the beach, you’re out of the fire as it were. But it’s a very hard lesson to learn and people won’t bloody learn it.

  The troops that landed in front of us, they had never been on an assault landing before. And I often wonder whether they were put there as sort of gun-fodder to distract attention for us to go in, because we were always the people who went in first, did a sharp, quick raid and got out again. It seemed to change here. They put those people in and they never even left the beach.

  Private Peter Fussell

  HQ 1st Special Service Brigade

  The Royal Navy beach clearance people had been in front of us, they had cleared a narrow strip of mines through which tanks were going, and this was a great s
upport to us as at least we had something to hide behind. If any snipers were around we could pop them off from either side – if we could see them.

  Corporal Jim Spearman

  4 Commando

  Our first job was to knock out a gun battery at a place called Ouistreham, which was right on the east side of the landing. After that we were to take up positions in the Hauger area a few miles inland and defend that against all comers. If our boat had sunk I really don’t know who would have taken over that job because there were no reserves for us. It was a very thin green line that we set up there.

  Piper Bill Millin

  HQ 1st Special Service Brigade

  The strongpoint in Ouistreham was the casino. Well, this was captured eventually, mainly by 4 Commando, which included a French troop. Of course the local French people were delighted that there were French commandos with the British and they gave us help by pointing out the strongpoints which enabled the commandos to eliminate them.

  Private Andrew Brown

  6 Commando

  Running up the beach I heard a ‘moaning minnie’ scream and one or two shells falling about so I dived into this shell hole and there was a bloke out of the East Yorks with a Bren gun there. I asked him what he was doing and he said he’d lost his mates and was digging in. I said, ‘Well, if you dig in there you’re going to die. Come along with me because if you stop on the beach you’re going to die. You’ve got to get off the beach.’ So he came along with me and he stayed with me to the end of D-Day, when he just told me he’d better get back and look for his mates. They took a plastering, they did.

  Sergeant Arthur Thompson

  2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment

  We’d lost that many that the strength we had wasn’t much strength at all, and when we got off the beaches we were getting shelled and mortared and God knows what. To move forward we had to go through some swamps and that was where we lost a lot. I remember one chap in particular. He was laid there in all this muck and he shouts, ‘Thommo!’ and I thought he’d fell over and couldn’t get up because of the weight of his equipment, so I went and picked him up and he had no legs on. I just had to prop him up against some willows and asked him if there was owt he wanted and he said he could do with his cigarettes, so I lit him a cigarette and had to leave him. He’d just die, you see.

  Private William Edward Lloyd

  2nd Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment

  You didn’t stop when someone got hit. You didn’t stop to see what happened to them. You knew you’d got to get on.

  Private Stanley Wilfred Scott

  3 Commando

  We went up the beach, straight over to the other side where the Germans had flooded it, and we lugged these bloody bikes through it. There was no cover and they was lobbing mortar bombs at us but they was just going ‘Glump!’ straight in the mud, cushioning the effect. Every now and then you would hear this ‘Ka-ka-ka-ka’ – you know, machine-gun fire – but if it didn’t hit you, you didn’t worry about it. There were blokes going down left and right. I stopped to have a few words with Johnny Johnson when he got hit. They took half his bloody ear off. He just went, ‘Ah,’ like that, and there was all blood. He said, ‘Well, see you Scotty,’ and went back down the beach and got on a boat. We carried on.

  Sergeant Desmond O’Neill

  Cameraman, Army Film and Photographic Unit

  I started taking pictures of the troops coming ashore. Then I suddenly spotted two very tiny infantrymen marching along with a very tall German soldier who was absolutely terrified. He had a bandage round his face and there were these two – rather cheerful, I think they were cockneys – on either side of him. I said, ‘Just a minute,’ and they posed as though they might be posing in Piccadilly Circus for their picture, with this German in between them. It’s a picture you’re always told to look out for, captured prisoners. Very good for morale and all the rest of it.

  I caught up with an infantry platoon who were making an attempt to get off the beach and all of a sudden there was a rattle of automatic fire, coming from where I know not, and I felt a searing pain in my left elbow. I didn’t go down, I don’t think I dropped the camera, I sort of crouched down and I looked to my left and the chap who’d been standing by my side, an infantryman, was lying on the ground and you could see right away that he was dead.

