Forgotten Voices of D-Day Page 5

  The grand finale of this training came two days later when they took us into a building where there was a large pit dug in the earth some forty feet deep. At the bottom of the pit stood a tank, a Valentine tank in those days, and down the side of the pit was a ladder. Wearing only our denims and gym shoes and with our escape apparatus, we went down the ladder, walked across to the tank and got in and took up our crew positions: the driver in his seat, the gunner in his, etc. etc. and we had a naval instructor with us.

  Now, as we sat there, sluice gates were opened and water came pouring in and we were told to sit where we were quite calmly and we were not allowed to put on the breathing apparatus until the water had hit chest height. When this happened we put in the mouthpiece, pulled down the goggles and put on the nose-clip and began breathing as the water rose above us. We had to sit there until the instructor told us to move and all the time the water rose until we were sitting under forty foot of water. Then, one by one, we received the signal and calmly and quietly, so the book says, each man came up through the hatch and went to the top and climbed out.

  If a tank should sink the heaviest part of that tank is the turret and it seems obvious that the turret would sink down to the bottom tracks-up; and if that should happen, of course, there is no possibility of getting out of the hatch. Nevertheless, this is what we were given, this is what we were trained on and I suppose the civil servants were pleased to say, ‘We’ve given you an escape. What are you worried about?’ Of course, it wouldn’t work in practice. And in practice, when tanks did sink, I never heard about one man who escaped.

  Above and below: A Sherman Duplex-Drive (DD) tank with its screens lowered and raised.

  Captain John Semken

  Sherman tank commander, Sherwood Rangers

  We found ourselves with a very ugly sort of mutiny developing, which took the form of people saying that they couldn’t muster the courage to do these trips in escape apparatus, they couldn’t bring themselves to do it and so on. Like all mutinies the thing was smoothed over and the chaps became reconciled to it.

  Trooper Ronald Mole

  Sherman tank gunner/wireless operator, 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards

  Once we felt fairly confident, or at least it was decided that we were competent, we moved down to Fort Monkton at Gosport and did our first sea operation from Stokes Bay. It was a night swim and we slipped into the water and travelled about three miles up the Solent in line ahead. All one could see was a small red and green light as you were following the vehicle in front, about ten, fifteen yards behind. When that light started to disappear, obviously they were turning, so we were looking then for a little white light on the beach and you turned in and homed in on that. But it was rather a hair-raising experience in the dark, first time at night, up to your knees in water, because these craft were very blunt nosed – they didn’t ride the wave, they just bumped into it – and of course water came over the top and the poor old driver down below was getting electric shocks because he had a twelve-volt battery by his elbow. That was our initiation to a night swim.

  Private Frederick Perkins

  5th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, attached to 3rd Canadian Division

  We were training with the ‘Funnies’: the flails, the Crocodiles, the tanks with bridging on them, tanks with great rolls of wooden bobbins which they dropped in ditches and went straight over the top of them. All those kind of ‘Funnies’ were brought in and as soon as they arrived they were covered over with canvas sheets so that the public couldn’t see them. The public were actually ordered to have all their blinds drawn and if they had to go to work they had to be gone to work before the exercises started: it was all top secret, the ‘Funnies’. The DD tanks, the Duplex-Drives, the swimming tanks, they came in as well. Even us infantry didn’t know what the DD tanks were. So when we saw them, we thought, ‘What is this, monsters coming out of the sea? Tanks swimming?’ We couldn’t believe it, really.

  Major David Warren

  1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment

  We prepared ourselves by going to the Combined Training area at Inverary in Scotland where we learned the various techniques of landing from assault craft and so on. Having carried out two assault landings before, one in Sicily, one in Italy, the naval side of it was familiar. We did know about landing craft and how to travel in them and how to get out and so on.

