I ran right past a big gateway, it had pillars on either side, and it was a good job somebody popped out and shouted, ‘In here!’ otherwise I’d have ran straight into the Germans. That’s where they’d taken refuge, a fairly large house, it was looking a bit worse for wear because the Germans were hitting it fairly regularly. I remember there were quite a few casualties lying in the courtyard. The signaller was there, a young lad, and I remember his body still twitching. He had a big radio set on his back.
So I ran in there and Captain Powell said, ‘There’s your gun, get over there,’ and I headed in the direction that he’d pointed me. Another young officer said, ‘In here, get in here.’ This was another air raid shelter at the far side of the house, across into the garden. I got down on the steps where he indicated and I got my magazines out. He had binoculars and he was lying alongside me and it was very easy to comply with the fire control order that he gave me. A green field was stretching out in front of us and it came to a little hedgerow and a wooded area beyond it. ‘They’re all along that hedgerow,’ he says. So all I had to use was the edge of the field and the bottom of the hedgerow as my aiming mark and it was quite easy to take aim at it. So I opened up with a few long bursts.
You could see clumps of them moving about and I kept firing. Then it died down and I switched the gun to single rounds, which was the drill to do. You fired bursts when you had a good target to shoot at but the Bren was always used to confuse the enemy – that was what we were taught – so that the enemy wouldn’t know if it was a machine gun firing at them or a rifle. So you switched to single shots when you could and when I did it on this occasion it was just like being on the firing point in practice: the officer says to me, ‘Very good; good lad.’ A thing like that in the middle of a battle seemed a bit odd to me, but that’s what he said. It was the first chance I’d had to look at him, and I didn’t know him. Afterwards I found out that we’d all been split up so bad they were trying to make up one troop out of two. The various troops had taken such a battering on the beach that we were under-strength.
I think I was the only one who had a really clear field of fire so he kept supplying me with ammunition and loading the magazines for me and I kept up this steady rate of fire. But of course the Germans don’t take that lying down – if they’ve got a troublesome point they try to eliminate it as much as we would – so it wasn’t very long before I was getting mortared then and I realised I was the target. They came fairly close but I didn’t take much notice of them except on one occasion when it burst really close. My reaction to it made me slide down these little shallow steps, down to the bottom, and the gun came with me and all the muck and dust. But I just got back up again and carried on.
During that time it seemed to go quiet and then it would rev up again in a different direction. Maybe they were trying to work their way round us. I didn’t have the feeling that we were being overwhelmed at that time but they must’ve had us well in their sights because they shot Captain Powell through the mouth. He was always a man who stood up. On one occasion during the training in Scotland he’d said, ‘Get down, you’re too high up, you’re too big a target,’ and he’d stood on my back to press me into the ground further. But that’s what he did and he was always shouting and moving about amongst the troops shouting encouragement and he was exactly the same on D-Day. He was walking around shouting and they shot him through the mouth and he must’ve still been shouting and bawling as it went right through and out the other side without touching his teeth. He always had his mouth open.
It must have been late afternoon, we must have been in this battle right through the day, I didn’t know when it was going to end, but the order must have come through, ‘Well, OK, you can pull out now’. I got told, ‘Keep up a steady rate of fire now because we’re running down the ammo.’ I remember this young officer telling me this and he put three grenades on the top step and he says to me, ‘Use them if they get too close.’ That shocked me more than anything else. ‘If he thinks that I’m staying here to throw those three things if they get that close – no chance!’
The only person I saw after that was Captain Powell. He was still there and he said, ‘Right, stand by to move out now,’ and I only remember him and I running. We were running through an orchard towards a big wall at the end and even though I was encumbered with the Bren gun I still made the wall before he did. It was quite a high one, about eight or nine foot high, I think, and made of these big rough stones. There was the odd crack around us as we were running but I didn’t think the Germans were really shooting at us until I turned round when I got there and found myself by myself and a little panic crept in. ‘Left on my own, what am I going to do?’ I couldn’t see Captain Powell and then I spotted him: he was lying on the ground about fifty metres or so back. I put the gun in the ball of a tree where the branches joined, aimed it back across the field and blasted away. The magazine must’ve been almost empty because it was only a burst of about ten rounds and I had no more ammunition left.
