Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  THE CAMPS

  Pilot Officer Ron Minchin

  Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF

  We knew that our end result was D-Day; we knew that we were training for D-Day. We were actually getting bigger and bigger exercises with more and more planes, more and more squadrons, more and more troops, more and more gliders. And eventually we got up to a point where 38 Group did a whole exercise full of paratroopers, with gliders, simulating what we’d be doing eventually on D-Day. And as D-Day approached, of course, the concentration told us it wasn’t far away. It was pretty easy to see, when we were flying round England, the build-up on the south coast. And there were fighters galore in the air all the time just in case there were any enemy aircraft, to try and keep them away from everything and not see.

  Private Frederick Perkins

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

  The south coast was just unimaginable, really. There were so many lorries, so many men assembled in an area, say, from Dover right the way to Devon, to Slapton Sands, to Brixham. It was just one vast marshalling area of men and materials all the way along.

  The marshalling areas were very adjacent to the ports: Portsmouth, Southampton. I myself was in a transit camp to the east of Waterlooville. We were in a pine forest and the tents were pitched among the pine forest. There were thousands of these camps around, it seemed, all handling different divisions.

  When we came into the marshalling areas, round about April, we started to get good contact with the Canadians. We made friends with the Canadians and they knew us as their beach group. They made a very, very good impression. We knew they were coming from famous regiments, like the Regina Rifles, the Chaudière Regiment, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada. The Canadians had taken a heavy toll of casualties at Dieppe and we knew they were going to give a good account of themselves in Normandy.

  Sergeant Joe Stevens

  33rd Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  We went out on an exercise there and, on returning, Major Wise said, ‘Stevens, order them back to the camp.’ I put it out on the radio – ‘Tell them to get back to camp’ – and he said to me, ‘Stevens, when we go back into the camp, we’re not coming out again, so we’ll go and have a beer.’ We went into a local pub and as we went in he said, ‘Stevens, do you play “Shove Halfpenny”?’ Not ‘Shove Ha’penny!’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and he said, ‘Well, you’d better, because we’re taking on the locals.’ We had a few hours in there and enjoyed ourselves and then went back to camp.

  Armoured vehicles await collection prior to the opening of the Second Front. The figure in the foreground sitting on the wheel-arch with her back to the camera is an ATS mechanic.

  Sergeant Edward Wallace

  86th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  All of a sudden barbed wire appeared all the way around the camp. Red caps, blue caps with dogs, patrolling outside. Nobody was allowed to leave, nobody could come in.

  Leading Telegraphist Alan Winstanley

  Combined Operations Bombardment Unit

  If I remember rightly there were a number of civilians in the camp who just got caught in it because they were delivering or doing something and that was their hard luck, they were sealed in like the rest of us. Same with the NAAFI personnel, because most of the NAAFI personnel were locals. They were not allowed to go back home: once the camp was sealed, that was it for them as well. Telephone calls were absolutely out of the question. Letters could be written but naturally they went into the military post-box.

  Sergeant Kenneth Lakeman

  Royal Corps of Signals

  One of our fellows applied for compassionate leave. His mother was seriously ill, in fact she died eventually, but they wouldn’t let him out.

  Trooper Eric Smith

  5th Royal Tank Regiment

  You had the odd character who always managed to get out. One or two of our, say, militant characters went into Ipswich overnight and stole bicycles and came back to camp with the bike. The next morning on parade the sergeant major said, ‘There was a bit of trouble in Ipswich last night. Some of you characters disobeyed orders and went into Ipswich and the police are coming today to identify you. So those who took part, don’t come on parade.’ They were terrible, really. Feared nothing. I suppose they’d been through so much, they thought, ‘Well, if they put us inside, we’ll still be alive. Stick us in prison, doesn’t matter.’

  Private Jack Forster

  6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

  Instead of having British guards, we had Americans patrolling outside the wire. Well, that upset us. If they’d been British guards I think we might have not grumbled, you know, but when there’s Americans walking by! God knows, we didn’t like that.

  Private Frederick Perkins

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

  We knew we were on top security and it was imminent. What made it more imminent was that they decided to get rid of the forage caps we wore and gave us a beret, a khaki beret. They said, ‘This stays on your head better when you’re running.’ They were absolutely right but the berets looked hideous as a military headdress. Then, leading up to D-Day itself, we had what they called the Normandy haircut. That was all off the head, hair taken right off to within a quarter of an inch all over, something like a crew cut. This was to prevent the spread of lice when you couldn’t wash. So we went to the barbers and we looked a sight. Everyone was shorn off, like shearing sheep.

  Sapper Thomas Finigan

  85th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  We had a lot of entertainment. We had rather large marquees with twenty-four hours a day film shows. They were on all the time and the films that we saw were before they were released to the general public, they came straight over from America. I think I saw Going My Way with Bing Crosby about twelve times. They had several tents with different films going on but that was one film I always liked.

