STRAFING THE BEACHES – DUNKIRK AS SEEN FROM THE AIR

By Alex Kershaw

Photo: Flight Lieutenant Frank Howell, RAF 609 Squadron.

By May 26 1940, around 250,000 British troops, the rump of what remained of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), were surrounded in the French port of Dunkirk and being mercilessly attacked by Göring’s Stuka dive-bombers. From the air it seemed that the nearby beaches swarmed with a huge army of ants that rippled with fear as German pilots made strafing runs. The mood was grim, both on the sand dunes where starving, exhausted Tommies waited for rescue, and in London, where even in Churchill’s War Cabinet there was talk of a compromise peace with Hitler. Churchill ended all such defeatist sentiment, telling his cabinet in an emotionally charged meeting on May 28: “I am convinced that every one of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to come to an end at last, let it end only when each of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

Churchill’s defiance was met with cheers and hurrahs. It was clear that he now had every one of his cabinet firmly on his side. “Quite a number,” he recalled, “seemed to jump from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back . . . had I at this juncture faltered at all in leading the nation I should have been hurled out of office. I am sure that every Minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed, rather than give in.”

Just as the cabinet had rallied to Churchill, so would the nation. But first, something had to be salvaged from the disaster unfolding at Dunkirk. Senior commanders hoped that perhaps thirty thousand men, a fraction of the British Expeditionary Force, might be saved. In London, Ambassador Kennedy added his own assessment to the general air of doom, cabling President Roosevelt that: “Only a miracle can save the BEF from being wiped out or, as I said yesterday, surrender . . . the English people, while they suspect a terrible situation, really do not realize how bad it is. When they do I don’t know what group they will follow, the do or die or the group that wants a settlement.”

But all was not yet lost. The seafaring nation was beginning to respond to a call for all available vessels to make the hazardous Channel crossing and evacuate men from the bloodstained beaches. All manner of craft, from private dinghies to Thames tugboats, were headed toward Dunkirk. Above the beaches, Fighter Command’s Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons were also now in action, fighting with unprecedented aggression, many of their pilots furious at the sight of their countrymen being mowed down as they waded in long snaking lines toward rescue boats. Even veteran Luftwaffe pilots, who had readily strafed columns of refugees in Spain and destroyed Guernica, soon began to sicken of the slaughter. For twenty-four-year-old Captain Paul Temme, flying at three hundred feet above his victims, it was “just unadulterated killing. The beaches were jammed full of soldiers. I went up and down ‘hose-piping.’ It was cold-blooded point-blank murder.”

The fighting over Dunkirk would be a prelude to the Battle of Britain, and the Luftwaffe and the RAF took careful measure of each other. For the first time, the Germans encountered the full force of Fighter Command, and it was soon clear that the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes were just as lethal as the Messerschmitt Me-109, the Germans’ best fighter. Another thing was quickly obvious: the British pilots were as well disciplined and courageous as their foe in the air, confirming the warning of influential First World War veteran Theo Osterkamp: “Now we fight ‘The Lords,’ and that is something else again. They are hard fighters and they are good fighters.”

For many RAF pilots, Dunkirk was a chaotic and brutal baptism of fire. “The Me-109s were quicksilver,” recalled one squadron leader. “It would have been ideal to come against them as a controlled formation, but the Germans always split up, so somehow you did, too. Then it was every man for himself—which was all right if you were good.” Thankfully, some were very good indeed. They included twenty-eight-year-old Flight Lieutenant Frank Howell of 609 West Riding Squadron, a strikingly handsome, blond-haired former mechanic who, on June 1, 1940, was appointed a flight leader after two days of fierce combat.

In a remarkable letter to his brother, Howell provided a vivid account of what it was like to fly above the hell of Dunkirk: “The place was still burning furiously, a great pall of smoke stretching 7,000 feet in the sky over Belgium . . Thousands and thousands of A/A [anti-aircraft] shells were bursting over the town . . . I looked down to see salvo after salvo of bombs bursting with terrific splashes in the water near some shipping, and there was a Heinkel, only 500 feet below going in the opposite direction so I did a half roll, and came up its arse, giving it a pretty 2 seconds fire . . . All the way back to England I flew full throttle at about 15 feet above the water and the shipping between England and Dunkirk was a sight worth seeing. Paddle boats, destroyers, sloops, tugs, fishing trawlers, river launches . . . anything with a motor towing anything without one . . . I am indeed lucky to have got away scot free. Dizzy was killed and five other chaps are missing. One was my flight commander so I am now in charge of A Flight, and will get another stripe, and it’s a rotten way to get it.”

On June 1, Winston Churchill was back in Paris, again trying to rally the French and sharing with them the heartening news that more than 165,000 troops had been pulled off the beaches at Dunkirk. Distressingly, his exhortations to fight on to the very end appeared to fall on deaf ears. Churchill’s escort from Paris back to England was to be provided by 601 Squadron, otherwise known as the Millionaires’ Squadron because several of its pilots came from wealthy families. “Winston was ebullient as ever,” recalled an aide. “When we started back he insisted on pacing round the aerodrome to review [601’s] nine Hurricanes, tramping through the tall grass in the flurry of propellers with his cigar like a pennant.”

British Major General Sir Edward Spears remembered “nine fighter planes drawn up in a wide semi-circle around the Prime Minister’s Flamingo . . . Churchill walked toward the machines, grinning, waving his stick, saying a word or two to each pilot as he went from one to the other, and, as I watched their faces light up and smile in answer to his, I thought they looked like the angels of my childhood. These men may have been naturally handsome, but that morning they were far more than that, creatures of an essence that was not of our world: their expressions of happy confidence as they got ready to ascend into their element, the sky, left me inspired, awed and earthbound.”

One of these angels, Flying Officer Gordon “Mouse” Cleaver, remembered that morning somewhat differently.13 The night before, the Millionaires had become rip-roaring drunk: “There assembled at Villacou-blay just about as hungover a crew of dirty, smelly, unshaven, unwashed fighter pilots as I doubt has ever been seen. Willie [Rhodes-Moorehouse] if I remember right was being sick behind his aeroplane, when the Great Man arrived and expressed a desire to meet the escort. We must have appeared vaguely human at least, as he seemed to accept our appearance without comment, and we took off for England.”14 By June 4, the evacuation of Dunkirk was officially over with an incredible 338,226 Allied troops removed from the beaches to England. Göring’s promise that “not a British soldier will escape” had been ludicrous. He had simply been “talking big again” as General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Hitler’s General Staff, was quick to point out.15 In a week of almost constant combat above Dunkirk, the RAF had shot down 132 German planes for a loss of 99 of its own fighters, 5 from Flight Leader Frank Howell’s 609 Squadron. It was a remarkable performance, or as Churchill described it to his War Cabinet, “a signal victory which gives cause for high hopes of our successes in the future.”

The British Expeditionary Force had been saved by some 693 boats of all sizes, many of them “little ships”—dinghies, pleasure yachts, skiffs, tugboats—a quarter of which were sunk. But now it had nothing to fight with. Almost all the BEF’s armor and weapons had been left behind, leaving England practically defenseless. The evacuation of Dunkirk could certainly not be described as a victory, but it was nevertheless a powerful tonic to both the British people and the rest of the free world.

THE LIBERATOR – FELIX SPARKS, on far left, Naples. 1944.

In March 1944, Felix Sparks was finally able to take a break from war. A couple of weeks after losing his infantry company at Anzio, he visited Naples.

THE STREETS OF NAPLES bustled with an exotic mix of Allied troops looking for “I & I”— intercourse and intoxication. It was a surreal and frenetic city, covered in a thin film of volcanic ash from the recently erupted Mount Vesuvius, that Sparks visited that March for a few days of sorely needed rest and recuperation. Australians ambled in their wide-brimmed slouch hats; sinister Goums strutted in their brightly colored burnooses; and at every corner, it seemed, feral water-sellers in coats cut from stolen U.S. Army blankets offered a delicious and tangy lemonade, conjuring it up on the spot, wielding enormous iron lemon-squeezers, then adding a pinch of bicarbonate of soda to make the bitter juice fizz.

Even the hundreds of sadistic MPs in their bright white helmets, batons tucked under their arms, on the prowl for deserters and violent drunks, swore by the frothing limonata. It was the perfect hangover cure. “Biftek, spaghetti,” offered black marketers, profiting from the theft of an estimated third of all supplies landed at Naples, now the busiest port in Europe. “Verra cheap.” “Good brandy. Only five hundred lire.”

On busy streets like the Via Roma pimps and black marketers were almost as numerous as the beggars and emaciated whores. Naples was a vast open-air bordello, it seemed, where everyone and everything was for sale. “You want nice girl?” asked fathers. “Beautiful signorina.” Every few yards, olive-skinned men would tug on a GI’s sleeve, offering yet another temptation. For those with real money, not invasion currency, there were myriad brothels full of women of all ages and body types, dark circles under their eyes, most of them infected with gonorrhea if the warnings plastered on walls along all the approach roads to Naples were to be believed.

The Neapolitan strain of gonococcus was in fact so virulent that even the new wonder drug, penicillin, struggled to combat it. Every Thunderbird, it seemed, was determined not to die a virgin. None had an excuse, given that there were eighty thousand officially registered prostitutes in Naples by that March of 1944. No matter the rank, men fornicated with wild abandon, even if the bella signora was clearly middle-aged and pulled up her DDT-sprayed skirt to reveal a wooden leg.

In nearby Pompeii, they jumped off trucks dubbed “passion wagons” and headed straight past the famous ruins, along narrow cobblestoned lanes to a brothel reputed to be two thousand years old. “A massive plaster penis jutted into the street from above the entrance,” remembered one man. “A red rag was hung from it when the place was open for business.” Of the tens of thousands of Allied troops having sex in Naples that spring, the Thunderbirds in Sparks’s regiment were among the most enthusiastic, judging by the rate of infection with VD, which did not go unnoticed by the top brass, who were outraged that 15 percent of all American hospital beds were now occupied by “clapped-up” GIs. “We were taking more casualties through gonorrhea,” recalled the Australian journalist Alan Moorehead, “than we were through enemy action on the whole front-line.” Sparks would soon receive an acerbic note from his division commander, forty-nine-year-old Major General William Eagles: “Congratulations Sparks, your men have the highest VD rate in the division.”

Kershaw, Alex. The Liberator: One World War II Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau (Kindle Locations 1595-1622). Crown/Archetype.

75TH ANNIVERSARY STORY

To mark fall of Singapore, 15 February 1942.

“LAST FLIGHT FROM SINGAPORE”

By Alex Kershaw

I WAS STUNNED when I saw the battered chest, plastered with customs stickers, sitting in the center of a living room in Springfield, Massachusetts. I couldn’t believe my eyes when a relative of the superb WWII fighter pilot, Art Donahue, opened the trunk and I then looked inside. Here were the personal belongings of one of the American few – eleven renegade crusaders – who fought illegally in the Battle of Britain: his RAF wings, a scrap of fuselage from a downed German bomber, diaries, log-books, and long letters sent almost daily to Donahue’s family in St. Charles, Minnesota, throughout 1940-42.

At the bottom of the trunk was the manuscript of a book that Donahue wrote in the spring and summer of 1942. It was titled ‘Last Flight from Singapore’. I carefully read the yellowed, type-written pages, with Donahue’s scribbled revisions on the flimsy margins, and was awed by the tale this remarkable 29-year-old warrior told. To mark the 75th anniversary of the fall of Singapore, on 15 February 1942, I thought it would be more than worthwhile to revive Donahue’s account of his valiant efforts to defend Singapore from the air.

The story begins in December 1941, a few days before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, which marked the United States entry into WWII – eighteen months after Donahue had first seen combat against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.

IT WAS A relief that be back in a cockpit rather than in some dingy Gibraltar bar trying to kill time playing darts. The smell of oil, burnished metal, and leather had always made Art Donahue feel better. He was delighted that early December of 1941 that he was keeping his flying skills honed through low-level patrols along the Spanish coast with 258 Squadron, based in Gibraltar. And there was always the off chance that he might run into easy prey: German Focke-Wulf Condors flying out of Cadiz to attack Allied convoys in the Atlantic.

On December 7, 1941, Donahue returned to his billet in Gibraltar after watching a movie. Before turning in for the night, he switched on his radio. At 11 p.m., he heard his first news report on the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Some of his fellow Americans serving in the RAF were deeply shocked, but they also celebrated the news of the Japanese attack until the early hours because it signaled the end of American neutrality.

In a letter I found in Donahue’s trunk, I read his reaction to the Japanese attack as he described it to his parents in Minnesota: “For the first few hours after I heard the news of the attack on Hawaii I seemed to take it quite casually. Then when it really began to sink home I found myself more really and truly mad at the Japs than I have ever been able to be toward the Germans—with all their crimes. Somehow, the fact that it’s your own people who have been attacked seems to make a tremendous difference.”

Donahue was in fact so enraged that he decided to apply for a posting to the Far East, but before he could do so he and 258 Squadron received orders to fly part of the way to a new posting which was being kept secret. Just before Christmas Donahue set out on a long journey across North Africa. In Nigeria, early in the New Year, he learned of his final destination—Singapore, garrisoned by some 70,000 front-line troops, including thirteen British and six Australian infantry battalions.

Donahue could not have been more pleased: now he would have a chance to strike back at the Japanese, who had bombed Singapore for the first time on 8 December. On January 29, 1942, 258 Squadron finally arrived in the British colonial outpost, finishing its marathon journey aboard a transport ship. There was no time for rest. Within forty-eight hours, 258 Squadron was in action, defending the island from Japanese dive-bombers. The squadron faced overwhelming odds and had to operate in terrible humidity without adequate fuel supplies, spare parts, or reserves of ammunition.

By February 15, barely a fortnight later, 258 Squadron had been reduced to a few bone-tired pilots and battered planes. Early that morning, Donahue led a search for Japanese invasion barges that had been spotted heading toward the mainland of Singapore. Flying as Donahue’s Number 2—his wingman—was British pilot Terrence Kelly. “You know what I need?” Donahue had asked Kelly just a few days before. “Just a nick. Just something that’ll get me home to an American squadron now we’re in the war.”

Donahue, Kelly, and four other pilots from 258 flew north toward the port of Pladjoe. Oil wells nearby had been set alight to prevent the Japanese from exploiting them. “The smoke rose for several thousand feet before, catching some air current, it spread away like a sign-post, a huge black swathe across the sky pointing to the target and we flew under it as cover,” recalled Kelly. “It was a strange atmosphere—above the queer black cloud, below the darkened jungle broken only by the turgid brown swathes of many rivers which made the Moesi delta.”

Donahue and Kelly spotted a small group of boats and attacked. But then they learned that their victims were not part of the invasion armada that had been reported. “I kept close to Donahue and he was puzzled too, looking this way and that,” recalled Kelly, “and then we came upon the barges.”

Donahue had never seen so many enemy troops so vulnerable to attack: “Often I had machine-gunned German soldiers, sailors, or airmen on the ground or in ships, but always where they either had a little shelter or concealment, or at least could scatter and throw themselves flat. These fellows had no shelter or concealment except the thin sides of their boats, no better than paper for stopping our bullets, and they were jammed in so tight that they couldn’t scatter or throw themselves flat or do anything except just sit up and take it.”

Donahue came in low, around a hundred feet above the water. He made a last check for Japanese fighters—Navy Zeros. The barges loomed larger in the amber glow of his reflector sight. He moved his thumb over to his firing button, wanting to send his first bullets a little high, knowing they would dip. Then he opened fire: “There was an abrupt shattering roar from the guns in my wings and then eighty ghostly white tracers snaking out ahead eagerly, toward the boat and its helpless passengers. They would know nothing more.”

Donahue’s wingman, Terrence Kelly, had the perfect view of the ensuing slaughter: “I probably saw the effect of Donahue’s attack much better than any of my own because I had fallen astern behind him waiting my turn and with nothing to do and not much to think about but watch. I really don’t believe Donahue missed a barge, his guns raking the convoy from head to stern. The bullets made an unforgettable pattern. There was a pincushion of water ahead of the nearest barge which moved along so that as the bullets raked through a barge what one saw was the pinpoints of light in the barge itself.”

Donahue had lost too much altitude, so he pulled the stick back and corrected, aiming at a barge farther in the distance. His aim was again perfect, its effect devastating. Tracers tore into the bodies of twenty tightly packed Japanese soldiers. He could see their faces as they died. Then he began to bank and turn away to attack another barge.

A 20 mm anti-aircraft shell hit Donahue in the calf of his left leg. He looked down in shock at two holes. “One [was] small and round,” he recalled. “The other [was] a gaping sort of thing an inch wide by a couple inches long, with raw red and blue flesh and muscle laid open, before the blood welled up and started streaming out.”

Donahue turned away sharply from the anti-aircraft fire toward an endless green carpet of jungle. The shock began to abate and his instinct for survival kicked in. He was almost a hundred miles from his base. He had a tendency to black out when he began to bleed. Could he stay conscious long enough to get home?

A few minutes later, Donahue began to feel light-headed. He grabbed his trouser leg above the wound and tried to twist it to form a tourniquet. But still his ruptured veins spurted and blood collected in a bright red pool in his heel rest, a metal trough underneath his rudder pedal. He looked at his altimeter, spattered with pieces of his flesh, and knew that if he faded away for even a couple of seconds he would crash. He gritted his teeth, his ears ringing, dots filling his vision.

I mustn’t faint, I mustn’t faint!

Donahue’s vision became blurred. He began to panic.

I am fainting—I mustn’t faint—I am fainting!

The seconds passed slowly. Donahue realized he was still awake. He could hear Hurricane’s Rolls-Royce engine purring. He wondered whether he should crash-land, and whether to shut down the engine before he did so. Then he had a smart idea: he would keep himself awake with extra oxygen. He let go of the stick, reached to his instrument panel, and increased his oxygen supply. Although flying just a few hundred feet above the jungle’s canopy, he was soon breathing enough oxygen to stay wide awake at forty thousand feet. Donahue still grabbed his torn trousers with one hand. He opened his throttle, letting go of the stick again for a second or two, and then checked his wound. He was still losing blood.

