Forgotten Voices of D-Day Page 22
We got under the sea wall, a concrete sea wall, and looking through the apertures we could see German sentries walking about on duty. We could see German soldiers getting on transport to go somewhere or other; we assumed they were going out for the day or something like that. And we just sat there and waited for the invasion to take place, because, in actual fact, we couldn’t put our explosive on the obstacles because the sea was too rough and we couldn’t get at our explosive because it was in a sunken craft.
Private Frederick Perkins
5th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment (Beach Group)
As we approached the beach there was all hell being let loose on Sword so by the time we got to Juno the Germans were aware that something big was happening. But that didn’t take much calculation because there were thousands and thousands and thousands of ships out there in front of them. You can’t imagine how many ships were there. You couldn’t have got any more in. The corvettes, the destroyers, the Landing Ship Rockets were all starting their bombardment, and the bombardment was absolutely colossal. As we ran in, the whole seashore looked like a blue haze, there were smoke shells bursting to cover the landing, and it looked pretty hectic coming in under this barrage. Thousands of shells were whizzing over the top as one was coming in and the din was absolutely enormous, indescribable. All types of craft were firing. Even the landing craft that were coming in with tanks were firing their guns actually in the landing craft to help with the bombardment or at targets that they could see they could hit.
Lieutenant Ian Hammerton
Sherman Crab flail tank commander, 22nd Dragoons
There was this ripping sound, like calico being ripped apart, and a flight of rockets went up. You could hear it even above the radio and I saw a Spitfire flying along the beach and that suddenly disappeared in a puff of flaming smoke. It must have flown into the flight of rockets. You could see them landing on the shore, not on the beach but the land behind the beach, and the fire burning and the smoke, a tremendous amount of smoke.
Lieutenant Gerald Edward Ashcroft
LCT commander
I had the great pleasure of putting ashore the first tanks of the 3rd Canadian Division to knock out the pillboxes guarding the beach. We were constantly under fire from approximately half a mile off the beach. Shellfire, gunfire and, as we got closer to the beach, shrapnel and of course mortar fire. Being the port-wing ship of the flotilla we had no cover ourselves and we came under mortar fire and lost two men killed and three others injured.
Our greatest problem, though, hadn’t been the gunfire so much as the fact that, owing to the invasion being postponed for twenty-four hours and being held up by bad weather, instead of beaching at the low water mark where all the beach obstacles would have been above water level, we had to beach through the beach obstacles: mines and stakes and shells fastened on to iron stakes. The infantry landing craft were coming in either side of us, blowing up in all directions on the mines. We backed away slightly and just let her drift, knocking off as many mines as we could with our big bow door, until we got two mines on stakes jammed within the door sections and had to pull away.
Boy Seaman Signaller Victor Longhurst
LCT crew
I was returning to the bridge when our gunners opened fire so we must have been quite close to the beach and I mentioned to the FO that there were no No 2s on the guns. Would he like me to act as No 2 on the guns? So he said, ‘Yes. Carry on, Bunts.’
Film stills of Canadian infantrymen of the North Shore Regiment disembarking from a Landing Craft Assault (LCA) on Nan Red sector, Juno Beach, at about 0805 hours on 6 June. They are under fire from German troops in the houses facing them.
I went down and I remember going to the port gun and loading the port gun for the gunner, because they’re strapped in, the Oerlikon gunners. I then went to the starboard gun and got a pan of ammunition out ready to load him up when all of a sudden it seemed like all guns were trained on us. There were bullets flying all over or so it seemed. Unluckily the bullets hit the wheelhouse and ricocheted back and I got wounded and the coxswain inside the wheelhouse got killed because one of the gun ports was left open and a bullet hit him right in the forehead. I didn’t know I’d got wounded. There was a lot of blood and I said to the gunner, ‘Somebody’s been hit,’ and he said, ‘It’s you, you’ve been hit.’ Then I looked and I’d got blood streaming down me arm.