  Trooper Ronald Mole

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

  We had a visit from Charlie Chester and his Stars in Battledress and that I shall never forget. By then, as you can imagine, we were down to our last ninepence for a cup of tea and a cake in the NAAFI. But he was there and he really gave us a good night. For his finale he came on dressed up as Monty himself.

  A sergeant of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, composes a letter from his unit’s tented camp at Denmead, Hampshire.

  Private Frank Rosier

  2nd Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment

  We started playing rugby to keep ourselves amused because we weren’t doing much; we knocked up inter-company rugby challenges and football challenges. Inside our camp were some black Americans cooking our food and the black Yanks were watching us and said, ‘We’ll beat you at your game and you try and beat us at basketball,’ which they played. So we played them at rugby and actually beat them but they got their own back and beat us at basketball. Then came the order that we were not to play with the black Yanks: the white Yanks had objected. As a cosmopolitan cockney used to playing with black children, Indian children, Chinese or whatever as a kid, it was part of my life and I couldn’t believe my ears. I was eighteen and I thought, ‘That’s stupid!’ I still can’t believe it today.

  Sergeant Major Russell King

  2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment

  We had to stop blokes playing football eventually because there were that many blokes getting crocked playing football they were going to be short of men. I remember quite a few lads getting ankles turned. Not serious injuries but enough to stop them marching.

  Sergeant Edward Wallace

  86th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery

  I can recall on one occasion a sergeant from the London Scottish giving a talk on how to make harmless a German Teller mine and the blasted thing blew up on him, left him in bits, and two or th
ree of his companions who were with him. Those bits were paraded about the camp so that everybody could see what a Teller mine did to you. A lot of them went back into their tents and were violently sick. It didn’t affect me because I’d seen so much of it before.

  Major John Mogg

  9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

  My commanding officer was Humphrey Woods. He was a highly experienced desert commander having got a DSO and two MCs and been blown up on mines and things. He was slightly deaf in one ear; he was young; he was beloved by his battalion. And he said to me, ‘There are three people that are allowed out of camp: you and I and the quartermaster. We will leave the quartermaster behind and you and I shall have dinner.’ I said, ‘That suits me very well,’ and we went to the Haunch of Venison in Salisbury and we had a marvellous dinner, hardly daring to open our mouths because of security. We certainly didn’t talk about anything like planning. But the thing I remember most vividly was when we got to the end of our meal, we were having a glass of port and Humphrey said to me, ‘I haven’t said this to anybody else but I know that I am going to be killed when we get over to the other side.’ I said, ‘Come on, you can’t know that. That’s ridiculous.’ I ordered two brandies quickly. He said, ‘No, I feel it in my bones.’ And here was a chap who’d been through it all, he’d been blown up on mines and everything else, but he somehow felt he was going to be killed. The amazing thing was how unbelievably enthusiastic he was that the battalion should be successful. He rushed around, never stopped. I mean, twenty-four out of twenty-four hours he was working, practically. That was the epitome of courage: to know you’re going to be killed and to go on.

  Major Peter Martin

  2nd Battalion, Cheshire Regiment

  I can remember again that unreal feeling that one had before leaving on the invasion of Sicily. Everything was totally normal and the countryside was so gorgeous and in a few days’ time one would be going into an absolute charnel house, if my guesses were right.

  Sergeant Desmond O’Neill

  Cameraman, Army Film and Photographic Unit

  I remember going to one unit, I think it was the South Lancashire Regiment, and taking some film of their final preparations for D-Day. I hadn’t come across them before. They were laagered down near Roland’s Castle in Hampshire, in woods there, and I went into the camp – the whole area was actually one huge camp. Very strict security all the way round.

  There was certainly a very excitable, tense atmosphere amongst those chaps. They’d been training presumably for a couple of years and they knew full well that they were going to be the spearhead troops and they knew therefore that there was a good chance of them getting shot. The atmosphere there was totally different to any other unit I’d ever been to. Discipline was strict but absolutely on a hairline. A very peculiar atmosphere. I know that the casualty figures had been given to them, the presumed casualty figures.

  We photographed the chaps being instructed as to what was going to happen on the morning of D-Day, where they were going in and the rest. It was all mocked up. I didn’t do very much filming apart from taking pictures of these chaps in the camp. They liked it. First of all they’d never seen a cameraman before. Secondly, it was a great divertissement. You know, ‘The Mrs is going to see me back in Wigan,’ all this kind of thing. I think it was a welcome diversion.

  Major Patrick Barrass

  2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment

  I remember being taken into a big marquee tent where there was a huge scale model of the coast on which we were going to land with every detail you could think of. The enemy positions were there with their guns and machine guns, every little hedgerow, every little tree, all taken off air photographs which were also there, pinned up on great big boards behind. The names of the places on the scale model were all coded, so that Bayeaux, for instance, was called Chicago or something. You didn’t get the real names but you got the real area.