  So I thought, ‘This is a fine kettle of fish.’ I got my field dressing out and wrapped it round and looked for a first-aid station. I saw the Red Cross flying over a bunker which had been captured by the initial assault troops who had used flame-throwers on it and I went up to the entrance. An RAMC corporal there said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘I’ve been shot through the elbow.’ He said, ‘Let’s have a look. Come inside.’ I went inside and it was almost like a Hogarth painting. There were soldiers lying all over the place and some of them very badly wounded, you could see, with legs off and things like that. And there was a young RAMC officer busy operating and I remember thinking, ‘That chap is going to learn more about surgery in the next half day than he will in the rest of his life.’

  JUNO BEACH

  Major-General Rod Keller’s 3rd Canadian Infantry Division was tasked with assaulting and securing Juno Beach – directly to the west of Sword – and advancing from there towards the Caen-Bayeux road. The landings took place either side of the seaside town of Courseulles-sur-Mer and the mouth of the River Seulles.

  Rough seas and the need to avoid offshore rocks meant that Keller’s assault troops approached the shore behind schedule and were forced to negotiate, under fire, hazardous belts of half-submerged obstacles before their craft hit the beach. Problems were also caused by the failure of the preliminary bombardment to suppress a series of enemy strongpoints and positions and by the delayed arrival on the beaches of many Canadian DD tanks.

  Losses among New Brunswick’s North Shore Regiment, Toronto’s Queen’s Own Rifles, the Regina Rifles and the Winnipeg Rifles were particularly high. By the end of the day, Keller’s men had suffered more than a thousand casualties, including 364 killed. Among the seaborne forces, only the Americans who landed at Omaha Beach suffered a higher casualty rate.

  Once the armour was ashore and the beach exits were cleared and enemy resistance was quelled or bypassed, progress inland was rapid. Canadian troops penetrated further on D-Day than any other Allied force. By nightfall, though it had to turn back, a troop of Canadian Sherman tanks had crossed the Caen-Bayeux road: the only unit among the seaborne Allied forces to reach its furthest D-Day objective.

  British assistance to the Canadians on Juno took many vital forms. Many landing-craft crews were British. AVREs and flail tanks from Hobart’s 79th Armoured Division and Royal Marine and Royal Engineers obstacle-clearance teams worked to clear beach exits and paths. Further support came from the accompanying beach groups, composite units tasked with securing and organising movement into and off the beach, including medics and infantrymen who landed close behind the first wave of Canadian assault troops.

  48 (Royal Marine) Commando, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Moulton, also landed on Juno Beach. Its objective was to push east through the village of St-Aubin and assault a formidable German strongpoint in the next village of Langrune, before continuing east again and linking up with 41 (Royal Marine) Commando who, it was hoped, would be pushing west from Sword. But obstacles and heavy fire from the shore turned 48 Commando’s landing into a disaster and casualties continued to mount on the beach. By the time the survivors had fought their way through to Langrune, their strength was insufficient to carry the strongpoint that day. The link-up between Juno and Sword, meanwhile, was made only on 7 June.

  Sergeant Keith Briggs

  Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Unit

  The beaches had about three different rows of obstacles. The main one was the large one called Element C. They were like iron gates and they were situated just at low tide level so that when the tide came in they were covered by sea and each one had on it
a mine or a shell with a fuse so that if you touched them they’d go off. They were between ten to fifteen yards apart and they were staggered so the rows were covered. And then, behind that, were rows and rows, continuous rows, of hedgehogs and then stakes driven into the sand. If your landing craft hit them, these stakes would make a hole.

  We knew everything about those beaches long before we went there. We’d trained on bays of Element C. We’d trained at Appledore to cut bays of Element C down from an eight-foot-high object to a ten-inch object with explosive so that landing craft could run over it. And we knew all about those because people had been to different places in France and we’d got all their photographs of the beach defences. We were told exactly where we were going to go, our beaches were pinpointed for us, we were given photographs of the whole beach area and in my case it was Juno Beach, Nan Red. We were given photographs of the exact landing points and the houses on the beach and the exact beach area where we were supposed to clear a gap of six hundred yards. And we were going into Normandy at H minus sixty, which meant we were going in before the major invasion took place.

  By the time we put to sea, there was a gale blowing, a storm blowing. Everything was terrible with the sea. We got to our point about seven miles off the French coast very early in the morning, probably about five or six o’clock in the morning, and we were dropped with our landing craft and its naval crew and had to get into our beach. Our craft was loaded with three or four tons of explosive; it was controlled by naval seaman, had Asdic gear for detecting underwater obstacles and so forth; and we went into the beach at Normandy. And as we were going into the beach, the sea was so rough, it was gale force, that our landing craft actually landed on one of the obstacles and had several holes knocked in it and the landing craft then sank on to the seabed. It was only in about three, four feet of water.