Eventually I started to feel a bit groggy and went below. The next thing I can remember, the telegraphist came down and started to bandage my arm where I’d been wounded. Then the FO came and had a look at me. His remark was, ‘Scars of battle, eh, Bunts?’
Corporal Thomas Edward Suffling
Royal Marine and LCA stoker
We were used to convey Canadian troops, the Winnipeg Rifles, on to Juno Beach. It was a very difficult landing and we became marooned on the beach. It was a funny sort of a tide, something like Cleethorpes’. It came in very slowly and if you missed it coming out again you were marooned. Gently shelving, the beach was; it wasn’t a steep one where you could land and go off again, you sort of landed flat on the beach, and if you didn’t get off quick that was it and that’s what happened. We got the Canadian troops off and we got marooned.
In an endeavour to return to the LSI, that’s our parent ship, my mates and I managed to float another LCA which was beached too and pointing nose-out and started to take it back. Bonzo Atkinson said, ‘Everybody up forward to lift the back up and give the propellers a chance to turn.’
We had on board a Canadian with a hole in his foot. I was going to bandage the wound, I was having difficulty in opening the field dressing and I was bent down trying to undo this bandage and this officer bent down and said, ‘Can you manage?’ And as he bent down, we blew up. I don’t know if it was a mine or a mortar but anyway everybody above the gunwales was killed by the blast. Everybody up front, this Canadian. There was two on the engine, there was two on the pumps, there was me bandaging this Canadian’s foot and there was the officer: we were the only survivors. Then we just tried to get back to the beach as best we could.
People were running up the beach. A few dead bodies. Craft all over the place. Proper mayhem it was. We went into the shelter of the sand dunes and then we started getting sorted out, recovering. Then we started to see what we could do for the wounded on the beach. It was a while after, you know, when I’d sort of settled down a bit, that I realised that I’d started shaking like a leaf and I was a bit ashamed of it, to be honest. I thought, ‘I’m a right ’un to be shaking.’ And then I realised it was a reaction.
Private Frederick Perkins
5th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment (Beach Group)
Suddenly we grounded and we were off. Down went the ramp and it was a mad dash for the sand dunes. Waves of Canadians had already gone in before us. On our particular beach they were Queen’s Own Rifles and, when we got there, there were lots of dead Canadians laying about. As they’d hit the beach, beach obstacles were blowing up around them, landing craft were blowing up, hitting the mine obstructions on the beach, and the Queen’s Own Rifles got caught with a crossfire by machine guns as they were advancing up a groyne. They lost the majority of one of their companies and they were laying there. It was terrible to see. We dug these hurried bolt holes in the sand and we got in there initially and set up gun positions, anti-tank positions, mortar positions. We were being mortared at the same time and sniped at especially.
Private Douglas Botting
5th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment (Beach Group)
It was just a nightmare, a complete nightmare. I was eighteen years old. I expect there were others there who were eighteen years old but it was the first experience like that I’d ever had. I’d wanted to get there and have a go but when I landed and I saw people going down right and left of me I thought, ‘What the devil am I doing here?’ There’s no joy in war. I mean, I come from a family of soldiers and I suppose you listen to their stories and when you’re youn
ger you watch the cowboys and all this business. And it’s just not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.
Lieutenant Gerald Edward Ashcroft
LCT commander
On our particular point of the beach was a pillbox on the corner of the Courseulles harbour wall and the sea wall. When we were close enough to examine it through binoculars we could see that the gun barrel of the big gun was pointing westward along the beach and the embrasure on the north side was completely open. And when we were nearly to the level of the mines we saw the gun barrel come back in. Knowing full well that they’d have to swivel the gun barrel inside the emplacement, it was obvious that they were now training the gun to come out the embrasure directly opposite us.
I got the major in charge of the tanks to get his forward tank close up to the watertight door, got our bow ramp lowered, the watertight doors opened, and I arranged for the tank to train on to the pillbox and try to get the pillbox before the pillbox got us. Fortunately we hit the beach at full speed, the tank jumped out and came to rest, trained his gun as their gun barrel was coming out and the first shot went straight into the pillbox and it gave us no more trouble after that.