  Sapper Thomas Finigan

  85th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  They showed you the actual beach that you was going to land on. The beach was split into three, there was red, green and white, but of course all the names were fictitious. We didn’t know if it was going to be northern France, Holland, Belgium or Norway but you knew exactly what beach you were going to land on and you could see all the obstacles that were there. We used to go in there on our own and study these maps so if the ship landed a hundred yards up or down you could know which way to go. You could say, ‘That’s where I’ve got to be, that’s where my job starts.’

  Private Frederick Perkins

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

  One or two of the men knew where it was because they’d been there on holiday before but they didn’t really let on. They could have taken bets on it but they didn’t, they rather left it as it was, because they’d have been put in prison if they’d let the cat out of the bag.

  Private Francis Bourlet

  2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  I think we’d been there about five days and they started talking about this place as being in France. Then they mentioned it was going to be in Normandy, which didn’t mean a great deal to me anyway except for William the Conqueror.

  Private William Gray

  2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  It didn’t mean a lot to anyone. Nobody had ever been to France. In fact very few had been abroad at that time.

  Lieutenant Hubert Pond

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  They unrolled, rather dramatically, a large-scale map of the Normandy coast and there, more or less in the middle, was a red dot indicating the battery we were to attack, which was called the Merville Battery. The things that impressed us immensely here were the number of air photographs we were given to help us to decide what to do there. These were taken mainly from low-flying aircraft, at what must have been considerable risk to the pilots, and you really could see the battery and the surrounding countryside with tremendous clarity. There was one, I remember, of a Frenchman waving up at the pilot as he cycled along a road near the battery.

  Lieutenant Alan Jefferson

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  We were shown a diagram of what our objective was going to be and it looked so formidable that when we saw it everybody laughed. It was four concrete emplacements surrounded by thick wire, ten-foot high, six-foot thick barbed wire, with a minefield and an anti-tank ditch and cattle wire on the outside. A huge, fortified position about a mile from the coast. The model was so good, so clear, that it was possible to trace one’s own movement on it. And each day, when a new photograph arrived, the intelligence people used to get a pin and dig out another crater on the model. It was that up to date.

  Pathfinders of 22nd Independent Parachute Company, 6th Airborne Division, are briefed at Harwell airfield, Oxfordshire. Their designated role on D-Day was to land in Normandy shortly after midnight and mark dropping and landing zones for the main force of British parachute and glider-borne troops.

  Staff Sergeant Peter Boyle

  Glider Pilot Regiment

  The RAF had made a film, with the model, of the glider going in, round the various turns, to the target. We saw this film as many times as we liked. We could go and watch it and then say, ‘Can we have another look? I want to see so-and-so.’

  Private Victor Newcomb

  Medical Orderly, 224 Parachute Field Ambulance

  The confidence with which that information was given to us impressed me. They seemed to have a wealth of information which was deadly accurate or at least was offered to us as a total and accurate assessment of the situation and which we were willing, at that stage, to accept as being absolutely accurate. None of us had any experience of things going wrong.

  Private Dennis Bowen

  5th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment

  One of the things that pleased me on this briefing w
as that here I was amongst these old soldiers and the major, the company commander, who was giving this briefing. We were told that the Germans who will be opposing us will be the 21st Panzers or some such unit and one of the old soldiers who were at the side of me said, ‘Oh, well, don’t worry about that. We’ve already done those ones.’ They’d already met them in North Africa. So I knew I was among a group of men that knew the enemy and knew their business.

  Private Ron Dixon

  12th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  There were models, which were quite good, but I can honestly say I didn’t take much notice of them. I thought, ‘We’ll be all together, we’ll drop in the same place, there’ll always be somebody who knows the way.’

  Major Napier Crookenden

  Brigade Major, 6th Airlanding Brigade

  My brigadier, James Hill, spoke to each battalion and he said, ‘You’ve had the most excellent briefing. You know exactly what’s happening. You know your tasks down to the last detail. But gentlemen don’t despair if, when you get there, you find absolute chaos reigns.’ And in view of what happened later it was an extraordinarily prophetic remark.

  Private Gordon Newton

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  As we left the briefing there was a huge bang and a series of explosions and the largest smoke ring I’d ever seen ascended the tented encampment of the Royal Ulster Rifles. Several of them had been de-priming grenades and some of them were anti-tank grenades and had gone off and the chain reaction had killed two of them. It was bedlam. This, to have occurred five days before our intended operation, did very little for morale. We ran over there and the regimental sergeant major said, ‘Settle down, you lads. Settle down, settle down. One of those things. You’ve got a job to do. Try and forget it.’

  Sapper William Dunn

  AVRE driver, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers