French civilians near Sword Beach show their identity cards to a British officer.
Sergeant Edward Wallace
86th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, inland from Juno Beach
Afterwards, of course, when they were liberated, they were all over you. Even now, if you go over there, they can’t do enough for you. But deep down they knew what was going to happen to their townships and villages: that they were going to be flattened. As you moved up through northern France, Belgium, and especially Holland, yes, you were really welcomed with open arms.
Lieutenant Eric Hooper
9th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, inland from Gold Beach
I tell you one thing, I felt very, very sad about an incident there. There was a farmhouse that had been shelled and, when I got there, there was an old lady and a nun. The old lady was very, very distraught and in the conversation I found out that her two grandchildren were buried in the ruins and they wanted us to try and get them out. But we couldn’t, we were under orders and had to be at a certain point at a certain time, and we had to go away and leave them.
Private Dennis Bowen
5th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, inland from Gold Beach
We dug in by a little farm, by the side of the duck pond there. 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,’ and we stood-to. I was completely petrified that these Germans would come storming back after we had been shooting and killing them and would attempt of course to shoot and kill us. But the men of the 5th East Yorkshires were not the slightest bit worried about them. They really were great old sticks.
Leading Telegraphist Alan Winstanley
Combined Operations Bombardment Unit, inland from Gold Beach
D-Day night, we actually slept under a tarpaulin at the side of a field. We hadn’t time to pitch tents and things, the main thing was to get the W/T equipment set up and working. And as night fell in that little village we began to think, well, what happens overnight here? Are we suddenly going to get counter-attacked? Are there snipers around? There’s all sorts of things go through your mind. Obviously it didn’t happen as we’re still here to tell the tale but it’s one thing that goes through your mind. Even though you have someone on guard while maybe six or eight of you sleep, there’s always the chance you could be surprised and overcome and the next thing you wake up dead, as it were.
Private Anthony Leake
8th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, near Ranville
We dug in for the night and strung anti-tank grenades across the road in case they sent any vehicles up. By this time we were very, very tired because we’d had no sleep since we were at the airfield: twenty-four hours, just about. Some of us were nodding off. Then there was some firing, we didn’t know whether it was a false alarm or what, somebody said the Germans were coming but we didn’t see any, I don’t know what happened. But anyway we were too frightened then to sleep for the rest of that night.
Staff Sergeant Reg Dance
Glider Pilot Regiment, near Ranville
During the night we had one or two scares. People said, ‘There’s something moving out the front!’ I kept peering and said, ‘Well, don’t fire, you’ll give the position away.’ I kept looking and I saw it was a cow. They were all dairy herds round there and of course cows don’t go to sleep like we do, they keep eating all night long – munch, munch – and wandering around.
Piper Bill Millin
HQ 1st Special Service Brigade, east of Ranville
We moved to a farmhouse and Lovat took that over as his HQ. I dug in with a chap who had a PIAT gun and that evening we got out and took a walk along the gable end of the farmhouse. Everything was still and the firing had ceased. Everything was nice and quiet and there was the smell of the corn and the flowers and we’re just walking along.
Suddenly, ‘Swoosh!’ and two mortars exploded in the cornfield and of course shrapnel came thudding into the wall of the farmhouse. I got right down and scrambled away back the way we had come and then another ‘Swoosh!’ and another two explosions. Well, I was in the trench by this time. The other chap was a big beefy man and I heard him running, his big thudding feet running along, and he fell into the trench beside me and I said, ‘For Christ’s sake, you’re quite a hefty character!’
We’d arranged that he would go first on the gun so I could get my head down a little bit. But then he’s still lying there, there wasn’t no snoring nor sound of breathing in the darkness, so I felt the back of his head and his back and of course there’s all blood. Obviously he’d been hit with several pieces of shrapnel in the back and one in the back of the head and he’d been dead all the time and I’d slept for about an hour.
Sergeant James Cramer
1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles, near Ranville
Suddenly there was an awful crashing, explosions going off, in the field next to us. We jumped into our trenches thinking we were being mortared and to our relief it was the whole of the brigade’s three-inch mortars. They had been brigaded, which meant that they had all been brought together, and they were all firing on a target: what we thought were explosions were our own mortars going off. So we had a very fitful night with all the noise. There were a lot of shots going on, explosions, and the Luftwaffe came over banging away at the beachhead.
Sergeant Reginald William Webb
Churchill Crocodile tank commander, 141st Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, inland from Gold Beach
What one reads about D-Day night is that there wasn’t much air activity but we thought there was a decent lot. We’d been two or three nights without any sleep and the ack-ack I recall near us was some Bofors and they were sending up a racket. And my crew always say – and I don’t remember the truth of this, I must admit – that I went up to the officer in charge of the Bofors and asked him not to make so much noise because we couldn’t get to sleep. I think we found some booze and I might have had a couple of drinks.