Before coming back off the beach, I couldn’t resist the temptation to go ashore quickly and see what had happened to the pillbox. It was really an astonishing sight and it showed how effective a solid shot inside a pillbox really can be. There was literally nothing left but skin, blood and bits of flesh, all mixed up like a load of mincemeat. The solid shot had simply ricocheted round and round and round. Far more effective than a high explosive shell.
Sapper William Dunn
AVRE driver, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers
The landing craft stopped and dropped the ramps for us to come down and everybody straight away shouted good luck to each other. The first tank off was a Canadian flail tank and I had to follow him off. We came through this narrow gap they’d done for us, these people that had been there lying overnight, and then we had to drive up the beach.
The atmosphere in the tank then was a little bit tense. I was the only man who could see where I was going because the tank commander had battened down more or less because the shells and the bullets were coming across the top of us. My co-driver, Bill Hawkins, was sitting behind me and kept asking me what was going on, could he see, you know. My main concern as we came up the beach was seeing all the lads that had been shot down and were lying on the beach. I was a bit concerned in case I hit any of them. I only had a narrow visor to look through and I didn’t know whether they were dead or whether they were alive or what, these people that were lying there. But in any case you had to pick your way through so you didn’t catch any of them.
Lieutenant Ian Hammerton
Sherman Crab flail tank commander, 22nd Dragoons
Two flails flailed up to the sea wall and backed away as per the plan. A bridging tank came forward but the commander was killed by a shell which landed on the turret; it also cut the cable and the bridge dropped. So we then had to make use of the existing stone ramp off the beach which was sealed with Element C and barbed wire. That meant I had to drive up to the end of this ramp, which by now was underwater, and I had to fire at the Element C.
Now, in order to fire the gun, I had to blow the waterproofing off so I could rotate the turret a little. I was clear of the water level by this time but the business of firing at Element C is a lengthy one – it meant the commander sighting the gun through the barrel at every joint of the welding. You peer down the bore of the gun: we called it posting letters. So we fired HE and broke up the Element C. I then had to drag it out of the way because the other Churchill AVRE, he went up, he pushed the Element C to one side and drove to one side and blew up on a mine. But the Element C was still blocking the top so I had to attach a towrope to it and tow it down the ramp back out to sea. By this time the tide was much higher and just as I’d said, ‘Right, that’ll do,’ the driver said, ‘I’ve got water coming in and it’s coming up to my neck. What shall I do?’ I said, ‘Bail out.’
We dismounted our machine gun from the top and got the tripod and boxes of ammo and grenades and dropped off into about five feet of water, which was very cold, right up to our necks. But the most difficult thing of all was climbing out of the water on to the ramp. The pull of the tide and the fact that our clothing was full of water and we were loaded down with grenades and things made it very difficult to get out, and there were various bodies floating about which didn’t help either. But we did get out and we set up the machine gun on the top.
An aerial view, through clouds, of Mike sector of Juno Beach on 6 June. Landing craft and vehicles can be clearly seen.
Major Allan Younger
Commanding officer, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers
The waterproofing was fine and we got quite close to dry land when suddenly I found myself sitting on the bottom of the tank and I didn’t know what had happened at all. I saw my wireless operator looking down at me and I said to him, ‘What the hell have you done?’ I just couldn’t realise why I was sitting on the floor of the tank and I knew I ought to be looking out of it. He said, ‘Sir, we’ve been hit.’
I realised the moment he started to speak that my hearing was very bad. What had happened was that a shell of some sort had hit the open turret hatch of the tank and it had burst there and knocked half the turret hatch down on to my head. Luckily I was wearing a steel helmet and there was a ridge down that and it had knocked me out and burst an eardrum. Otherwise it had not done me any harm. However, it had taken off the aerials from the tank, so I couldn’t use the tank as a command vehicle any longer.