There was only one thing for it. “It seemed easy,” he later recalled. “I let go [of] the hold I had of my trouser leg above the wound, grabbed up the torn cloth right over it, twisted it, and then jammed my gloved fist, knuckles first, as deep as I could into the large hole, and held it that way.” Donahue almost blacked out. He tried to breathe more slowly so he could stay conscious. His oil and temperature gauges showed normal. They had not been hit. His reserve fuel tank was still full. Constantly, he turned his head, looking out for Japanese Navy Zeros, flying as low as he could above the trees.

The jungle finally gave way to rice fields and waterways—he was getting close to his home base. He looked down at his wound and saw that it had stopped bleeding: “The red rivulets down my leg and shoe seemed to be stationary, and the puddle of blood in the heel rest was no longer bright but dark, which meant that there couldn’t be any fresh blood on it. The pain, which never had been agonizing, had settled into a heavy ache as from a badly bruised muscle. My hopes of making it really soared.”

Donahue flew south, unable to recognize landmarks because they were obscured by smoke from bombings and many fires. If only he could spot a familiar railway line to lead him home. The weather had now closed in and he had to concentrate hard to avoid several rainstorms. Suddenly, there were the blessed rail tracks. Donahue banked slightly and followed them. And then there it was—his airfield. Now he would have to land with one hand: he dared not pull his gloved one out of the hole in his leg.

Donahue came in low, slowly wagging his wings to show that he was hurt. He let go of the stick for a second to lower his wheels for landing and then he eased off the throttle. Still too much speed. He used his left elbow to throttle back even more. Then the wheels hit the ground and he bounced violently for a hundred yards. “The feeling of triumph at having made it safely made the bad landing seem inconsequential! I felt almost boisterous as I taxied up to the watch office.”

The surviving pilots and ground crew of 258 Squadron ran out to Donahue’s plane and helped him out of the cockpit. A fellow officer dressed his wound, and he was rushed to the nearest aid station. Donahue suddenly feared that if he was hospitalized he would inevitably become a prisoner of the Japanese, who in a matter of hours would seize all of Singapore.

To Donahue’s relief, after a quick call was put through to his squadron, he was carried to an ambulance and driven back to his base. “A Lockheed bomber bound for Java was held up waiting for me at Squadron Leader Thomson’s intercession,” recalled Donahue. “Two hours later I was safely in bed, three hundred miles from the fighting zone, in the Dutch Military Hospital of Bandoeng, a beautiful city in the mountains of west central Java. I had all that I promised myself—a bed to sleep in, with clean sheets, and the prospect of breakfast in bed in the morning! In addition, I had a very pretty nurse to look after me.”

Donahue was lucky indeed. It is believed that the Lockheed bomber that arrived in Java with him aboard was the last flight out of Singapore before it fell to the Japanese. At 17.15 that day, 15 February 1942, as Donahue lay in a hospital bed in Java, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, commander of the Singapore garrison, formally surrendered to the Japanese. Around 80,000 Allied troops became prisoners of war – in Churchill’s words the “largest capitulation” and “worst disaster” in British military history.

ART DONAHUE’S thrilling account of the last hours of Singapore, lyrically described in the yellowing first draft manuscript that I found in his trunk several decades later, was published in hardback for the first time in 1943. Donahue never got to read it. After recuperating from his wounds, he joined 91 Squadron back in England as a flight commander and by August 1942 had become 91’s acting commanding officer, the first and only American in the RAF’s history to lead an all-British squadron. On 30 August 1942, Donahue failed to return from a Channel sweep over Ostend. An obituary in the London Times noted that Donahue “had joined the RAF in spite of considerable difficulties, personal and otherwise, not from any wish for adventure or personal advancement, but rather in the spirit of a crusader who had no illusions about what lay before him, and had counted the cost…He was a very gallant gentleman.”

Dear friend

It’s a great pleasure to invite you to join me on the National War II’s museum’s Soldiers and Spies tour, a unique and truly immersive experience that takes you back in time to many of the extraordinary places featured in my best-selling books, from the bloodiest sands in American history where the Bedford Boys landed to the grand avenues of the City of Light. I believe it’s the most inspiring journey you can make, one that honors the warriors who gave us everything – by making their stories truly personal and memorable – and celebrates their joyous liberation of the most beautiful and romantic city on the planet. We follow in the footsteps of the first wave of Americans to land in Normandy, paying our respects where 19 young men from one small town actually fought and died, also visiting other key sites on D Day such as St Mere Eglise and Utah Beach. After breaking out of Normandy, we explore the most sinister yet exclusive streets in all occupied Europe and then sample the eternal delights of a city that charmed even the most sadistic of Nazi occupiers. And we do it all in high style, staying in grand hotels, experiencing French hospitality at its most authentic and charming at the extraordinary Chateau Brouay, enjoying great wine and cuisine at my favorite restaurants, savoring stories of heroism and sacrifice that will stay with you long after you’ve sipped your last glass of champagne.

I’m very excited and truly honored to be your host. I hope you’ll accompany me on this wonderfully inspiring and deeply moving journey.

To mark the anniversary of the death of Captain Waskow, killed near San Pietro on 12 December 1943, I am posting Ernie Pyle’s deeply moving account and a beautiful letter that Waskow had upon him when he died – it was for his family and captures the immense nobility of man who gave his life for and in service to others….

CAPTAIN WASKOW BY ERNIE PYLE

In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Captain Henry T. Waskow, of Belton, Texas.

Captain Waskow was a company commander in the Thirty-sixth Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and a gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

“After my father, he came next,” a sergeant told me. “He always looked after us,” a soldier said. “He’d go to bat for us every time.” “I’ve never known him to do anything unfair,” another said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Captain Waskow down.

The moon was nearly full, and you could see far up the trail, and even partway across the valley below. Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden packsaddles, their heads hanging down on one side, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other, bobbing up and down as the mules walked.

The Italian mule skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies when they got to the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself and ask others to help. I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you don’t ask silly questions.

They slid him down from the mule, and stood him on his feet for a moment. In the half-light he might have been merely a sick man standing there leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the stone wall alongside the road. We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more; the dead man lay all alone, outside in the shadow of the wall. Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain.

The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. “This one is Captain Waskow,” one of them said quietly. Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally, there were five lying end to end in a long row. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zones. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody comes after them. The unburdened mules moved off to their olive grove.

The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually I could sense them moving, one by one, close to Captain Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear. One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, “God damn it!” That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came, and he said, “God damn it to hell anyway!” He looked down for a few last moments and then turned and left. Another man came. I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the dim light, for everybody was bearded and grimy.

The man looked down into the dead captain’s face and then spoke directly to him, as though he were alive, “I’m sorry, old man.” Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said, “I sure am sorry, sir. Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the captain’s hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face. And he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there. Finally he put the hand down. He reached over and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of the uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

The rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line end to end in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

LETTER FROM WASKOW

“If you get to read this, I will have died in defense of my country and all that it stands for – the most honorable and distinguished death a man can die. It was not because I was willing to die for my country. … I wanted to live for it …

“To live for one’s country is to my mind to live a life of service. To, in a small way, help a fellow man occasionally along the way and generally to be useful and serve. It also means to me to rise up in all our wrath and with overwhelming power to crush any oppressor of human rights. That is our job, all of us, as I write this, and I pray God we are wholly successful.

“Yes, I would have liked to have lived – to live and share the many blessings and good fortunes that my grandparents bestowed upon me. A fellow never had a better family than mine, but since God has willed otherwise do not grieve too much dear ones. … I was not afraid to die. … I prayed that I and others could do our share to keep you safe until we returned.

“I made my choice, dear ones. I volunteered in the armed forces because I felt it my duty to do so. I thought that I might be able and might do just a little bit to help this great country of ours in its hours of need – the country that means more to me than life itself. If I have done that, then I can rest in peace, for I will have done my share to make this world a better place in which to live.

“Try to live a life of service …”

WWII’S GREATEST US REPORTER – ERNIE PYLE

NOT LONG AGO I CROSSED DOG GREEN SECTOR OF OMAHA BEACH – THE BLOODIEST SANDS OF D DAY AND INDEED IN AMERICAN HISTORY. THE IMAGES SHOW MY GROUP RE-ENACTING THE FIRST ACTIONS OF THE BEDFORD BOYS AS THEY LINED UP READY TO ATTACK THE GERMANS.

THE BEDFORD BOYS

By Alex Kershaw

Introduction

Bedford boy Lieutenant Ray Nance, 28, managed to get a few hours’ sleep. He awoke at 2am, dressed in full combat gear. He had not even removed his boots. Nearby were five fellow officers from Company A. By lunchtime, three of them would be dead.
In the non-commissioned men’s berths, a few dozed fitfully. Most sat in silence, alone with their thoughts. Other Bedford boys lay in bunks writing last-minute letters home. Nance knew that some would not live to write another. He felt responsible for them all. He had grown up with these men, trained them to be first-class soldiers, censored their love letters to girls he knew back in Bedford. The men under his command were family.

As Nance was getting up, 21-year-old British Sub-Lieutenant Jimmy Green was being woken by an orderly and told that his flotilla commander wanted to see him urgently. Green was second-in-command of the flotilla, but in full command of the first wave of boats that would land Company A in France.

Green’s commander told him the boats would have to leave earlier than planned because weather conditions in the English Channel were so bad. Green grabbed a cup of tea and a ‘bite to eat’ and then drew his weapons from the Empire Javelin’s store. He had no illusions about what lay ahead. There would be heavy casualties. In his last shore briefing, he’d been told to expect to lose a third of his men and his boats.

