Forgotten Voices of D-Day Read online

  Petty Officer Reginald Samuel Francis Coaker

  HMS Urania (Royal Navy destroyer)

  I can remember the motorboat going up and passing us and the chappy waving his arms and shouting through a megaphone that it had been postponed. I can remember that as plainly as anything.

  Wren Messenger Margaret Seeley

  Women’s Royal Naval Service, HMS Squid (Royal Navy shore station, Southampton)

  The ships were full of these men. They’d all embarked and there they were sitting in Southampton Water and the Solent for twenty-four hours and one way of keeping them occupied was to send two Wrens down in this ML [motor launch] to wave at them for forty minutes. Of course we had the most wonderful time on this trip and the highlight was having tea on the Admiral’s flagship, HMS Bulolo, where we actually had white bread. One never had white bread during the war except on board ship.

  Lieutenant David Wood

  2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  We were all briefed and kitted up and ready to go and then the whole operation was postponed. This was a severe shock to our morale, temporarily. And I, who don’t normally drink much, and another couple of officers bought two bottles of whisky which we demolished that night in our small tent.

  Brigadier James Hill

  Commanding Officer, 3rd Parachute Brigade

  It was a godsend for commanders. It gave you time to relax and rest when you had nothing to do.

  Private Sidney Capon

  9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

  Next morning it was a beautiful day and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, good God. It would have all been over by now.’

  Lieutenant Commander Lawrence Hogben

  New Zealand Officer, Royal Navy meteorological team

  So we had to go through it all again and our nerves, already jangling, had to suffer another twenty-four hours of the same thing. On the fourth, forecasting for the sixth, we looked at all the observations again carefully and fearfully. We made our forecast maps and then we all issued our individual forecasts. On this occasion there was another obstacle to a perfect agreement. The Americans, clinging to their anti-cyclone, said, ‘Everything will be fine and dandy.’ While we agreed that marginally it was possible, the Met Office were a bit doubtful. Ike asked Montgomery what he thought and he said, ‘Go.’ He asked Admiral Ramsay what he thought and he said, ‘We can accept these conditions.’ He asked Mallory, the air force man, who was a bit doubtful but accepted. And Ike said, ‘Well, let’s go.’

  Colonel Thomas Collins

  Director of Movements, War Office

  I was the Director of Movements, Continental Operations. What we had to do was deal with the marshalling and embarkation, getting the troops into craft loads, getting them briefed and so on. It was such an enormous undertaking: millions of men and thousands and thousands of vehicles. And I can well remember going to the conference at Eisenhower’s and Monty’s headquarters and they finally decided, ‘No, if the men are going to be sick, it’s just too bad. We can’t turn everybody back off the ships.’ And I can remember coming away thinking, ‘Thank Heavens we’ve not got to do that.’ It could have been awful. You can imagine the whole army going into reverse in England. It would have been almost impossible.

  Sergeant Major Russell King

  2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment

  We weren’t back in the training camp for more than a few hours and then we went back on the ship again, which was a bit off-putting. We were on and off, on and off, and people got a bit disconcerted. They thought it was just a bloody big flap, like. Typical army.

  Captain Guy Radmore

  Brigade Signals Officer, 5th Parachute Brigade

  The following night, of course, we went. If it had been postponed a second time I think we should have been absolutely shattered.

  THE CROSSING

  Major David Warren

  1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment

  I think we up-anchored at about five o’clock in the afternoon in the Solent and we sailed out past The Needles. Not a bad evening, not too rough, good visibility, and you could see other ships moving in the same direction as us, see the minesweepers that led the convoy ahead. And I remember standing on deck and admiring the scenery. It seemed unrealistic that we were going to go to war in the morning.