Lieutenant Richard Charles Bird
LCT crew, off Sword Beach
A bomber, a Heinkel, came over and everyone opened fire. And the Americans, oh, the Americans are very trigger-happy and there were a number of American merchant ships and they were all opening up with Oerlikons and God knows what. And of course, as it came over, their elevation kept getting lower and lower and lower until eventually the bullets were going just over our heads. And this plane crashed, oh, I suppose, not fifty yards from us. It just crashed and went under and nobody bothered any more about that.
We hadn’t had any decent sleep for a long time, so we thought, ‘This is a good chance to get a good night’s rest, because in the morning we’re going to be given all sorts of jobs to do.’ I remember I’d just got off to sleep and the quartermaster who was on duty came and shook me. He said, ‘I haven’t told anybody, but there’s a mine bobbing around our stern.’ So I had to get dressed again and go and have a look over, and there, sure enough, was a damned great black thing. He said, ‘What shall I do?’ I said, ‘Well, you can’t do anything.’ He said, ‘Shall I push it off with a boathook?’ I said, ‘Yeah, but you got to be careful with it. I don’t know what kind of mine it is. With contact it may go off.’ Anyway, when it got closer, it was the wheel of this Heinkel, the tyre, just poking out.
Lieutenant James Lowther
Sherman tank commander, East Riding Yeomanry, inland from Sword Beach
It must’ve been one o’clock in the morning or something when the night sky was alive with tracer bullets and anti-aircraft fire because the Germans were trying to bomb the beaches. There was an immense amount went up in the air and it all had to come down again and we lost two men killed and one wounded during the night by shrapnel or spent bullets or God knows what falling through their bivouacs. It was something we hadn’t learned to expect in training. So whenever afterwards we stopped and harboured up at night, we dug a bloody great pit like an inspection pit
and drove the tank over the top of it and slept underneath.
Captain Julius Neave
Sherman tank commander, 13th/18th Hussars, inland from Sword Beach
Tanks can’t fight at night and the squadrons, when they had achieved as much of their objectives as they could, pulled into laagers, as we used to call them. Our HQ pulled into its own laager in a wheat field, and that’s when we got our first prisoners. Two in particular were heard wandering about calling for ‘Hans’ and ‘Rudi’. I can hear them now.
Corporal John Barnes
Sherman tank commander, 13th/18th Hussars, inland from Sword Beach
If they’d kept quiet and laid there they would’ve got away but they started to shout, as though they were trying to make us know there were lots of men there. We stood them in the middle of where the tanks were and the squadron leader told them, ‘Tell your mates to come in or we’re going to shoot you here.’
We used to have little tins of soup and you’d flick the top off and put a light to them and you got hot soup and I looked at these Germans sitting there shivering and I said, ‘Give ’em a hot soup,’ and then we had a rapport. One said, ‘Invasion. Tanks, no infantry. Infantry at the back.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said they were told that all they would see would be infantry and that it would take about two hours before tanks came. That’s what he was crying for. And he was trying to tell us a lot of people were crying because they saw these canvas things coming and they’d thought there were infantry in there and they weren’t worried until they came on the beaches, but suddenly up the beaches came tanks.
Trooper Kenneth Ewing
Sherman tank driver, Sherwood Rangers, inland from Gold Beach
We supported the Hampshire infantry and the colonel of the regiment asked our colonel if the tanks could stay behind them in the line for the night. Well, our colonel explained to him it was out of the question: normally all the tanks laagered up at the rear during the night because there was no protection. But after some discussion he said, ‘All right, I’ll agree to one squadron.’
Well, he went back and all the squadrons by this time had settled in for the night so they drew lots who was to go up and of course B Squadron lost the toss. So we went back into the line again and it was most unnerving because you were sticking out like a sore thumb. There was a huge tank sticking out there in the dark and you couldn’t see anything. We used to take it in turns in the turret with the binoculars, but you couldn’t see anything, it was non-productive. We spent a most uncomfortable night.
When dawn broke, the co-driver asked for a shell-case. Now, if you wanted to go to the toilet, the normal practice, if it was bad, was to use a shell-case. Well, the tank commander said, ‘No, you’re not. We’ve had a bad night; we’ve had a bad day before. You’ve got to get out.’ So after much protesting he gets out the tank and a hedge was about twelve yards to our right and he gets in the bottom of the hedge and he squatted down to go to the toilet. The commander says to me, ‘Keep an eye on him and make sure he’s all right.’ I said, ‘OK.’ I could watch him through the periscope.
Unbeknown to him, there was a German in the hedge behind him who was trying to give himself up. He didn’t want to distract the chap’s attention because he was frightened he might turn round and shoot him, you see. So while the chap’s in the hedge, this German’s poking his bottom with his finger to attract his attention. The chap thinks it’s the hedge and he keeps trying to knock it away and after a couple of times he turns round to see what it was and there’s this German with his hands up. Of course, his first reaction was to run, so he sets off to run and of course he trips himself up with his trousers obviously. The tank commander says, ‘Oh, for God’s sake. Go and get him in.’ We sent the German back to the infantry.
