大象传媒

鈥�. An eight year olds D-Day

What do I remember about the 6th of June... D-Day ... absolutely nothing! I suppose I must have got up... got dressed...... heard the milkman arrive... walked to the village school... run home for dinner... back to school .. at the end of classes played cricket or football on the village green... in short, an ordinary day for an ordinary eight year old boy living in an ordinary small village in Leicestershire in June of 1944... and yet..... and yet... there must have been something different about that day because upwards of a thousand young men were no longer living our village...and you just can鈥檛 loose that number of people and not notice.

Sixty years later and I am occasionally reminded of those times, because after those young men left I found, lying in the long grass in the field at the end of our garden, a pair of wire cutters... a well designed tool ... I still use them to this day. There, stamped on the metal jaws, is the legend 鈥楿S Government 1943鈥� and when I see that I do remember.

The young men ...well, they were 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the American 82nd Airborne Division... but I didn鈥檛 know that at the time..... to me they were just Yanks!!

Our sense of smell can often be the most powerful of memory joggers. When I first looked into one of their olive green bell tents it was the smell that seemed so unusual. Perhaps it was a thick fug of Lucky Strike cigarette smoke mixed with spearmint chewing gum, damp canvas, gun oil and sweat but it was beyond my eight year old experience ... it was exciting and slightly scary. Their weapons and equipment lay all around and ...oh boy! did I covet those olive green torches with the angled lens and red filter ... did I ever!.

They all seemed tall, rangy men ... blue of eye ... lean of jaw ... well tanned with their gum and their sharply cut uniforms. They were heroes ... or at least they were in the eyes of an impressionable eight year old boy whose horizons had been completely constricted by five years of continuous, depressing, wartime restrictions. Goodness, the furthest I had ever traveled was to see my Auntie in Leicester... 12 whole miles.... these people had come from another planet.
They were a breath of fresh air in the wartime gloom. 鈥極ver paid ... over sexed and over here鈥� ran the popular wartime mantra, but to a small lad asking for gum, running errands, collecting orders for fish and chips from the village chippy, eating some of their rich fruit cake, they were so different ... so extrovert ... they were real soldiers.

Soldiers who would soon be tested to the limits of their endurance and ability, but, in the meantime, the villagers mostly tried to make them feel welcome and for their part, they made every effort to enliven this quiet community... no doubt in a variety of ways... but that was well beyond my eight year old comprehension.

Their raucous summer evenings and mad scrambles back to camp after closing time at the King William IV pub. The unofficial use of our garden as a quick way back to camp to escape the Military Police patrols. My father, disturbed late one night by these incursions, went into the garden brandishing his WW1 pistol ... thank goodness he didn鈥檛 use it ... later he invited a few of these soldiers around for tea. Strange names ... Cloid ... Heinz ... Buddy ... Al ... 鈥� hi kids ... here鈥檚 some candy鈥� and 鈥渉ello Ma鈥檃m ... would you like some butter and tinned ham鈥� Mother鈥檚 eyes widened 鈥渢hank you very much 鈥� with English reserve. Cloid was a cowboy from Oregon... Heinz, now a little deaf, the result of a Bazooka round going off prematurely in the launcher... Al suffering from a terrible sore throat 鈥� this goddamn English weather鈥�. The image of my very small mother administering, as she would for us children, a spoonful of cough mixture ....what was it now.... Famels Syrup?....... to this very large, tough paratrooper remains with me to this very day.

My distant memories ... The strains of 鈥業n the Mood鈥� from wind up gramophones .... the rattle of small arms fire from the local disused Quarry as they continued their weapons training. Elder Brother coming back with dangerous but exciting unused ammunition. Cooking off these cartridges in little fires... hugely satisfying bangs... Health and Safety Executive... eat your hearts out. Those were heady times.

The shouted marching beat as they began their training marches ... the games of baseball on the village green... village girls and soldiers by the riverside ... the colour and laughter of those young men from another Continent who finally, one day, marched out of the village en route to the airfields and the lines of waiting C47鈥檚......leaving us all to withdraw into quiet normality

Recently I visited the D Day beaches .. did the 鈥楶rivate Ryan鈥� thing ...marveled at the impossibility of climbing the steep sand dunes under withering fire..... compared the huge US cemetery at Omaha Beach to the quiet dignity of the British Cemetery at Caen. Saw the Normandy villages in the area of St. Maire-Eglise where the 82nd Airborne parachuted in and held the German reinforcements at bay, giving those on the beaches vital breathing space

......and I remember the Yanks returning to my village very much later, sadly reduced in numbers, and maybe just a little ...even to the eyes of an eight year old boy.... just a little more sombre.

In my schoolboy collection of memorabilia I have a cloth shoulder flash showing a parachute and two capital A鈥檚 close together.... American Airborne... just part of the incredible jigsaw that was D Day 1944

Tony Fewkes

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