Forgotten Voices of D-Day
Page 25
Leading Seaman Wally Blanchard
Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Unit
The Germans had done all sorts of things. They’d left a lot of the pre-war beach kiosks and things like that on the promenades, left them all in position. Only of course they looked like kiosks but they were really pillboxes either painted to look like they were before or heavily reinforced. And they did indeed open fire as soon as the landing craft appeared and I engaged what looked like a beach kiosk where I’d seen what I took to be an Oerlikon or heavy machine-gun muzzle emerging from the slot. I had it covered and I fired straight into it. I managed to subdue whatever was going on there, by which time the infantry landing craft were in.
Private Leslie Gibson
6th Battalion, Border Regiment (Beach Group)
There was everything flying about, there were these cross-girders with mines on the top and the first chap I saw was a rubber-suited frogman, minus a leg, lying on the beach. Of course there was lots of other debris. We were very lucky because we did have a shell ricochet under the boat.
Sergeant James Bellows
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
Suddenly we grounded. I think it was a sub-lieutenant, he dropped the ramp, and we were a hell of a way off the shore and the waves are coming by the side and I thought to myself, ‘They’re pretty bloody high for shallow water.’ It was nice, smooth, what you get in fairly deep water. So I said, ‘We’re not in shallow water, you know. We’re in deep water here.’ But this sub-lieutenant, he said, ‘We’ve grounded.’ Course, all sorts is going on all around but we were in our own little world here and I’m having an argument with him about the depth of the water. So he calls for a stick. One of the matelots comes down, he puts it in the water and he says, ‘Four foot six.’ I said, ‘You must be bloody joking. You’re in deep water, we’re on an obstacle.’ He wouldn’t have it. ‘No we’re not,’ he said. ‘I’m in charge of this ship. I’m the captain.’ Little sod. I said to all my chaps, ‘Now, look, this is going to be a bloody wet landing.’
Major Richard Gosling
Forward Observation Officer, 147th Field Regiment (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery
I was a very simple boy, you know. I hadn’t been out of England in my life before then and there I was wading ashore in France to fight the Germans. Extraordinary. We weren’t trained for that at Eton or Cambridge. But anyway we were full of enthusiasm and we started to wade ashore and the water got gradually shallower and there was a lot of forward shelling, our Essex Yeomanry guns fired over our heads, a lifting barrage.
As we got nearer and nearer we could see one or two flashes from German guns on the other side and then we heard something and because I’d been born in the country I thought it was a swarm of bees. It wasn’t. It was German machine guns firing on fixed lines overhead. We got through the deep water over our balls and then we could see the German machine guns furrowing the sand – there was wet sand in front.
We were supporting the Hampshires, the assault infantry, so I was with the colonel, Nelson-Smith, and he said, ‘Lie down.’ Well, he’d been a soldier all his life, I’d never been a soldier before, but I didn’t know what the idea was, it was bloody wet to lie down, so we weren’t very keen on that and we started to run across the wet sand. We could see the sand dunes just in front of us, fifty yards in front of us, and one or two people were shot and suddenly there was a great ‘Bang!’ just behind me. And exactly like playing football at Eton, when a boy had kicked your legs away from you, suddenly I found my legs kicked away from me and I was lying on the wet sand. Poor old Nelson-Smith, the colonel, was next to me. His arm was shot through the elbow. I could just hobble. One leg was all right. I limped through and we got up into the sand dunes and were able to throw ourselves flat on the ground.
We were just under the sand dunes and we could hear these Germans firing their machine guns through the rushes just over our heads. I wasn’t really frightened because so much was happening you couldn’t be frightened. My leg was numb. It was full of small pieces of splinter but it wasn’t really hurting. I had a first field dressing, Sergeant Brace took it and wound it round and cut my battledress. I said, ‘For Heaven’s sake, I’ve got to pay the quartermaster if that gets damaged.’