I ran out to Captain Powell and he was lying there groaning. I said, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ and I lifted him up and he was shouting at me and he wasn’t very complimentary. He was a big, long, tall man, must’ve been about a foot taller than me, and big, long, lanky fellas are very awkward to handle. He had multiple wounds on him then, blood splattered all over him. He looked ghastly. And when I lifted him he didn’t know I was just trying to help him and in my panic I suppose I was being awkward and the size of him was making it more difficult for me. I got him up and he was collapsing again and eventually he falls on the ground again and of course I’m on my knees with him then.
He said, ‘For God’s sake, leave me alone. You’re doing far more damage to me than the Germans.’ But of course it was told to me in the colourful language of the service of the time. You know: ‘Go away and multiply.’ His leg was broken, you see, and I was lifting him on his good leg and getting him to stand on the broken one. When I realised, I did get him up. And with the excitement and the things that were happening and the panic and the fear, all mixed up, I was sort of giggling and laughing and crying, like a frightened child, I suppose. Anyway, I got him to the wall and, of course, there was no way I was going to get him over that. Every time I let him go he slumped to the floor and I was nigh on exhausted myself.
There was a ladder. And I can only assume that the Germans, if they saw us, didn’t shoot us because this is like the Keystone Cops and they were standing there laughing their heads off. So I got this ladder and I banged it against the wall. Then I had to lift this long man up to get him in a fireman’s lift over my shoulders. When I eventually did that I got on the ladder and started to climb it, without any thought that the ladder didn’t reach the top anyway and without any thought of what I was to do when I got to the top of the ladder. Who thinks straight in situations like that, except John Wayne or somebody like that? Anyway, I’d only gone about two or three steps and the thing broke and there we were in a heap on the floor again, and he was really telling me where to go and of course I think he was losing consciousness then as well.
Then a man named Mortlock appeared over the top of the wall and he hung his arms down. I had to stand Captain Powell against the wall again, by this time he must’ve given up all hope of ever getting any sense out of me, and I pinned him against the wall. Another chap joined Mortlock and they grabbed his wrists and I pushed at the bottom and over he went. I got over the wall on that bit of ladder, half was still left, I ran at it, jumped on it and got over. I threw my Bren gun over the wall first; I didn’t leave my gun behind. And there in the garden was Captain Powell. I can only assume that Mortlock didn’t know he was wounded; they must’ve jumped up and run and of course he didn’t because he couldn’t run. When I dropped down he was still there and I thought, ‘God Almighty, I still haven’t got shot of him. He’s still there like an albatross around my neck.’
There was a wheelbarrow and I got Captain Powell into it with his legs
stuck up towards the shaft. I put the Bren gun on his chest and I wheeled him down the garden path and had to turn round and pull it up a couple of steps into the rooms of the house and I wheeled him through and out through the front door. I came out into the street, into blazing sunshine and within seconds – where it came from I don’t know – there was a jeep, which was converted into a very fragile type of ambulance. That pulled up and we put him in that and that was the last I saw of Captain Powell.
They’re the things that amazed me about war. How they can be so dramatic and tense at times and then you can have idiotic things like that happening. There’s no way I can describe the feeling I had when that jeep drove away, the loneliness I felt standing by myself in this road and not a soul around me. A bedraggled young marine standing in this street, clutching an empty Bren gun and watching his troop commander getting whisked away. Standing there bereft. Where was I going to go? What was I going to do? How was I going to link up again with the battle?