  Sergeant James Bellows

  1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment

  We were the most experienced men in the British Army on invasion training and the instructors were all men who had never left the country. It was really funny. I had to take my signallers down for a lecture and leave them in this Nissen hut with a corporal from the Royal Corps of Signals and when I came to collect them this poor corporal is nearly in tears. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Your men have been taking the mickey out of me, sergeant.’ I said, ‘Why? What happened?’ He said, ‘When I started to teach them about waterproofing their sets, they started laughing.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s understandable,’ and I told him what they’d actually done. He said, ‘And I’m supposed to tell them what to do?’ I said, ‘All the equipment you’ve got here, they’ve used in action. Not once. Twice.’ ‘Well, sergeant,’ he said. ‘I’d appreciate it very much if you’d let them teach me.’ Which is what they did for the remainder of the time in Inverary. One of the things they taught him was how to waterproof a pocket watch and still tell the time. He said, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ All you do is get a French letter, as they were called in them days, put your watch in, get the air out, tie a knot and there you’ve got your watch waterproofed and you can still tell the time. Simple little things and he appreciated it.

  Lieutenant David Wood

  2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  It was a time when everybody was trying to inspire us with military thoughts. When you went on to the assault course, people screamed, ‘Remember Hong Kong!’ or ‘Remember Singapore!’ And at one stage, but not when we were there, they had buckets of entrails and the like, so that you actually had blood splashed on you and you felt even more aggressive than you otherwise might have done.

  Brigadier The Lord Lovat

  Commanding officer, 1st Special Service Brigade

  A demonstration was laid on where the brigade landed at Angmering and fought their way across very difficult country. We landed under smoke in the same craft as the ones we actually went ashore with on D-Day. This is rather an important point as you’ve got to know the sailors as well as yourself, the sailor being responsible for getting you ashore, and if you aren’t in complete tune there can be misunderstandings. Anyway, we landed on the coast at Angmering in three waves under the cover of smoke launched from two-inch mortars and swept inland and did it very quickly. I remember the third wave that came in seized all the cars of the spectators. They reckoned they were getting rather far behind in the sweeping inland movement, seized the cars, much to the rage of the drivers and the people who owned them, and formed a mobile column that followed the main advance, which had to cross the Arun below Arundel Castle and get to the gap in the Downs above the town. And this we managed to do in a very much shorter time than was generally expected. It was a good thing of its kind and it surprised the brass hats in the War Office who came down to watch the whole affair, although there were a good deal of hard feelings as smoke bombs fell among the higher generals.

  Sapper Thomas Finigan

  85th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  There were quite a few accidents during the training. I remember a particular occasion when we were carrying Bangalore torpedoes ashore. A Bangalore torpedo is a two-inch pipe, roughly about ten to twelve foot long, full of explosives, and that was pushed through a barbed wire entanglement and you set it off and it used to blow the wire apart. We had an infantry battalion of the King’s Liverpool Irish who used to look after us – once sappers are in minefields and you’re under fire you have to have someo
ne to protect you, you don’t take your arms into a minefield – and we were on the beach for about ten days and one of these Bangalore torpedoes went up and it killed several men. We were getting up in the morning and having our wash when it went off. It was a matter of about a hundred yards down and it was quite gruesome. What came out in the inquiry was that they were using it over a fire when they were boiling their water in cans, they were using it as a support over the fire. I think there were seventeen that died.

  Lance Corporal Alan Carter

  6th Battalion, Green Howards

  We were on this invasion training and our artillery were firing. I was going up this slope, there was a bloke in front of me and the rest of the blokes were behind me, and the artillery fired a shell and it dropped short. It caught this lad, shrapnel in his arm; and off went my steel helmet on to the ground. I picked it up, put it on, never looking at it, and turned round to the rest of the blokes and said, ‘Who the hell’s buggering about here?’ I thought they’d thrown a grenade or something. And I looked at one bloke and he had a face of horror, open-mouthed. He said, ‘You’ll never get killed in France. Look at your steel helmet.’ I took it off and there was a hole where a bit of shrapnel had gone that you could get your fist through.