So we lay there for a little bit. Then a chap next to me, a Hampshire corporal, he put his head up to look over the sand dunes to see what was happening and as soon as he did that he was shot straight through the chest. A little bit later I thought I should look over – I was the officer. I had a wonderful old revolver which had belonged to my uncle Seymour in the Boer War and it had some bullets in it and it worked, too, so I crawled up the sand dunes with my gammy leg and peered over the edge and there was a bloody German, just the other side. I didn’t like the look of him, he didn’t like the look of me, and I fired my revolver hopefully in his direction and then I slid back again. When I looked up again he’d gone.
Private James Donaldson
2nd Battalion, Devonshire Regiment
One thing I remember – very outstanding – was 47 (Royal Marine) Commando, who were part of our brigade for this individual landing, coming past us, soaked to the skin. A lot of their landing craft had turned over but I’ve never seen men so resolute as these commandos.
Brigadier Sir Alexander Stanier
Commanding Officer, 231st Infantry Brigade
47 (Royal Marine) Commando had a terribly rough landing. The seas got rougher as the tide came in and they lost seventy men before they actually reached the beach. Then, when they got on to the beach, they found none of their wirelesses would work. How their commanding officer collected them, I don’t know. He must have had a megaphone and shouted; sent people hither and thither; perhaps even put a flag up, I don’t know. I saw the commanding officer for five minutes while they were assembling just behind the sand dunes and him worrying about where his men had gone to and getting his wirelesses and things and trying to get a move on. They were very independent, if I may say so. They knew what to do and they were quite happy to get on with it.
A knocked-out flail tank of the Westminster Dragoons on Gold Beach after D-Day. An abandoned DD tank can be seen in the background.
Lieutenant Edward Wright
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
When we got to the dunes on the far side of the beach we discovered a minefield which we knew was there but we hoped it would have been breached by our armoured flail vehicles. But when we arrived it hadn’t been breached at all so I had to decide whether we were going to try to make our way through the minefield or go up or down the beach. We’d always been trained: ‘Get off the beach.’ And by that time there was a lot of machine-gun fire coming down. It was very unhealthy. I lost two of my platoon, killed.
But we were very lucky. When I’d just made my mind up that we had to go through that minefield, a prospect I didn’t like one little bit, a flail tank appeared on our left and began to flail through the minefield and got through to the far side. This was actually in the area of the 1st Dorsets to our left but I wasn’t going to fuss about that and we went through that breach and we got through. It was clear afterwards, when I had time to look at my map, that we’d landed about two or three hundred metres to the east of where it had been intended that we should. In the event that proved very fortunate because the further west you went the more unhealthy it was. The main trouble was coming from an enemy strongpoint at Le Hamel and those who landed closest to Le Hamel got the worst of it.
Major David Warren
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
I realised that we should have to ‘gap’ our way ourselves, cut our way through the wire, and we started to do that. Meanwhile the casualties were piling up because the fire was very strong and it was raking along the top of the beach where people were trying to get. This particular beach was enfiladed: that is, there was a German position at the end of it and they could rake the whole beach with fire. Also there was a gun, which appeared to
be some sort of antitank gun, and that of course was in concrete and steel. This position, at Le Hamel, where we landed, was going to cause us a great deal of trouble. It had excellent fields of fire and the Germans in fact did not show much signs of giving up.
Captain Arthur Warburton
Sherman tank commander, 147th Field Regiment (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery
I got my tank on to the beach road behind the sand dunes and when I looked back to the sea I found the sand dunes were full of Germans still running about. They’d camouflaged themselves and they must have been well under cover when all this bombardment was coming down and there was the pillbox at the end still firing, still shooting at things coming in. Then it changed its ideas and saw my tank coming along this beach road and I thought to myself, ‘I’m bloody sure that thing’s pointing at me.’ I could see this thing, about 150 yards away, so I shouted at my driver to pull out the fire extinguisher, by instinct, and at that very moment the thing hit me and cut my engine into about fifty pieces. But we never caught fire. I saw many, many Shermans hit and I never remember seeing a Sherman hit without going straight up in flames. I then saw one of the regimental self-propelled guns coming ashore so I got hold of him, the No 1, and I pointed out to him where this pillbox was which was within good range for him. I said, ‘Blow that damned thing up, it’s just hit me.’