After breakfast, Ray Nance gathered his kit and climbed up a gangway. A heavy canvas curtain stopped light seeping on to the deck from below. Nance stepped through and into pitch blackness. He went to the rail and looked out at the dark waters, swelling ominously. Suddenly, he noticed Captain Fellers at his side. Fellers had, like Nance, grown up on a farm outside Bedford. The two were cousins.

Twenty-nine-year-old Fellers was tall and thin, with a prominent chin and rolling gait. He was suffering badly from a sinus infection and looked tired and concerned. Before embarking for France, Fellers had confided in Nance, telling him that very few would come back from France alive. Fellers had studied the Allied intelligence and countless aerial shots and concluded that Company A was being sent to face certain slaughter.

Fellers and Nance both looked out to sea.

‘We stood there awhile,’ recalls Nance. ‘We didn’t say a word, not a single word to each other.

I guess we’d said it all.’

An anti-aircraft gun broke the silence, tracer bullets spitting through the sky, and then a searchlight caught the blaze of an exploding plane. ‘That brought it home to me,’ remembers Nance. ‘This thing is real. It’s not an exercise.’

A loudspeaker called the British naval crew to its stations. The troops knew they would be next.

‘Now, hear this! All assault troops report to your debarkation areas.’ As 34 Bedford boys emerged from below into the cold darkness, Nance touched every one of them lightly on the arm. ‘It was a gesture, a goodbye,’ he says 60 years later. ‘They were the best men I have ever seen in my life.’

The men included husbands, three sets of brothers, pool-hall hustlers, a couple of highly successful Lotharios, a minor-league baseball player destined for great things, and several Bible-reading, quiet young men who desperately missed their mothers and dreamed of home cooking.

The Bedford boys checked weapons and kit, exchanged scribbled home addresses ‘just in case’, wished each other good luck, and tried to bolster others who suddenly looked terrified.

‘This is it, men,’ a loudspeaker blared. ‘Pick it up and put it on, you’ve got a one-way ticket and this is the end of the line.’

REST IN PEACE LYLE

To commemorate the passing of Lyle Bouck, commander pf WWII’s most decorated US platoon, I am posting an extract from THE LONGEST WINTER and several photos.

Chapter 7: The Last Sunset

Lanzareth-December 16, 1944

At 4:03 p.m. precisely, at regimental headquarters in Hünningen, a radio operator received the last transmission from James Fort: “We are holding our position. Enemy strength 75. They are moving from Lanzerath west to railroad.” The message had been sent at 3:50 p.m.

Above Lanzerath, Lyle Bouck passed the word that the platoon would soon withdraw on a signal of three short whistle blasts. Twenty yards away, Bill James finished removing the distributor cap from the last of the platoon’s six jeeps. The Germans would not be able to make use of a single vehicle.

James clambered back into the dugout.

Bouck looked grave.

“What’s wrong, sir?” asked James.

“When I blow the whistle, you go with the others. I’ll stay.”

“Like hell,” said James, “you’re coming with us or we all stay.”

“Okay, you win,” Bouck finally replied. “I’ll go.”

No one would be left behind. The platoon would leave as they had fought-together. But not until they had the cover of near darkness. There was perhaps time for one last attempt to get help. Bouck called for Corporal Sam Jenkins and Private First Class Preston. “Sam,” Bouck told Jenkins. “You and Bob take off down the Buchholz Station road and go to regiment in Hünningen. See if you can find Major Kriz, get us reinforcements or orders to pull out. We can’t hold much longer.”

Jenkins and Preston quickly left their dugout. They had gone fifty yards when they looked back, only to see three mortars land smack on the top of their hole. They hurried on, following a logging trail that led to the position’s rear.

Dusk settled quickly.

Down in Lanzerath, villagers could hear an incessant moaning as dozens of wounded paratroopers were laid out in homes converted into aid stations. Behind the Schur farmhouse, fifty yards to the west of the Café Scholzen, Sergeant Vinz Kuhlbach pleaded with 9th Fallschirmjaeger Regiment officers not to send his last few men to their deaths by attacking straight up the hill toward the Americans’ foxholes. Surely it was time to outflank the American position? Several officers nodded their agreement.

Kuhlbach and fifty other paratroopers gathered in the backyard of Adolf Schur’s house. In the growing darkness they moved into wooded areas leading to the platoon’s right flank. There were precisely eight hours and five minutes of daylight that day. Sunset arrived at 4:35 p.m.

Lyle Bouck knew he had only a few minutes before nightfall. The men would benefit greatly from what was left of the light as they retreated through the deep forest to the rear of their position. Bouck prepared to blow his whistle.

At that moment, Germans were crawling into the rear of the position. Slape and Private Milosevich spotted several among the fir trees, their mottled uniforms blurring into the mist and dusk.

The two had resolved to fight to the very end. Slape was as “scared as hell” but still believed he would somehow live, even with the odds so heavily stacked against him and his men. “About dark, there were Germans all over the area, inside the perimeter,” he recalled. “I told Milosevich, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and I started out of the bunker by the rear entrance and a German shot a hole in my field jacket (still no blood). He was about twenty yards to the left rear of the bunker. There were three of them. A grenade handled the situation nicely.”

Slape dove back into his dugout where he and Milosevich started to fire their last M-1 rounds. With less than a handful of bullets between them, every shot counted.

“Krauts in the woods to the left!” someone shouted.

Then another of the platoon’s last remaining men yelled that the Germans were also infiltrating from the right. Lyle Bouck saw three, perhaps four, figures. He pressed the trigger on his carbine, sprayed the silhouettes, ducked back down, and checked his gun. The two magazines he’d had welded together were empty.

“Did you get anything?” asked James.

“I think so.”

In his dugout at the center of the position, Private John Creger came under machine gun and mortar fire. As he fired back, he heard the puttputtputt of a V2 rocket. He looked up to see it pass over and crash into the woods behind him. To his surprise, it did not explode.

There was a lull in the firing. To Creger, it seemed as if the entire war had stopped momentarily. “I crawled out of the fox-hole to see what the hell was going on,” he recalled. “I spotted this German soldier sneaking up behind us with a hand grenade, and when he saw me, he instinctively threw it at me. The only thing I could do was to hold my head on the ground. Luckily, the grenade was evidently a concussion one and failed to do much damage except for filling my eyes with dirt and rock. I then jumped back into my fox-hole.”

In the nearest dugout to Creger’s, radio operator James Fort peered into the darkness and saw gray figures infiltrating the position in all directions. “One of them fired a long burst from a burp gun,” he recalled. “He hit the radio receiver-transmitter type SCR-284. That took care of destroying it before we surrendered.”

Frantically, Fort removed the bolt from his M-1 and threw it into the snow to prevent the Germans from using it. All he could do now was detonate the grenades he had hung in surrounding trees.

As the Germans closed in, Fort pulled on several wires. The fragmentation grenades exploded all around, but still the Germans kept coming. Then Fort heard a German shout for him to come out of the dugout. It was all over.

Fort slithered out of the front of the dugout with his hands clasped behind his head. A young German paratrooper stood before him, quivering with fear and rage, his finger on the trigger of a burp gun. The German was shaking so much that Fort feared he would fire by accident. The German stepped forward and stuck the gun’s muzzle against Fort’s belt buckle.

“Kamerad?” he screamed.

“Kamerad,” replied Fort.

“Raus, raus!” (Out, out!).

The German led Fort away.

In their dugout, Bouck and James could hear sporadic gunfire and Germans yelling.

Suddenly, the muzzle of a burp gun appeared through the rear exit to the dugout. Bouck instinctively pushed the barrel away from him. There was a huge roar. Brrrrp! Brrrrp! Brrrrp!

James felt himself “floating upward and backward” from the force of impact of the burp gun bullets. Then he slumped to the bottom of the dugout, littered with empty M-1 cartridges and shell casings. “Bill, you’re hit!” cried Bouck.

A flashlight lit up the hole.

Bouck briefly saw James’s face and winced. It looked like his head had been shot off.

“Mein Gott!” cried the German with the flashlight.

Perhaps ten seconds later, two Germans reached into the dugout, grabbed James’s body, and pulled him out.

The Germans then yanked Bouck out. He saw James’s body lying in the snow.

James had taken five or six rounds in the face at close range. He had lost an eye and most of his right jaw. Fragments of bone and bullet were lodged in his brain.

“Wer ist der Commandant?” (Who’s the commander?), shouted Sergeant Vinz Kuhlbach.

Bouck raised his hand.

“I am.”

“Why your men still firing?” asked Kuhlbach.

“They aren’t. They must be yours because we’re out of ammunition.”

A nearby German officer asked for Bouck’s name, but before Bouck could answer a burst of fire hit the officer and then Bouck. They both fell to the ground beside James.

Bouck had been hit clean through his calf. He looked down at his leg. He was bleeding “like a stuck hog.” He somehow managed to get a tourniquet on the leg.

Meanwhile, the Germans seized hole after hole.

Lieutenant Warren Springer and his two fellow forward artillery observers, Technician Fourth Class Willard Wibben and Sergeant Peter Gacki, had used every last magazine for their carbines. Springer had only a couple of bullets left in his Colt .45.