  Captain John Sim

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We were out on two nightly exercises a week, moving about the countryside, lugging our equipment, attacking positions, digging in, and we had quite a number of parachute exercises which was good. The aircraft were available, all sorts of aircraft, and we had battalion night drops in the Salisbury Plain area and the odd brigade exercise as well, so we were really put through our paces. One of the hardest physical tests we all had to go through, even the CO, was a fifty-mile march in full fighting order carrying all our equipment, all our weapons, our mortar shells and so on, fifty miles within twenty-four hours. The average was twenty-two hours. Our morale was high: this tremendous adventure coming towards us.

  Private Philip Crofts

  7th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We did constant cross-country runs, constant route marches, constant road run-and-walks, constant manoeuvres. We did very little parade-square drill. Practically the only drill we did was battle drill. We were always doing something. Everything seemed to be geared up for one purpose. It was the most intense period of training I’ve ever had in my life for anything.

  Private Ernest Rooke-Matthews

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  As time went on we got to the point where we started doing training on specific tasks: attacking a bridge, defending a hillside, attacking a battery. All the different things that might well have come. Then we went on a special exercise where they had actually constructed a mock battery at a place called Inkpen and we were doing night attacks on this battery. And that – we didn’t know then, of course – was what the powers that be had decided would be one of the major tasks.

  Private Harry Clarke

  2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  We attacked so many bridges at night that we formed the opinion then that we would be attacking a bridge at night. It became so fixed in our minds. This went on for some months and finally we went to Exeter for ten days where we practised countless times each day. We formed up in platoons to simulate glider landings and we attacked a bridge. Each time we took a different position so that we were ready to take on any role should we land out of turn. If we were first to land, we would take the bridge. Second to land would take on the inner defences. Third to land would rush over the bridge and reinforce the first platoon. And this went on for eight to ten days and we were thoroughly sick of it at the end because we’d continued to do it until we were absolutely perfect in every detail. At that time of course we did not know what it was all about but we had a good idea that it was for the invasion.

  Aircraftwoman Ivy Button

  Parachute packer and repairer, Women’s Auxiliary Air Force

  At Ringway we were packing the parachutes for the paratroops when they were going to invade. When we first started we didn’t have to do it so fast. But of course when they were getting ready to invade France they were training hundreds of men. We first did about eight an hour but then, as they were training all these men, they sort of kept on increasing the amount until we were rushing all the time. And by the time we’d done, oh, eighteen an hour, we all felt that you just couldn’t put your mind to it as exactly as you should. We didn’t feel we should have had that responsibility. So when they tried to put it up more we all got together and said we didn’t want to do it. We didn’t feel we should be responsible for maybe causing somebody’s death by a parachute not opening. So we stuck to our guns and the CO agreed with us in the end.

  Sergeant Bob Rose

  Glider Pilot Regiment

  We had to do the PR job where we went round the factory and talked to all the workers in the factory. ‘These are the boys who are going to fly your aeroplanes,’ and all the rest of it, and we were making dates with these girls but we never went back there again. Then we’d go in the MD’s office and have a small whisky. ‘Small whiskies for fliers,’ he used to say. Then we’d collect the brand new aircraft.

  Sub Lieutenant Roderick Braybrooke

  LCT crew

  We were training with British troops, picking them up from Southampton, loading and going across to Studland Bay because the beach at Studland was similar to what we could expect the other side. I think it was Churchill tanks, mainly, we were taking and dropping off and they’d go on up the beach. This was an ongoing thing.

  Corporal John Lanes

  Sherman tank commander, Sherwood Rangers

  We used to sail down and land on Hayling Island. We did that two or three times. They wouldn’t allow the tanks to go inland, they just used to get out of the craft and on to the beach and stay there, so whenever we went somebody would always bring a football and we’d have a kick-about. We were having a kick-about one day on the beach, because there was nothing we could do, and a brigadier came up and said, ‘What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you realise there’s a war on?’ We’d just come back from Africa after four years.