Sergeant Robert Palmer
Sexton (self-propelled gun) commander, 147th Field Regiment (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery
He yelled at me, ‘Sergeant! Quick! See what’s happening? You’ve got the best gun nearest to that! Put that out of action!’ I climbed over the side of my selfpropelled gun, got down on to the road, on this unmade road, walked along the road till I got level with this line of trees. Then I looked across and with my field glasses I could see ever so easily what it was. There was this enormous monster of a place and it looked like a big, big mushroom. And as far as I could see, the only bit that was likely to be of any help to us, if we could get there, was their gun aperture point, where their gun barrel came out. The rest of it, if you hit it, you’d only be bruising the concrete, so we’d got to try and get one in that aperture.
I said to my crew, ‘There’s no good us going up there like all the others have done, we shall simply be number seven if we go up nice and steadily. We’ve got to do something different and take them by surprise.’ So I said to the driver, ‘When I say “Go”, go. Put your foot down and go.’ Now those things weighed something like thirty-five tons but they would do about thirty-five miles an hour. And I said, ‘When I tell you to stop’ – a tap on the head, that’s the signal to stop – ‘I want you to immediately turn 45 degrees to your offside.’
So what happened was, I hit him in the back, which was the signal to go, and off he went. We flew across as fast as we could and we got away with it, we caught them by surprise, they weren’t able to pick us up. We did about eighty yards past the trees. I tapped the driver on the head; he stopped and immediately turned 45 degrees to his right. The gun layer, who was going to fire the gun, he could see quite clearly what the target was and I’d instructed him to travel with the gun already loaded and the safety catch off, which you shouldn’t do normally, to save us seconds of time. And as soon as the driver stopped and steered it to 45 degrees to his offside, the gun layer, with his wheels, was able to manoeuvre it on to the thing accurately and fire. And as soon as we had almost stopped bouncing, as a tank does when you stop suddenly, he fired immediately and the first shot actually hit.
From where I was, I could see we’d hit the target but it hadn’t gone in the narrow bit that we wanted. It was a fraction high and a fraction to the left. So I ordered him to deflect one to the right and drop twenty-five yards and fire again. So he fired again and, would you believe, the next one was kind enough to go right in the actual aperture. Now, if we’d practised it all the morning we couldn’t have got better than that, it was marvellous. That went in and of course exploded inside and put the gun out of action. About four people struggled out of the back of this emplacement with their hands over their ears. Poor devils, I felt sorry for them. Obviously they were badly knocked about.
Major David Warren
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
We had managed to gap our way off the beach and we’d got over the mines and so on and then I met a tank, an AVRE, a Royal Engineers’ assault tank, specially equipped. This particular one had a mortar-like gun on it, called a Petard, which fired a large bomb. So I spoke to the commander of the tank, I told him I wanted him to support this attack on Le Hamel, and the tank came forward and it fired the bomb into the buildings and when he did that we assaulted it and went inside and it was silenced. And that was a great relief to all concerned because there was a lot of landing craft having difficulties on our beach. They could now come ashore; the beach masters could get things organised rather better.
Troops inspect a knocked-out German 50-millimetre anti-tank gun emplacement on Gold Beach, 7 June 1944.
Lance Corporal Norman Travett
2nd Battalion, Devonshire Regiment
No way could we possibly advance until this troublesome pillbox had been destroyed. We laid there in our wet trousers and water oozing out of our boots for what seemed ages. Eventually it was silenced. That was where I saw my first dead Germans, up there in that pillbox. Gruesome. I thought those chaps had probably been called up for service like myself and had no wish to be where they were. They didn’t stand a chance, really. Not there. What could they do?