Then Sergeant Hazlehurst appeared from nowhere and had the audacity to ask me where I’d been. I said, ‘I’ve got no ammo.’ It took him about five seconds to produce it, much to my surprise. He hung these bandoliers around my neck and told me to get into a house just behind me. I went to the door, a big studded door. And the humiliation there! Being a Bren gunner I had a personal weapon, a Colt .45, so I took this pistol out and I fired at the door; you know, the way you see in the films. I fired one shot at it and there was a tap on my shoulder and when I turned round there was a priest standing there with his cassock and his robes on and a round flattish hat on his head. He shook his head and he reached forward and he turned the knob and opened the door. I slunk inside and I went upstairs to the bedroom and cried my eyes out. I just stood there and cried. I thought, ‘I’ve made a complete and utter mess of the whole thing.’ After all the training, I realised how immature, young, green, call it what you like, I was.
When I recovered a little bit, I filled the magazines and then I remember the training taking over. Don’t break the windows, leave the curtains where they are; don’t put the gun right up by the window, keep it well back. All those things started going through my mind again. I suppose I started functioning like a soldier again. It started to go dark then. And that was my D-Day. I didn’t sleep that night; I sat on that bed, looking out the window, and the night passed.
Day’s End
I remember the sergeant coming round, saying, ‘This will be your arc of fire. Watch out, because Jerry will come back. Don’t think that it’s all over; he’ll be here.’
D-Day night was one of continued activity. Fighting carried on in many areas. Behind the front lines, exhausted units began digging in and feeding. Some men tried to sleep but many stayed alert in readiness for enemy counter-attacks or were kept awake as the Luftwaffe tried noisily to get at the beaches: Allied air superiority was less formidable in the dark. Supplies and reinforcements continued to pour ashore; wounded and prisoners were taken away.
Not all of the day’s planned final objectives had been achieved. In the west, the Americans at Utah, assisted by their airborne divisions dropped inland, had made real progress in securing and extending the western flank, though casualties among the paratroopers were high. In the east, inland from Sword, the British Sixth Airborne had accomplished all of its D-Day aims: the only Allied division to do so. But while the Canadians had pushed far inland and the British 50th Division had reached the edge of Bayeux, all beachheads were less deep than had been hoped for and only Juno and Gold had linked up. Caen, the prize scalp, had not been taken. And the American grip on Omaha remained tenuous.
But the Allies were ashore. The essential plan had been a great success. By midnight more than 156,000 men had landed in Normandy.
The confusion of the battlefield, combined with conflicting sources, has caused estimates to vary considerably, but the day’s cost for the Allies probably stood in the region of ten to twelve thousand dead, wounded and missing. The American share of that figure was most likely more than half. The British and Canadian divisions that landed at Sword, Gold and Juno had three thousand casualties between them – approximately a thousand per division – and the Sixth Airborne may have suffered as many as 1,500 killed, wounded and missing.
The sixth of June was only the first day, of course. The Second Front had just begun. Securing the Normandy foreshore was to take ten days; a month of fighting would pass before Caen fell; eleven months were to pass before Berlin was reached and the Germans were finally beaten. Yet D-Day was the springboard to that final victory. D-Day secured for the Allies the vital toehold that made possible the liberation of north-west Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany in the west.
Trooper Ronald Mole
Sherman tank gunner/wireless operator, 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, inland from Gold Beach
Before we bedded down the first night, and it had been a heck of a long day, you had to scrub the gun, load up with about 80 gallons of diesel, replenish the 75-shells and boxes of Browning machine gun bullets. If you were a wireless operator, you had to do an hour’s wireless watch. Others had to do an hour’s guard. Obviously we couldn’t make fires and I was so grateful to Mr Heinz and his products and his self-heating soup. This was a can with a little recess and you dug out the middle and this revealed a little fuse. You touched that with a cigarette and within thirty seconds you had a hot drink. We learned, of course, the hard way that if you didn’t spike it with two holes before you lit it you got the lot down your uniform from the pressure inside, but we caught on very quickly. The biscuits we were given had surely been made of concrete but we made bully sandwiches and jam sandwiches or whatever.