  United States troops disembarking from Landing Craft Assault (LCAs) during combined Anglo-American invasion manoeuvres on the Devon coast.

  Commander Felix Lloyd-Davies

  HMS Glasgow (Royal Navy cruiser)

  We started carrying out bombardment practices off the south coast of Devon which were live practices carried out mainly by American troops to practise the landings for Normandy. Part of the south coast was evacuated and we opened fire with live ammunition over their heads and undoubtedly it helped them a lot.

  Betty Tabb

  Civilian, Slapton, Devon

  My sister heard the rumour in the shop when she went to get some groceries and she said to Mum that we were all going to have to move and of course Mum says, ‘That’s nonsense talking like that. Where we going to go?’ And she says that’s what she heard in the shop. There was a meeting called then in the village hall and that confirmed that there was going to be an evacuation of the area for the American training.

  My parents just couldn’t believe it. I mean, Mum just said, ‘Well, no, it’s not going to happen because it can’t. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?’ But it had to be so. So, of course, everybody had to get their thinking caps on and think, ‘Well, where are we going to go?’ If you couldn’t get anything yourself the authorities would help but they did want you to try and get yourself fixed up, if possible, because, as you can imagine, there were hundreds trying to move. Thousands, I suppose, really. Quite an area it was.

  Ordinary Seaman Leslie Tabb

  Royal Navy seaman from Slapton, Devon

  There wasn’t a lot of damage done to the village, structural damage. I think the church got knocked about a bit. There might’ve been one or two corners of houses knocked off by tanks. There was a lot of looting we
nt on. You might wonder what there was left to loot but a lot of people left things behind. When they went away, they thought, ‘Oh, we’ll be back again in a while.’ So, if there was anything that they could do without, they’d left it stored in a cupboard under the stairs and thought, ‘Oh, well, it’ll still be there when I come back.’ I think the people that done the looting were the people who’d come to rebuild and paint the places, not the Americans. I can’t see what the Americans would’ve wanted with what people left, old ornaments and whatever, you know. Not when they were going to war.

  Slapton parish church, Devon. When the village and surrounding area were evacuated to permit training exercises in preparation for D-Day, churches and historic monuments were padlocked, ringed with barbed wire and designated out of bounds. To further identify this church as ‘untouchable’, a white strip, visible here, was painted on the roof.

  Sergeant Edwin Sinclair

  Instructor, 12th Field Training Regiment, Royal Artillery

  We were doing exercises which obviously pointed to an invasion. The Second Front was on everybody’s tongue; the politicians were talking about it. We were getting pep talks from generals and various other people; we were meeting in cinemas all over the country periodically for pep talks. One general said, ‘The war’s a fucker; everybody thinks it’s a fucker. Monty’s a fucker but Monty’s the fucker who can finish the fucker.’ That was told to us on the stage of one of the cinemas where we attended one of these pep talks; some general came out with it. I thought myself it was a fairly apt saying for the time.

  I think the general attitude of the British Army was that with American support – we could not have done it on our own – we could definitely invade Europe and we could actually beat the Germans. Up to then we’d been having rather a hard time. We were practically scrambling our way up Italy and places like that and the Germans were holding us in various places. Stalin was pushing forward with the Russian Army. But at that time I think the anticipation of the Second Front had been built up. I think everybody was more or less ready to go. I’m not going to say that if somebody had come up to me and said, ‘Would you volunteer to go and open the Second Front?’ that I’d have jumped in. Personally I was willing to go along with the rest if we were ready. And the people who were in charge of us then were a different brand of people from the people who were in charge of us at the beginning of the war – we’d pulled Monty back into England for the Second Front. Most of the troops had great confidence in their leaders at that time. I know I had that feeling that if we’ve got to do it, let’s go and do it.