Trooper Douglas Edwin Patrick Wileman
Tank fitter, 13th/18th Hussars, inland from Sword beach
One of the lads called out, ‘Bloody hell, Jerries!’ I had a Bren in my hands so I threw it down and fired it in their direction and they put their hands up immediately. Probably what had happened here was that, a short while before, the Airborne reinforcements had gone over and these Germans had realised they were on the wrong side of all these reinforcements dropping and they thought the best thing to do was to pack it in. But we had a heck of a job to get rid of these prisoners. In fact, our brigadier, when he saw us standing there wondering what to do with them, said, ‘Get rid of those so-and-sos. We can’t get rid of them any other way: shoot the buggers.’ Fortunately, a party of about twenty Jerries were being marched down the road under an escort of about four men and we bunged our twelve on the back of the line, much to the annoyance of the infantrymen.
Lieutenant Herbert Jalland
8th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, inland from Gold Beach
I remember the cries of ‘Russki! Russki!’ very well. A lot of our men regarded them as traitors because they were Russian and should be shot as traitors. Some of them may have been shot but I think most of them were saved because the officers and NCOs saw to it that these people were prisoners of war and that was that.
Captured German soldiers being marched to the beaches.
Captain David Tibbs
Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, near Ranville
Well, the evening wore on and at about half-past ten we learned that casualties could be evacuated. So carefully selected people, selected because they were near death but salvable if they were given proper help, were evacuated by jeep-ambulances across the bridges to join the main dressing station the other side of the river. This was a hazardous journey because they were liable to be mortared or sniped at all along this route. Anyway, evacuation had started and we were beginning to have real communications with the seaborne people.
Major Richard Gosling
147th Field Regiment (Essex Yeomanry), Royal Artillery, on Gold Beach
Just behind the sand dunes there was a German pillbox, which the Germans had used as sleeping quarters, and they turned it into a little first-aid post for us and we crawled into this. Very smelly it was of Germans. They’d been standing-to that morning and the remains of their breakfast was on the tables still and some red wine on the table and there was a letter from a French girl to one of the Germans. It was ‘Hans chéri’ – Dear Hans – ‘Je vous attendrais’ – I will meet you – ‘derrière le pillbox’ – behind the pillbox – ‘à six heures du soir’ – at six o’clock in the evening – ‘le six juin’ – on the sixth of June. And it was signed ‘Madeleine’. So Madeleine was going to meet this German behind the pillbox at six o’clock that evening. So we all looked out and waited for Madeleine to come along. Madeleine never did.
Near Ouistreham, soldiers of 4 Commando stretcher a casualty back to an aid post.
Sergeant Desmond O’Neill
Cameraman, Army Film and Photographic Unit, on Sword Beach
There were hundreds of walking wounded and chaps on stretchers and we were told that we were going to be evacuated as soon as possible. Then they started putting us on DUKWs, which had brought troops ashore, and commenced taking us out to a big Liberty ship moored offshore. On the DUKW we had a lot of chaps – French commandos – who were wounded, badly wounded, two of them were blinded, and it was very uncomfortable for them going out because the waves were coming over the side and they were in a state of shock. But strangely enough, when they were being loaded on, they didn’t want to go. They nearly had to be forced to get on to the DUKWs and be taken away. After four, five years in England and now being back home in the motherland, to suddenly have to leave like that.
Lieutenant Eric Ashcroft
1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, on Sword Beach
I was sent back to the field dressing station and it was at that stage that I saw many of the wounded on the beach area. I saw officers that had been blinded, walking wounded, stretcher cases, and all the documentation was going on. Labels, tags. Ones they were giving morphine had lipstick put on t
heir forehead, I seem to remember: a capital M. The documentation went on meticulously by the Royal Army Medical Corps.
Towards nightfall we were collected by a Royal Army Service Corps DUKW vehicle, incredible vehicles which go on land and swim on water. Just about dusk we entered a fairly rough sea, we inflated our life jackets and we swam – that’s the word used for the propelling of these vehicles – out to a Landing Ship Tank and this ship lowered its ramp and we went inside into brilliant light. The whole area was like entering a great hall. Around the sides were bunks and towards the end were green tents with lights in. They were the mobile operating theatres. And you could still smell the oil from the tanks: during the day the tanks had been carried across and the tank crews and the tanks had come out and the LST then became a mobile hospital.
We were then given sulfonamide. I was given trousers-down injections. Some of my fellows were taken for further dressings. I remember further dressings, further inoculations and further documentation and I was allocated a bunk. There must have been about three hundred people on this LST and the ones that were able were given a higher bunk and the ones who found it difficult were given a lower bunk. It was a hospital ship, really, and they were able to carry out quite sophisticated treatments right from the beaches. I want to emphasise the medical side of this, how efficient it was. Monty always said he’d look after the wounded and I remember thinking that that side had been taken care of.
Forgotten Voices of D-Day Page 35