A German yelled into the back of the dugout: “Come out, or we throw grenade in!”

Springer climbed out, convinced that the Germans would soon shoot him and his men. But if he was going to go, he’d rather have a bullet in the back of the head than be maimed by a grenade.

To Springer’s astonishment, his captors held their fire. “When I saw they weren’t going to shoot I said in English and fractured German: ‘Wo ist Dein Hauptmann? (Where is your captain?). We must take care of our wounded.’ I repeated this several times, and one of the Germans who seemed to be the leader came forward and said in English, ‘Be quiet-we are taking care of them.’ He directed Gacki, Wibben, and me to help a wounded German, and at his command the soldiers around us motioned with their rifles and made it clear that we were to get going.”

Private First Class Milosevich and Platoon Sergeant Slape watched as the Germans pulled other men from holes.

“Come out!” other Germans cried. “Hands up! Come out!”

Milosevich spotted a decorated German officer holding a Mauser pistol. He quickly had him in the sights of his M-1 rifle. There were still a couple of rounds in the magazine.

“I’ll get a big medal for shooting this bastard.”

But then something told him not to shoot. He had killed so many young Germans already that day.

Slape picked up his M-1.

“What you doing?” asked Milosevich.

“I’m gonna shoot the Germans!”

Milosevich grabbed the rifle from Slape.

“They’ll kill us all. Don’t.”

Then the burly figure of a German paratrooper appeared in front of their dugout and pointed his burp gun at Slape.

“Go ahead and shoot you son-of-a-bitch,” said Slape.

“I won’t shoot,” replied the German. “I’m a soldier.”

Two more Germans pulled Slape out and began to pat him down. Slape had hidden a hand grenade in his pocket. One of the Germans quickly found it and threw it away.

At the far northern edge of the position, Private Louis Kalil and Sergeant George Redmond were also ordered out of their dugout at gunpoint. The Germans hauled them through the narrow slit at the front, and then Redmond was told to carry Kalil down the hill.

The German captors lined up the able-bodied survivors just inside the tree line and stripped the men of personal valuables and rations. Then several of the Germans raised their burp guns.

This was it. Now they were going to be executed.

Suddenly, a German officer rushed over.

“Nichts! Nichts!” he shouted.

The paratroopers lowered their guns a few inches. The platoon had been spared, for now at least.

A German sergeant walked over to where Bouck lay bleeding in the snow beside Bill James.

“Get up!” he shouted.

Bouck staggered to his feet. The German then ordered one of his comrades to help Bouck carry James down the hill.

Bouck went to James’s side.

“You’ll be all right, Bill,” Bouck soothed. “I’ll get you out of here.”

“Raus mit du!” (Get moving!), cried a German.

Bouck and a German paratrooper lifted James to his feet and began to stumble down the field leading to Lanzerath. It was strewn with so many shell cases and pieces of shrapnel that the metal crunched under foot in the cordite-gray snow.

James briefly regained consciousness.

“Bouck, let’s take them,” he whispered, figuring they could use the German propping him up as a hostage. Then James heard the German cry out: “Ach, Meinen Kameraden!” (Ah, my friends!).

James saw the man’s friends littering the hillside.

“My foot dragged over one of the bodies, face up, a blond kid, his eyes staring that blank stare, his lips parted,” recalled James. “He had no visible mark on him. No blood. But he was dead. My thoughts went to the mothers of these boys and the worry they were enduring at the moment and the anguish they would suffer when they received the news that their sons were dead. Could I but tell these mothers that their boys died brave men-attacking. My heart was crying for these mothers and all humanity when suddenly I thought of my mother.”

If Bouck made it through, he must get in touch with her.

“Bouck, Bouck,” added James, “tell my mother when you get back that I love her and that I didn’t suffer.” Then he lost consciousness. Bouck noticed a German toting a burp gun following behind. They crossed the fence that bisected the hillside. It had been so badly damaged in the battle that they were able simply to step through a gap. Dead Germans were clumped against it.

“Halt!”

Bouck stopped.

The German with the burp gun stuck its muzzle in Bouck’s stomach.

“St. Lo!” the German shouted. “St. Lo!”

“Nein! Nein!” grunted Bouck.

The German was referring to the fierce month-long battle for the strategically vital Norman town that summer. By July 11, 1944, when St. Lo finally fell, his 3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division had lost more than a third of its seventeen thousand men.

The German suddenly pulled the trigger.

Bouck heard it click.

“It’s all over,” he thought. “I’m dead. I don’t even know it. How easy it is to die. It’s not too bad.”

Bouck saw the German’s face, contorted by rage, a few inches from him and realized he was still alive.

It was now pitch dark. The German was even more incensed because his burp gun had failed. He picked up a rifle and stuck it in Bouck’s back. “Oh, no,” thought Bouck. “I’m gonna still get it.”

But there was no click.

“Rausen!” (Get going!), shouted the German.

Bouck struggled to carry James down the hill, now thinking every step might be his last. Then they exited the field through a gate, walked along a road, and entered the Café Scholzen.

Inside, a single paraffin lantern provided light, casting a flickering shadow over a small bar, a cluster of old wooden chairs and tables, and a cuckoo clock mounted on a wall.

“Setz dich!” (Sit down!), ordered a German.

Bouck slumped down, exhausted, on a bench just inside the café, propping James up beside him.

Back at the position, the able-bodied survivors from the platoon were ordered to help carry the German dead and wounded off the hill. Lieutenant Warren Springer watched as the men began to pick up German bodies.

“Pick up that machine gun,” a nearby German officer commanded.

“Nein! Ich bin ein Officier” (No! I’m an officer), said Springer.

The officer glared and then told one of his own men to pick up the machine gun. Springer would not retrieve weapons for able-bodied Germans but was willing to help with the wounded. “I had nothing against them once they’d been shot,” he recalled.

Some of the platoon began to use their mackinaws as litters. It was back-breaking work given the quantity of German wounded and the distance-around two hundred yards-that they needed to be carried into the village.

James Fort grabbed one end of a mackinaw. Milosevich held the other end, and they began to lug two of the German wounded down the hill. Fort was so soon so exhausted that he felt close to collapsing. “Risto, I can’t go another step. It’s too heavy.”

“On three, drop them,” said Milosevich.

On three, they dropped the makeshift litter and collapsed in the snow. The wounded Germans screamed.

A German paratrooper rushed over.

“Up!” he ordered.

Milosevich and Fort got to their feet. As soon as the paratrooper had moved away, they dropped the litter again.

When Lieutenant Warren Springer reached the village, he was ordered into a room adjoining the Café Scholzen. A German officer stood waiting to interrogate him.

Springer calmly placed his gloves on a nearby table.

“I’m only going to tell you my name, rank and serial number.”

“I’m not going to press you,” replied the German in English. “I already know who you are. You’re from the 371st Artillery Battalion.”

Springer did not reply.

There was a long silence.

“How long do you think the war’s going to last?” the officer finally asked. “Maybe three or four months.”

The officer looked bored.

“You can go,” he said, motioning for two of his men to take Springer away. Springer looked over the side-table. His gloves had disappeared.

“Hey! Meine Handschue, meine Handschue!”

The officer snapped at a couple of his men, and Springer’s gloves reappeared. Springer was taken next door into the main café. As he entered, he saw Bill James seated on a bench beside Bouck. James had been patched up by German medics. Only one eye and his nose were visible through brown paper bandages, which the Germans used instead of gauze. Springer joined his men in one corner.

Sometime later, Lyle Bouck noticed blood seeping through his field jacket. He checked inside-a bullet had grazed his upper body. He looked down at his leg. The wound was not too severe: he had been able to hobble to the café from the position without the pain overwhelming him.

Outside, meanwhile, members of the platoon had been lined up against a wall. “Even though they [the Germans] were our enemies,” recalled John Creger, “they showed their respect for our gallant stand against them. One said: ‘Amerikaner is very good soldier.’ . . . A German officer took my cigarettes and offered each of us one and then kept the rest of the pack.”

One by one, Private Creger and his buddies were then brought into the café. Bouck watched as Sergeant George Redmond carried in a wounded man: as with James, only his nose and eye were visible because of the extensive bandaging.

Bouck suddenly realized it was Private Louis Kalil.

Sergeant Redmond laid him down on the floor. Others from the platoon walked over to check on him, wanting to know how bad the wound was. “I was just looking out of my right eye and that was it because the rest of my face was covered up,” recalled Kalil. “They didn’t realize how bad it was. Neither did I.”

Kalil had still not been given any morphine. His embedded teeth caused him maddening pain. But he was glad to be alive, amazed that he had not been shot. Thank God their captors were not SS. They were in the hands of the German army. Perhaps that was why they had not been executed.

Then the Germans brought in Private Joseph McConnell. His field jacket had been cut away, and he had a bad gash in the shoulder. He was placed near some wounded German paratroopers. The café now seemed like a strange combination of a command post and an aid station. Bouck asked a German who looked like he had some authority if James could be allowed to lie down next to Louis Kalil. It was exhausting having to prop up James, whose blood was now soaking Bouck’s shoulder, and James would be more comfortable if he was laid down. The German conferred with another officer and then agreed.