Sergeant James Bellows
1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment, inland from Sword Beach
Sticking out the old RSM’s pack was two French sticks. I said, ‘Where did you get them, Jimmy?’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I got them off the crew before I got ashore. I got false teeth, I can’t chew bloody biscuits, can I?’ I said, ‘How about giving me a bit?’ He told me what I could do. I said ‘That’s all right, Jim. I’ve got mushrooms and bacon for what I’m going to have.’ So I got them out, this bacon and mushrooms, and I sliced some bacon off and put it in my mess tin and I opened up this tin of mushrooms. He relented. We had about the finest meal anybody had on D-Day, I think. Bacon, mushrooms, and real bread. That was lovely.
Sergeant Major Russell King
2nd Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, inland from Sword Beach
We posted sentries, naturally, and either myself or the company commander or both went round the sentry posts and made sure that everything was OK. We had hurried inspections of the lads, made sure that the grub was coming up. I don’t think the lads got much sleep at all. I didn’t seem to get much sleep anyway.
I remember the company HQ was in an old farmhouse and it had been evacuated that hurriedly, in fact, that they didn’t seem to have taken a thing with them. There was a little enclosed courtyard and there was still stuff on the bloody tables and in the bedrooms. They just seemed to have taken off. And the thing I was most struck by in that part of France anyway was that every bugger seemed to keep rabbits. There was rabbit hutches all over. Everywhere you went there was little rabbit hutches. Mind, a lot of people were still there. There was an old couple in Benouville in fact and they had no intention of moving. I don’t think they knew what it was all about, to be honest.
Driver Roy Hamlyn
282 Company, Royal Army Service Corps, attached to 3rd Canadian Division, inland from Juno Beach
We found our way along this road and we came to a cornfield. Being a country boy, I was bit shocked to think of what we were going to do to that cornfield because it was a splendid field, the corn was green and it had reached a height of two-foot-six or whatever, and through we had to go. The French farmer came on the scene and I don’t speak French but I could understand exactly what his language was because we had to destroy his cornfield. He became a very, ver
y excited man and I could rest assured that we were not very popular. The last thing that he wanted was an Allied invasion of his part of France. But unfortunately we had to destroy that lovely field of corn because it was earmarked as an ammunition dump and that was it.
Private Richard Atkinson
9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, inland from Gold Beach
Civilians didn’t really want you there. They weren’t too happy because you only brought death and destruction. It was beautiful lush farmland and there were cows, legs up in the air, they were all dead. All the livestock had been killed in the fields and whatnot. They did moan because we’d killed all their stuff and we were pinching their wine. The Germans hadn’t done any of that to them. There was no love lost at this stage between us. We wrecked their houses; we killed their stock. We were in their farmhouses, not that you were allowed to sleep in the farmhouse, you slept on the vehicles round about it, but naturally you were rummaging, which you shouldn’t have been but you did. By evening time we were into the farmhouses and taking the Calvados from the cellars.
Marine Dennis Smith
48 (Royal Marine) Commando, near Juno Beach
During the course of the night I was called to escort our intelligence officer, Lieutenant Smedley. He wanted to contact the mayor of the town. So we wandered through the town, he obviously had directions of where to find the mayor, and I went as his escort for the night. Very quiet it was. A few flashes of light here and there. We didn’t know who we might meet, Germans or French people, but we eventually found the place and he asked me to sit by the gate and not let anyone in whilst he went indoors. Then he went and tapped on the door and a few words were spoken and he entered. Within half a minute he was out again and said, ‘You must come inside. The mayor doesn’t want you to be seen here.’ So I went inside and stayed in the hall, just inside the doorway. I think at that time the French people thought it might only be a commando raid and that if we withdrew and they cooperated with us they would be in danger. That was the point of the intelligence officer explaining to the mayor that this was not a raid, we were there for good, we hoped.
Forgotten Voices of D-Day Page 34