So we got on to the beach and I sort of pulled myself together and I realised I had to get out of the tank in order to command anybody and I got out and I ran across the open beach. There were quite a number of casualties already on the beach and there were little groups of Canadian infantry sheltering in the sand dunes. And I went up to this great conglomeration of tanks, I suppose about eight or nine of them there, at the entrance to what I knew straight away should be 2 Troop’s projected gap.
26 Squadron’s objective was to create two gaps and I had two troops to do this, each with some flails under its command. The first thing I did was to look out the commander of 1 Troop, Hewlett, to ask him what on earth he was doing there. I found him and he said, oh, well, his landing craft had landed there and so he thought it was best to go on in, which was not a very good answer. I told him to collect his men and get over to the correct gap that he was meant to be making which was another, I suppose, couple of hundred yards to the west. However, by then, his front tank, which was numbered One Charlie – our tanks were One Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog and so on in 1 Troop, Two Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog and so on in 2 Troop – was already through the sand dunes and was teetering on the edge of what looked like a huge crater. It was indeed a huge culvert, sixty-six feet across, full of water. And this tank was teetering on the edge of it and just as I came up I saw it sort of nudge into the crater, into the water.
Sapper William Dunn
AVRE driver, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers
The Germans had flooded the area and you couldn’t see the culvert, you see. Tracks snapped, water started coming in the turret and, of course, with me being right at the front, I was last one out. Everybody had to get out a bit sharpish because the bullets were flying all over the place, I was starting to swallow water actually because it was all coming into the turret and, as my co-driver got out, he put his knees on both sides of me head, me temples, and as he came out he dragged me with him. Of course I had quite a bit of water in me stomach by then and Bill Hawkins, who was standing just outside the turret when we got out, he just hit me once in the stomach. He hadn’t any time for any niceties or anything like that. He just brought the water up and that was it. Of course the bullets were still hitting the turret and so we decided that our best bet was the seaward side of the culvert. We had to jump off the tank and by that time Captain
Hewlett had come up to see what was happening and he put his tank between us and the Germans and brought us back into the sand dunes.
He went away and left us then and we just lay down behind the sand dunes. Jim Ashton started to sing ‘Kiss Me Again’. Like a father figure – he was a good lad – he always did this, tried to settle us all down. And he’d just started to sing when the mortar bombs came and dropped between us. It killed three outright, definitely. I was wounded. Bill Hawkins was badly wounded. The co-driver, he rolled over to me, he had a hole in his back that I could put me fist in, and he said, ‘I’ll call for help.’ And he crawled away and I just saw him roll over after he got about a hundred yards from us and I was told afterwards that’s where he died.
I rolled down into a minefield. In fact when I looked up there was a big board, ‘Achtung Minen’, straight above my head and I thought, ‘Cor blimey.’ I managed to get on to me feet and I ran about fifty yards, which the doctor said was impossible when I got home because I had five compound fractures in one of me legs. I said, ‘Well, when you’re frightened and there’s bullets flying around, it makes you do queer things.’ But me legs just gave way from me and I collapsed, I didn’t know how badly I was wounded then, and two lads came and dragged me back. I told them Bill Hawkins was still up there and they asked me about the others and I said, ‘I’m pretty sure the others are dead.’ So they went up to Bill Hawkins and they took me back and laid me beside another sand dune and gave me a cigarette and a drink, and left me there.
The first one that came on the scene after that was a Canadian medical officer and he gave me an injection of morphine and put a card around me neck to say he’d given me morphine, then he took off. Then two Canadians came. I must have been lying with me eyes shut and they started going through me pockets and they took me watch out of these pockets and me whistle and I had a commando knife stitched to me trouser leg and they took that. Then I opened me eyes and one of them turned round and said, ‘We’d better leave this bugger, he’s alive,’ and they took off. Then two lads from me own unit came and they carried me further back towards the beach and they brought Bill Hawkins down alongside me and they laid the two stretchers right between two Priest guns. Both of them opened up together and it just lifted the stretchers up and bounced them down.