Private First Class Milosevich watched as James and the other wounded men from his platoon were placed together. It filled him with pride to watch his buddies endure their pain so stoically. “They were really hurt. Boy, they were hurt. James, at least three bullets in his face; Kalil, a grenade in his face; McConnell hit in the shoulders. But they never said a word. There was no crying. Downstairs, they had more German wounded, and they were screaming. The super race was screaming.”

Bill James drifted in and out of consciousness. “Lying there bleeding all over the place, I thought I was dying. There was this clock hanging there going tick, tick, and every fifteen or thirty minutes the little gong would ring. The clock got into my brain. Whatever was left of my brain, the clock was working at it, trying to keep me focused on life.”

JIMMY GREEN’S ACCOUNT OF JUNE 6 1944

This was provided by Kevan Elsby to the BBC in 2003. A fantastic account by the Brit who landed the Bedford Boys in exactly the right place – Dog Green – at the right time, 6.32am H Hour, June 6 1944.

[The photos are by Robin Kershaw of Alex Kershaw showing where Jimmy Green looked that morning as he surveyed the German defenses…]

I was born on the 4 July 1921 in the city of Bristol, England. It had a long association with the sea for the Cabots sailed from Bristol in 1497 and discovered Newfoundland. Bristol was also involved in the triangular trade — providing workers for the plantations in Virginia in return for the tobacco that the local manufacturers W D and H O Wills turned into the Woodbine cigarette so popular with British servicemen in the two world wars.

Seeing ships from all over the world in the centre of Bristol gave me a longing to go to sea. My family spent their holidays in the 1930s at Weymouth and it was there I saw the British fleet and went on board HMS Hood on a Navy Day.

As soon as war broke out in September 1939 I volunteered for the Royal Navy, but there were no vacancies. It was not until after the Fall of France in 1940 that I was able to join the Fleet Air Arm as a trainee pilot. I was fortunate (though I did not think so at the time) in not passing the course, as most of those cadets who became pilots did not survive the war.

I was given the option of staying in the Fleet Air Arm as observer or joining the executive branch as a potential officer. I spent most of 1941 in HMS Bulldog, an old destroyer on North Atlantic convoys. In May 1941 we captured U-110 with its Enigma machine and code books intact. I was on deck behind the 3.5-inch guns when U-110 was captured. A British sailor who could speak German took my place in the boarding party. The German prisoners were told of the invasion of Russia, which we heard over the ship’s radio, but they would not believe us, saying it was British propaganda.

I spoke with one of Goebbels’ propaganda officers, who was at sea for the first time. We spoke in French. He would not believe me.
Life aboard HMS Bulldog was dreadfully uncomfortable. Above deck, waves as high as houses would crash down. I was often very cold, spending endless hours staring out to sea. Below deck, there were too few hammocks, so I had to sleep on a locker, tossed and turned by every movement of the ship, with seawater sloshing around everywhere. It was the worst year of my life!

After being commissioned as a sub lieutenant in February 1942 I opted to serve in Combined Operations and joined 24th R Boat Flotilla. I was a keen sportsman, playing rugby, cricket and football. Being part of an assault flotilla allowed me to indulge my interest in sport more frequently. We were assigned to Lord Lovat’s 4th Commando and took part in the Dieppe Raid and lost our Flotilla Officer when we ran into a German convoy.

Early in 1944 I joined 551 Landing Craft Assault (LCA) Flotilla at Plymouth as its Divisional Officer (otherwise known as Executive Officer, 1st Lieutenant or second in command, and generally known as ‘Jimmy the One’.) I joined the navy as George and came out as Jimmy.

551 Flotilla was based in HMS Ceres, an old cruiser permanently anchored in Plymouth Sound to protect the dockyard and city from German raids. The Luftwaffe flattened the centre of Plymouth in 1940 and 1941, but the dockyard was virtually untouched.

The German air raids ceased in 1941 so life on board HMS Ceres was peaceful. Our 18 LCAs were moored close to Ceres and we were able to carry out exercises and use dockyard facilities to bring our craft up to operational standards. We also managed to play an occasional game of football against local opposition.

We were really awaiting the arrival of SS Empire Javelin (our mother ship) recently built in the USA and converted to a Landing Ship Infantry (Large). It was manned by a Merchant Navy crew and had davits equipped to hoist our LCAs on board. The Javelin spent a few days in Plymouth where we worked out operational procedures for hoisting and lowering the LCAs with mixed RN and MN crews.

After a short stay in Plymouth, SS Empire Javelin sailed to Scotland and anchored in the Holy Loch north of Dunoon. Here we came under the orders of a Commodore of the US Navy. The Javelin carried a Royal Navy Lieutenant as Liaison Officer between the US Navy, Royal Navy and Merchant Navy. He was the Senior Naval Officer Transport and known to all of us, unfortunately, as SNOT. He had received from the US Navy two manuals entitled ‘From Ship to Shore. Volumes 1 and 2′. He passed them to the Flotilla Officer, Lt Freddy Grant, who passed them on to me to read, learn and inwardly digest. The books detailed the procedures for taking troops on the landing craft, which circled off the troop ships until such time as they were called in to load their passengers from scrambling nets. We took part in a couple of exercises using these procedures with limited success.

The LCA had a crew of four — a coxswain, two seamen and a stoker in the engine room responding to a telegraph and voice pipe operated by the coxswain. The LCA had two petrol engines fuelled by 100 percent octane, which it gobbled up rapidly giving a comparatively short range. It was also not designed to go round for a long time in circles and I was made aware of the discontent of the crews, particularly the stokers who had bells constantly ringing in their ears as coxswains tried to maintain station. I wasn’t particularly happy circling around the rear of a transport waiting for my number to be called.

I conveyed my criticisms to the Flotilla Officer and SNOT, having doubts about the system working in the English Channel in the night and in a possible gale. My arguments were accepted and it was decided to invite the Commodore to lunch aboard the Javelin to discuss our problems. I assembled a colour detail complete with Bosun’s whistle to pipe the Commodore aboard. He duly arrived on time, acknowledged the presentation of arms by the colour party and greeted us with a ‘Hiya Boys! Where’s the bar?’ He later agreed to our method of having troops loaded on board the Javelin, loading them into LCAs at the davits and lowering them into the water. We found that troops normally preferred this method rather than using scrambling nets.

We continued our training in Scotland, exercising with troops both by day and night. The Javelin did sail south to take part in Exercise Fabius on Slapton Sands. Live ammunition was used in this exercise and my first wave had little time after the ceasefire to make for the shore. At the given time the bombardment ceased and we made full speed for the beach. As we neared the shore about ten minutes after cease fire we were straddled by a salvo of 14-inch shells from USS Texas, which missed our craft but soaked most of the occupants. Observers reported that we were all sunk, which gave rise to rumours over casualties. There was of course another action off the Isle of Wight during the earlier Exercise Tiger with the landing craft for Utah Beach, when E-Boats got amongst the convoy of troop ships making for Slapton.

Early in June the Javelin arrived at Portland and we took on board from Weymouth harbour the 1st Battalion of 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division along with other support units. They were a friendly but shy bunch of fresh-faced country lads who must have felt at home in Ivybridge — a small town in Devonshire, where they had trained for the invasion.

There were a series of briefings at the Pavilion in Weymouth and I had a separate briefing for my particular assignment. I was the leader of the first wave and it was my task to land A Company of 116th Infantry Regiment at Vierville sur Mer at 05:30 on 5 June. We were referred to in the flotilla as ‘The Suicide Wave’, something that we felt with pride represented the danger we faced rather than the prospect of casualties. We had trained day and night, including fog. Many of the men in 551 Flotilla had taken part in earlier landings in the Mediterranean. Like so many men on D-Day, we felt we simply had a job to do and that we were ready for it — ready for the war to end and ready to get on with it. When troops were aboard the Javelin, it was very cramped and the bar was closed, so we were ready to get the troops off the ship too.

I had six craft of 551 Flotilla under my command plus two LCAs from HMS Prince Charles carrying two platoons of C Company 2nd US Rangers. They were to come to the Javelin and tag on to my right column then come into line abreast on my signal so that we all landed at the same time 05:30 on 5 June.

The officer commanding A Company 116th Infantry Regiment was Captain Taylor Fellers who I believe served in the National Guard at Bedford Virginia. He was a very serious, thoughtful officer who seemed a lot older than our sailors who were in their late teens or early twenties. It was his objective to secure the pass at Vierville sur Mer, which led off the beach between the cliffs. It was my task to put him and his Company plus the Rangers on the beach at the right place and at the right time. For as far as I could see on D-Day in both directions, Captain Fellers was the first American soldier to set foot on Omaha Beach in front of the Vierville sur Mer draw. The beach was empty, apart from the beach obstacles laid by the Germans.

Taylor Fellers spoke to me of his concern that this would be the first time that he and his Company would see action and asked me to give them every support. He sought me out on the Empire Javelin. I assured him that if we saw any Germans we would certainly open fire with our Lewis guns. In the event, we were unable to do so. We landed about 100 yards below the beach obstacles soon after low tide and hundreds of yards from the edge of the beach. It was dull, grey and overcast. Like so many, we could not make out a single German. We knew they were there, but we could not see them. With the LCAs rocking up and down on the surf, we were in more danger of shooting down the American troops in front of us.

The Javelin sailed from Portland harbour on the evening of the 4 June 1944 in the teeth of a gale. A few hours later we were recalled to Portland harbour as the invasion had been postponed for 24 hours. H Hour was amended to 06:30.