  Sergeant James Bellows

  1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment

  We pulled off straight away and got out in the midstream and this sailor said, ‘We’re in a bloody hurry today, aren’t we? Where are we going this time? Hayling Island?’ Of course we were amazed that he didn’t know. We said ‘No, France.’ And he said – and he used that favourite word of ours – ‘Now don’t fuck about, mate. Where are we going?’ And we said, ‘France!’ We’d already been paid in French francs and one of the lads showed him.

  Sergeant Joe Stringer

  48 (Royal Marine) Commando

  When we moved off on the evening of 5 June we passed through the rest of the craft all lined up in Southampton harbour and on the Solent and we were told by our CO, ‘Get on deck with your green berets on. Let them see you. Give them encouragement.’ We sailed through to cheers and what have you.

  Piper Bill Millin

  HQ 1st Special Service Brigade

  Lovat had me up at the front of the landing craft playing the pipes, piping the flotilla down. And as we drew level with the Isle of Wight and all these ships, a terrific roar went up, because they’d put me over the loudhailer system, and all kinds of people were throwing their hats in the air.

  Engine Room Artificer Ronald Jesse

  HMS Belfast (Royal Navy cruiser)

  We were able to line the decks and wave and cheer to all the soldiers. The soldiers in their landing craft were all waving back. We were overhauling dozens of them as we went along the south coast; they were all coming out of their little harbours and taking up their allotted stations.

  Telegraphist Harry Siggins

  HMS Ajax (Royal Navy cruiser)

  Everywhere you looked there were ships: battleships, merchant ships, landing craft of all descriptions, hundreds and hundreds of ships, seagoing tugs, trawlers. If there ever were a word, it was ‘armada’. I don’t know what the Spanish Armada was like; it must’ve been a fearful sight.

  Private Reginald Barnes

  4 Commando

  I would like to mention that it was most exhilarating, sailing through the greatest armada the world has ever seen. And I never loved England so truly as at that moment.

  Lieutenant Gerald Edward Ashcroft

  LCT commander

  By the time we cleared the Isle of Wight, the sea really began to build up. We had a very heavy pounding, we were shipping water over the tanks, had our pumps running full pelt all the time. And as the seas came up, so the army’s stomachs came up also. We felt really sorry for the troops on board. Our only worry was that we would be putting them ashore when they’d reached a state where a few minutes before they’d been afraid to die and by the time they got on the beach they’d be glad to die.

  The view from a Royal Navy aircraft of invasion vessels assembling off the Isle of Wight, 5 June.

  Private Leslie Perry

  1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment

  As you clear the breakwater there’s conflicting currents and as they came together that’s when the landing craft started to toss and turn. Being flat-bottomed they were just bobbing about like corks. That is when I started being sick. The officer was the first one to the rail and I followed him and I was sick all the way over. I was sitting on top of the stairs munching biscuits and sipping water because when you’re retching and haven’t got anything to bring up it tears you to pieces.

  Lieutenant Eric Ashcroft

  1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment

  The chaps that were sick, their vomit bags were pushed over the side. And one chap was signalling frantically, you know: ‘Don’t throw the bag over!’ Apparently his teeth wer
e in the bag. And that seemed to break the tension of things: this chap wasn’t worried about landing on the beaches; it was more that his teeth were in the bag.

  Sergeant Robert Palmer

  Sexton (self-propelled gun) commander, 147th Field Regiment

  (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery

  In my honest opinion, it was rougher then than it had been the night before. And, oh, so many people were ill on the boat. My friends were all sick. One of my friends I remember in particular said, ‘I don’t care what we face, Bob, just as long as we can get off this bloody boat.’ He kept being sick and sick and sick. It was horrible. I don’t get seasick ever, so I was one of the lucky ones. Almost everyone on board our craft was seasick, including most of the sailors.

  Sapper Thomas Finigan

  85th Field Company, Royal Engineers

  We had a lot of Canadians on board ship who were cleaning their arms and also sharpening their knives. You’ve got to realise that a lot of Canadians were brothers of chaps who had been killed at Dieppe and they were all looking forward to this landing. They really wanted to avenge what had happened at Dieppe.