Private Leslie Gibson
6th Battalion, Border Regiment (Beach Group)
We were pinned down behind a jeep. There was a big concrete building, it had been a convalescent home for German soldiers, and they’d left a lot of snipers behind in the building. To the right of me was some high ground in the direction of Arromanches and I could see a tank blazing in the distance, bodies round it. And this soldier, I don’t know what regiment he was in, came up. He had a leather jerkin on which was smouldering. I thought, ‘He don’t know what he’s doing,’ and when I got closer to him I found out that he had no face at all, it was just a balloon, it must’ve swelled up in the tank when it got hit and the heat had blown his face up. Anyway, I got hold of him and took him back to the first-aid post, told him to keep his head down. I don’t know if he heard us but he did keep his head down a bit.
Lieutenant Edward Wright
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
We’d had quite a lot of casualties and a lot of the supporting fire we had expected hadn’t materialised but I personally had never expected it to be a walkover. I had hoped that we would do it with fewer casualties and to that extent it was a disappointment, but we had achieved what we had set out to do and we had got all our objectives, so that was a plus.
Sergeant James Bellows
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment
Just off the beach there were two or three little cottages and opposite these cottages there was a road that led from the beach and one of our men had been killed and his mates had just dug a hole and covered him. The reason they done this was because, if they hadn’t, it was more than probable he’d have been run over by all sorts of things, tanks, you name it. It was a humanitarian gesture, you might say. And as I was walking by, out of one of those cottages came an old lady. Goodness knows how old she was. Skirts were touching the ground. And she hobbled across the road and in her hand she had a posy of flowers and she placed them on the grave, kneeled, said a prayer, got up, gave the sign of the cross and then walked back to her cottage. It was one of the most moving sights I think I saw in the war.
KING SECTOR
Lance Corporal Alan Carter
6th Battalion, Green Howards
It were very quiet on my landing craft except for one young lad. I always remember him. Fresh-faced, he’d only be about eighteen, and I heard him say to one of his mates, ‘I hope I get a Blighty one.’ That was about the only thing said.
&n
bsp; Private Dennis Bowen
5th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment
Once you get down into the assault craft you can’t see out of it because it’s all metal and the front, which is like a ramp, is up in front of you. So you’ve got to get up to look over the side, if you were daft enough, to see what’s happening. Everybody’s got enough sense to stay in the bottom where it’s quite bulletproof.
Corporal Alfred Church
2nd Battalion, Hertfordshire Regiment (Beach Group)
Everybody was sick. There was probably a foot of seawater and sick and everything else in the bottom. But of course as soon as the shells started coming over you forgot that sort of thing.
Private Dennis Bowen
5th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment
The noise is absolutely horrendous. It’s not ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’ It’s a continual roar of sound, constantly, without stopping, and all the time you can hear people shouting out orders. ‘4896 follow me!’ ‘My maximum speed is 22, I’ll keep up with you!’ All that sort of stuff. Everything’s very exciting. Your heart is pounding like mad. You can’t really think of it as something where you’re going to get hurt, you’re going to get killed maybe, or lose a limb or whatever. It’s all very, very exciting. But if somebody had actually picked you up out of that boat and took you away to where it was quiet and said, ‘Now, what’s happening?’ you’d have said, ‘I’ve no idea. I’m on a ship that’s going to land and there’s going to be Germans there and we’re going to fight them.’ That’s really all.
Lieutenant Michael Irwin
LCA(HR) commander
It was H minus one minute. The destroyers were bombarding and then precisely at the moment we arrived off the beach to do our job, about twenty or thirty yards from the beach, the bombardment lifted and we let go our spigot bombs and there was a tremendous explosion. I went to port and then along came this LCT that beached and out of it came the flail tank. And the most incredible thing was that there wasn’t a shot fired. It was absolute peace, probably for a minute or two minutes. Then this tank waddled up the beach, the flails started off, there was an explosion as the waterproofing was blown up, then there was black smoke from the tank as it received a direct hit. There weren’t any flames for a moment but they were obviously all killed inside.