I turned in at about 22:00 hours on the night of the 5 June with instructions for a call at 04:00 as we were due to launch at 04:30. I was shaken at about 03:30 by Able Seaman Kemp who combined his duties as Captain of the Heads (toilets) with looking after the officers — I don’t think there was any reason why he combined both tasks. He asked me if I would be good enough to report to the Flotilla Officer as the launching time had been changed. At first, I was annoyed at being woken early. The ship was bouncing around in the heavy seas — little different from the previous day. Freddy told me to get the first wave launched as soon as possible as I could not make my planned rate of knots in these conditions. My craft LCA910 was on the starboard side of the lower deck with LCA911 behind me followed by the LCA coxed by Leading Seaman Massingham.

Captain Taylor Fellers and 31 of his men were waiting at the davits opposite LCA910 and were soon taken on board to be launched in the pitch dark into unfriendly sea. The lowering into the water was a bit of a nightmare as the heavy block and tackle was moving around and had to be secured against ones body before the hook could be released from the ring of the LCA. The after hook had to be released first while the LCA maintained position until the forward hook (my responsibility) could be released. My coxswain was Leading Seaman Martin of Newfoundland (How I blessed those Cabots from Bristol for discovering a land which produced such an excellent seaman). Instead of my normal sternsheetsman (the sailor at the back) I had been given at the last minute Signalman Webb to work a brand new signal set — also given to me at the last minute.

Webb was delighted to be given the opportunity to see action instead of manning the signal station in the Javelin. As LCA910 was being unhooked we were hit in the stern by LCA911 and the stoker told the coxswain through his voice pipe that we were taking in water in the engine room. I had to clamber through the troops to the engine room only entered through the stoke hole on the after deck. After a discussion with the stoker and Webb we thought we could keep afloat if Webb, sitting at the open stoke hold, used a hand pump at its maximum.

After this minor diversion we found the American patrol craft, which was to escort us part of the way to Vierville. We set off in two columns of three, like Nelson at Trafalger, with LCA910 at the head of the starboard column and my second in command Sub Lieutenant Tony Drew at the head of the port column. There was no sign of the two LCAs from HMS Prince Charles, so we set off without them. In fact, they were close behind us on my right flank, but I could not see them in the dark. I had been aboard the US patrol craft after Exercise Fabius and had seen its radar, which was far more accurate than my magnetic compass.

It was heavy going in the rough seas and we were shipping water over the bows. However we were on course and on time. About five miles from the coast we parted company from the US patrol craft with mutual signals of respect.

A few minutes later we came upon a group of Landing Craft Tanks (LCTs) wallowing in the heavy seas and making about half our speed. I muttered something like ‘What the hell are they doing here!’ Taylor Fellers, who had been sitting on a bench with his men, joined me and told me the LCTs were carrying tanks scheduled to land before us and lead A Company up the beach. This was a complete surprise to me but it didn’t make much difference, as they had no hope of getting there on time. We left them in our wake and never saw them again.

It was beginning to get light and the bombardment by the battleships and cruisers had ceased. I could vaguely make out the French coast through the gloom and noticed puffs of smoke moving along the top of the cliffs. Dismissing the thought that it was the USS Texas emptying its gun barrels, I believed that it was a steam train puffing its way along the coast to Cherbourg.

It was approaching the time to form line abreast and make our dash for the shore. I turned round to see how the other craft were coping. I was just in time to see the bow of LCA911 dipping into the sea and disappearing below the waves. I believe 911 had been damaged during the collision with 910, whilst lowering the boats from the Javelin.

All the crew and soldiers had life jackets and I could only hope they would keep everyone afloat until I returned. It goes against the grain for a sailor to leave his comrades in the sea, but LCA910 had no room and our orders were explicit that we were to leave survivors in the sea to be picked up later. It was essential to land on time.

A few minutes later as we neared the shore I picked out some nasty looking pill boxes and hoped they were not manned. A group of LCT(R)s — tank landing craft carrying rockets on their decks — came up behind me and launched all their rockets woefully short. Not one came anywhere near the shoreline. The heavy swell must have played havoc with their range finding. I remember shaking my fist in anger.

I then gave the signal to form line abreast and told signalman Webb to stop pumping and take cover. Martin pulled down the cover over his head and was guided by me through slits in his armour-plated cockpit. I was watching a particularly menacing looking pillbox at the mouth of the Vierville sur Mer draw in my binoculars and thinking that if it was manned we were going to be in trouble.

There was a loud bang in my right ear and I turned to see a LCG (Landing Craft Gun) blazing away with its 4.7s and scoring direct hits on the pillbox. I wished it could have stayed longer but it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. I had no idea we were getting support from other landing craft. One of the LCAs in the left flank was hit by an anti-tank bullet, passing through the armour plating on both sides of the boat and catching one of the American troops, who was vary badly injured.

Now we were alone, at the right beach at the right time. Taylor Fellers wanted to be landed to the right of the pass and the other 3 boats in the port column just to the left of the pass. We went flat out and crunched to a halt some 20 or 30 yards from the shore line. The beach was so flat that we couldn’t go any further so the troops had to go in single file up to their waists in water and wade to the shore through tidal runnels. Taylor Fellers was gone as soon as the ramp was lowered before I could wish him luck, followed by the middle file, then the port file and the starboard file as practised and in good order. They all made the beach safely and formed a firing line at a slight rise. At this time there was a lull in the German firing. They had been plopping mortar shells around us and firing an anti-tank gun but suddenly they ceased fire. A German veteran told me recently that they had been ordered to preserve ammunition. They had been ordered to wait until they had a clear target within range.

The beach was very wide. About 100 yards from the shore line were some obstacles. We knew the beach was mined and this was why we landed at low tide. About another 200 yards further on from the obstacles were the dark cliffs where the Germans were in their prepared positions. In my briefing I was told that the beach would be bombed the night before and there would be craters where the advancing troops could shelter. The beach was flat as a pancake with not a crater in sight.

The landing took quite a time and I was itching to return to the survivors of LCA911 hopefully still afloat about a mile offshore. I looked to my left and saw Tony Drew up to his neck in water around the stern of his LCA and obviously in some sort of trouble. He told me much later that he had reversed off the beach into a tank, most probably from the US Navy LCT(A)2227, which landed immediately to our left.

I was intending to see if I could help Tony Drew, when my coxswain told me that there were some of our lads on the beach. I thought it unlikely but he was right. The two craft with the Rangers on board had landed just behind us and to our right. The crew of one of these craft were waving frantically at us and wanted us to take them off. I thought twice about it, with Tony Drew and the survivors from LCA911 in mind, but I couldn’t leave them on the beach so 910 went into the beach again, grounded and picked up the crew. One of them was wounded and had to be supported by his shipmates. They told me that they had been hit by 4 mortars on landing which destroyed their LCA and killed a number of the Rangers. There was no one else nearby so I assumed the Rangers had looked after their own casualties.

Tony Drew was still up to his neck in water around the stern of his LCA. He told me that his rudder had jammed, but he could fix it. This LCA made its way ten miles back to the Javelin without steering, using the twin engines to steer the boat.

It was about this time that I remembered to send a signal reporting our landing. I looked round for Signalman Webb who was on the after deck sweeping off the remains of our smoke float which had probably been destroyed by a near miss from a mortar or anti-tank shell. He obviously enjoyed his role as a seaman — much more exciting than relaying signals in the Empire Javelin. We sent a signal to the effect of, ‘Landed against light opposition.’

We formed up again and set off to find the survivors of LCA911. They were still bobbing around in the heavy swell. I was told that the crew of 911 had been picked up by a patrol craft, which then made off at speed with Petty Officer Stewart hanging on to a rope. (His arm was later amputated and he was invalided out of the Navy). We managed to get everyone on board with some difficulty as an exhausted sodden soldier carrying a vast amount of kit is very heavy to lift. I had to use my sailor knife to cut the straps releasing the kit before being able to lift survivors aboard, leaning over the side of the boat and being held by my legs. In some cases I had to lower the ramp and lift exhausted soldiers in over the bow. No one was left in the water. Years later, I was informed by survivors from A Company of 116th Infantry Regiment, which the signalman had downed, weighed under by his signal equipment.

The survivors asked about their comrades and I told them that they had landed as planned. Many wanted to be taken to the beach, but they were in no fit state to take any further action. I handed round my ships Woodbines (made by W D and H O Wills of Bristol from Virginian tobacco) and apologised for not having any American cigarettes.

We returned to the Empire Javelin and took several shots at hooking on. The Javelin had to up anchor and make a lee, the conditions were still so rough. We had never set sail in such seas. Martin was hit by a swinging block which threw him from one end of the boat to the other, splitting his forehead open to the bone but we eventually made it and handed our survivors over to the waiting medical staff.

I have absolutely no idea what I did when I returned to the Javelin. There is a gap in my memory and my next recollection is of entering Plymouth harbour the following day to an amazing reception. Plymouth sound was full of ships waiting to depart to Normandy and they recognised that we had come from there as our six empty davits revealed our losses. The surviving landing craft were badly shot up. As we came to anchor we were greeted by all the ships sounding their sirens as a signal of their respect. It was a very moving and rare experience. We were the first vessel to enter Plymouth harbour from the invasion. 551 Flotilla formed up on deck. We had been told to expect one-third losses and in respect of the landing craft, the planners were right. We returned with 12 out of 18 LCAs, with many of the remainder badly shot up.