  Private Frederick Perkins

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

  We were told on the way over that the landing was in the morning, that this was the real thing. We knew that anyway because we’d gone so far: we were more than halfway across the Channel when we were told. So we were on our way and we thought, ‘Good, let’s get the job done. Let’s get on terra firma.’ We were so ill. ‘Let’s get onshore.’

  Bound for Normandy, vehicles and men aboard an LST in the Channel.

  A landing craft en route for Normandy carrying Sherman tanks and other vehicles of 13th/18th Royal Hussars.

  Corporal Frank Cosgrove

  45 (Royal Marine) Commando

  Nerves take a part then. We was pretty quiet for a bit. Different people act differently. Four of us played cards. Hours and hours we played cards and you’re pretty cramped in an LCT, there’s not much room to move around. I think we nearly wore the cards out.

  Sergeant Kenneth Lakeman

  Royal Corps of Signals

  Andrews was a great big fellow: six feet tall, fifteen, sixteen stone, but he had this jumpiness about him and he was wandering around this limited space of this LST and there were huge packing cases and boxes there with serial numbers on them, like X/34321. And he prised one of these open and he changed colour. They were white crosses. ‘God,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind going to my death but to take my own cross…’ He was visibly upset. Being in charge I rollicked him for this because it was upsetting for the rest of the crew. And my driver-mechanic, a wonderful guy called Fred Mincher, he would take the mickey sometimes, and he said, ‘Well, of course, Andy, it’s probably got your name and number on it.’ And that nearly started a fight, so I had to calm that down. That’s the sort of edginess around at that time and you can understand it.

  Sergeant Desmond O’Neill

  Cameraman, Army Film and Photographic Unit

  I was half-terrified and half-enthusiastic. You know, ‘This is what we’ve been trained for,’ and I thought it was going to be exciting. I was also cagey enough to know that there was a good chance of having my head knocked off.

  Trooper Ronald Mole

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

  I was as innocent as a newborn babe. Never had any experiences before. I was perfectly innocent and quite honestly it didn’t register.

  Major Allan Younger

  Commanding Officer, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers

  I think we’d done so many training exercises by then that it was difficult almost to realise that this was the real thing. It was just a case of, ‘Oh, well, we’ve done all this before. Come on, let’s get it done. We’ve got better tanks this time, let’s get it done.’ I think on future occasions when I had to do assaults across the Rhine I got far more worked up than on this one.

  Major David Warren

  1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment

  I think we were perhaps slightly influenced by the fact that we had done two in the Mediterranean. I think we felt very confident that having done it twice we could do it a third time. But I think we were all rather prepared for things not to be as simple as we hoped them to be because we had come through it twice reasonably well and the third time one always feels something might go wrong. But what we all felt, and this was the most astonishing thing about the Normandy landings, was that everyone was one hundred per cent confident that whatever happened to me or to anyone else or perhaps to the Hampshires it would be successful. There was no question of thinking it might not be. And I think everyone was quite glad to get on with it because it was like the green light for the end of the war, or so it seemed at the time.

  Corporal George Richardson

  6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

  The men who’d gone through the Middle East, we were very experienced in war by then and we thought, ‘Well, we’ve already done one invasion, on Sicily, and it was fairly easy. This one’s not going to be easy. The Atlantic Wall’s supposed to be impregnable.’ We fully expected the first few waves of us to be mown down. We never expected to make it inland. I never did. I didn’t expect to come through it.

  Major Richard Gosling

  147th Field Regiment (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery

  The parson gave us communion, he gave us wafers, but that wasn’t a great success. We all went up, those of us who were confirmed, to take communion but there was a hell of a gale and suddenly the wafers all blew overboard into the sea. The poor parson, he said, ‘Bloody hell, lucky fishes,’ and had to go down into the galley and get some loaves of bread, chop them up into bits and start all over again.