The second and third waves of LCAs from our flotilla had landed between 0700 and 0800, by which time the tide and reached the beach obstacles and the Germans had them within machine gun range and subject to more accurate mortar fire.

One sailor from our flotilla, Bill Wheeldon, was killed on Omaha Beach. One of our crews had called to him from the water’s edge, but Bill continued to cross the beach with the American troops and was shot down. Many of our flotilla were injured and invalided out after D-Day.
All of the American troops on LCA911, including the CO Captain Taylor Fellers, were killed on Omaha Beach. Many other troops transported on the Javelin and landed by 551 Flotilla were killed. It was a long time before we discovered the extent of the casualties.

The last time I saw the troops of A Company of 116th Infantry Regiment, they had been in conference at the water’s edge and were forming an assault line parallel to the water line, like a scene from The Somme. I expected them to run off in various directions, like the commandos we had trained with. Having completed our task, our attention turned to getting back to the Javelin and away from the beach. Captain Fellers had discharged himself from hospital to lead his men on D-Day.

It is not widely known, but there was a substantial Royal Navy presence on Omaha and Utah Beaches on D-Day. On Omaha Beach, four battalions of American troops were landed from seven British transport ships and LCA Flotillas. Both of the 2nd and 5th the US Ranger Infantry Battalions were with the Royal Navy, as were the 1st Battalions of 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division and the 1st Battalion of 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division.

Some of our sister flotillas, including 550 Flotilla on the SS Empire Anvil at the eastern, Colleville end of Omaha Beach, suffered higher casualties. A number of British sailors were killed on Omaha Beach. Many other landing craft, amongst them LCTs for example, were British.
We had to replace and repair our craft at Plymouth and take on fresh crews as quickly as possible so as to make many more trips to Normandy, ferrying men and equipment until suitable harbours could be opened. In November 1944 our services were no longer needed and we left the Javelin at Fowey where we moored our craft in the river there. Shortly after leaving SS Empire Javelin we heard that she had been sunk by a U Boat in the Channel off Cherbourg, where she still rests at the bottom of the sea.

551 Flotilla was earmarked to take part in the recapture of The Channel Islands — the only part of Britain to be captured by the Germans. The reception given to us by the Channel Islanders was rather different from the one we received in Normandy. We were the first into harbour, with the Germans still at their stations. We enjoyed several days of celebration then rounded up the German Garrisons and took them back to Southampton to POW camps. I remember being driven around Jersey in a car that had been hidden in a haystack for the duration of the War.

The flotilla then sort of disintegrated. We were destined for the war against Japan but VJ Day arrived as we were embarking for the Far East. The officers’ postings were cancelled but the crews were sent as far as India where they remained for several months before return to Britain for demobilisation.

I buried my wartime memories for over 50 years and it was not until I became a widower in 1995 that my thoughts returned to my old shipmates. I joined the Landing Craft Association and through them discovered that my flotilla had been holding reunions for a number of years. They had tried to contact me but I had joined the Army after taking a history degree at Bristol University and spent several years in territories throughout the world linked to Britain. I left the Army Education Corps as Lt-Colonel in 1976, so I had flown, sailed and also served in the army during my military service.

I eventually made a reunion in 1997 and once the initial reticence was overcome became shipmates again. There was however an underlying rancour directed at American writers, which had escaped me as I had no desire to resurrect old forgotten nightmares. However, when I read these accounts written by S L A Marshall and Stephen Ambrose, I could see why our veterans were angry. These two writers had no idea what occurred at 06:30 on D-Day so invented some cock and bull yarns to cover their ignorance. According to these writers reluctant British coxswains had to be persuaded at the point of a Colt .45 to land their soldiers on the beach, including the boats under my command. If these two writers had bothered to study photographs of LCAs they might have noticed a box shaped turret ‘forard’ on the starboard side (up front right). This armour-plated turret enclosed the coxswain where he controlled the LCA — well clear of any Colt-toting mutineer intent on assuming command.

I can personally shoot down another flight of fancy dreamt up by Marshall and repeated by Ambrose, who describe how the lead craft (mine) with Captain Taylor Fellers and 31 men aboard was struck by a German weapon (A V3 perhaps) which ‘vaporised’ the LCA and all of its occupants before it could reach the shore. As Taylor Fellers and his men all landed safely and were later killed on the beach one wonders how Ambrose could write such fiction. The body of Taylor Fellers was found on the beach and brought back to the USA and buried in Bedford Cemetery. I laid a wreath on his grave on behalf of 551 Flotilla when I was privileged to attend the dedication of the Memorial gate at the magnificent D-Day memorial.
A bare minimum of research was all that was required to find out how Taylor Fellers died and where he was buried.

Matters were hardly improved by the film ‘Saving Private Ryan’. I have no objection to the film as such because it wasn’t a documentary and Spielberg can use his remarkable talents to portray a story. But when asked by a BBC interviewer why he did not show any British involvement, he replied ‘This is a film about Omaha Beach. There were no British on Omaha. There is no role for the British.’ Spielberg also claimed that ‘Historical accuracy is the bedrock of films such as Saving Private Ryan.’ He follows the tradition of Marshall who wrote in an article ‘Normandy was a great American victory.’ Perhaps it was all a bad dream and I was not there.

‘Saving Private Ryan’ depicted C Company of 2nd Ranger Infantry Battalion landing on the Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach. Their two British LCA landing craft and the six LCAs carrying A Company of 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division of the Army of the United States of America came under my command at that exact point and time. I was British then, as were all of the hundreds of other British sailors landing American troops on the morning of D-Day. Denying the presence of the Royal Navy on Omaha Beach or dishonoring them was a gross injustice.
On a more serious note, Omaha deserves a place in American history.

Those who died bravely at Omaha deserve to have their death recorded accurately. We who survived owe it to them. We owe it to those who served in World War Two to remember their stories, like mine, and we owe it to them to remember them accurately, as they actually happened.
As Lieutenant Ray Nance, a veteran of and second in command of A Company of 116th Infantry Regiment put it ‘We were with the British. They were the best.’

Jimmy Green

BETTY WILKES – A BEDFORD GIRL

I interviewed Betty Wilkes several years ago, after I had published The Bedford Boys. I recently found the transcript having learned that she had passed away. She lost her husband, Master Sergeant John Wilkes, on D Day, 6 June 1944. He was killed on Omaha Beach with 18 other men from the community of Bedford, Virginia.

How did we get word that the boys were finally shipping out to England? One of the boys must have gotten a telephone call through to Bedford, and we got word of it. My friend Viola, whose husband Earl Parker was in Company A with my husband, called me and said: ‘Well, do you want to go to New York?’ I said: ‘Well I guess so.’ Her dad brought us to the station in Bedford. We caught a train out, in the evening, the next week. It was crazy. But I had said I would see John any way I could. Of course, we couldn’t get a call through from our hotel in New York. We tried and tried. The next day we decided to try to go back to Bedford.

I lived in Bedford with my sister Mildred. We had an apartment together. She was very important to me. We worked together. She was five years older than me. I was 21 when John was killed. When I found out about his death, I didn’t want to go back to work. After I got the telegram, about a week later, my sister said: ‘I’m not going back to work until you go.’ I guess that pushed me. I didn’t want her to lose her job on account of me. I didn’t want to lose mine either. Having to do something helped.

Viola Parker, who also lost her husband Earl on D Day, was close to me. We talked probably about every night. Viola would always talk about Earl, saying: “when he comes back…” She would not accept that he had been lost. I just listened and didn’t want to tell her he wasn’t coming back. She went to see [Lieutenant] Nance [who had been on Omaha Beach] and he told her Earl had been killed and then she finally accepted his death. She was trying to keep hope alive and I didn’t want to stop her having that….

I was with Viola the night that Danny [her daughter with Earl] was born in 1943. Her mother was over at the hospital and called me. Viola had taken a pencil and paper with her when she went to the hospital. They brought her back to her room in the hospital after she gave birth. I was there. She was soon looking for a little draw in the bedside table. She brought out this paper and pencil and she tried to sit up and write to Earl, just a few hours after she had given birth. We tried to get her to go back to sleep.

I went to Normandy for the 40th anniversary of D-Day in 1984. I met a medic, Cecil Breeden, who had landed in the first wave with my husband, John. We met at Dulles airport first, boarding a flight. He helped me with my luggage. He wanted to know where I was from. His eyes popped out when I said I was from Bedford. In Normandy, he took me down onto the beach and showed me where he had found John’s body. He said John hadn’t suffered – he was shot through the forehead.

I had John’s body brought back to Bedford in 1947. I felt better because I knew he wanted to come home. There was some closure there. I had brought him home. His mother and father are buried right behind him now. His sister is too. When we saw the coffin, his father said to me: ‘I feel sure that’s him, don’t you?’ I replied: ‘Oh yeah.’ We could not be certain because we were not allowed to open the coffin.

I still have John’s ring [over sixty years later]…the wedding ring. It’s in a necklace that I wear. The photo shows me near a waterfall. It was a Sunday, on our honeymoon, in 1941. I was eighteen.