  Captain Arthur Rouse

  1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment

  Colonel Burbury spoke to all the men and told them very briefly what was expected of them. Then he turned to me and said, ‘You say something now,’ and he whispered, ‘Give them a bit of uplift.’ I thought, ‘My God, Henry V had more warning than this.’ But Shakespeare came to the rescue, of course. I said, ‘Tomorrow afternoon the BBC will tell your parents and your wives and so on that you have landed and they all know you’re an assault battalion, they all know you’ll have gone in first.’ I didn’t give them the full business of ‘Gentlemen in England now abed’.

  Lance Corporal Alan Carter

  6th Battalion, Green Howards

  Kirkpatrick said to the sergeants, ‘Synchronise your watches.’ And my sergeant said to him, ‘That watch’ll be mine tomorrow night.’ You wouldn’t have dared said that to another officer. Kirkpatrick just laughed.

  Able Seaman Kenneth Oakley

  Beachmaster’s bodyguard

  The senior army officer had all the group gathered on the upper deck and said, ‘You will be taking part in this massive invasion. Many of you will be in the first assault. Many of you will be killed. But don’t worry, the second assault wave will pass over you and, if that fails, a third will pass over you also, until we have gained a foothold on that beach.’ And with those thoughts ringing in my head, I went to sleep.

  Trooper Joseph Ellis

  Churchill Crocodile tank driver, 141st Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps

  We were supposed to sleep in hammocks. I’d never slept in a hammock in my life and I tried to get in and fell out t’other side and tried to get in and fell out t’other side so I thought, ‘Well, bugger it, I’ll get in the tank,’ and I fell asleep in the tank. Dropped the seat right back. It wasn’t made for people to sleep in them but if there was nobody else in, you could do.

  Gathered on board their landing craft, men of 4 Commando receive final instructions from their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Dawson.

  Lieutenant Ian Wilson

  73rd Field Company, Royal Engineers

  Our landing craft and several others were towing a th
ing called a Hedgerow. This was a small assault infantry landing craft which was packed with spigot mortars and the idea, so we were told, was that it ran up on the beach and fired its spigot mortars to add to the general bombardment that was going on at the enemy. We were also told that if it fired its spigot mortars without being beached it blew the bottom of the craft out. But I don’t know, this is all hearsay, because in fact the last we saw of our particular Hedgerow was upside down in the middle of the Channel round about three in the morning before the towrope parted. What happened to the crew, I don’t know.

  Sapper William Dunn

  AVRE driver, 26th Assault Squadron, Royal Engineers

  The main order we got as we were sailing, and this came over the loudspeaker, was, ‘You don’t stop for anything. If any ship falls foul you don’t stop to pick them up. If anybody falls overboard you don’t stop to pick them up.’ And some of these little landing craft did overturn as we were going and our skipper was pretty good, he slowed down to try and pick some of the lads up. This MTB came along and they weren’t very happy with us and told us we had to get back into line and leave them, other MTBs would come along and pick these lads up, to make sure the timing would be exact.

  Stoker Albert Rogers

  LBV crew

  It was pitch black and I’d just got relieved to have a jimmy riddle over the side and a smoke and I noticed a seaman get washed over the side. I seen him go and I went in after him, grabbing hold of a lump of what we called ‘hanging line’ for safety,’ cause I had a duffel coat on, sea boots, trousers, overalls; and I had a steel helmet on but I flung that off because they’re more trouble than they’re worth in water.

  I grabbed hold of him and hung on to him; they shouted out ‘Stop engines!’ He was so terrified. Don’t forget he had a duffel coat on and that. I’m trying to push him up. A couple of the crew came up and started to get hold of him. They got him on board and that’s when the second-class stoker came up to help and as he was pulling him up his feet went from underneath him and he went in so I had to grab hold of him. When we eventually got underway we was on our own, we’d fallen behind.