大象传媒

I set sail from England to France on one of the large war ships from a little village just above Brighton. We marched down the street to the harbour where the ship was waiting for us. The people came out of the houses to give us sandwiches, cakes and buns because they knew where we were going.
When we boarded the ship we were ordered down to the bottom deck. The Captain then bolted the trap door shut over our heads. It was a very frightening experience to be locked up down there. We could not get out at all. However, when we were within sight of France the Captain ordered the door to be opened. I said to him 'Why did you lock us in?' He replied that if the ship had gone down then we would have all gone down with it. This would have stopped anyone on the top deck from panicking!
As we came up on the deck there were buzz bombs flying over our heads, making their way towards London. The guns on our ship fired at these bombers.
When the ship finally stopped we started the engines of our lorries and jeeps as they were to be craned up over the sides of the ship on to a steel raft. One of the drivers was stood on the deck when a lorry spun out of control as it was being lifted and broke his leg. The ambulance ship took him straight back to England. In spite of his injury the driver remained cheerful and laughed!
The raft set off across the sea, making its way towards the beach but stopped short. I then had to drive the jeep (with full revs) through the sea to the beach. The RSM sat next to me and said 'Keep going, we are going to drown'. By this time the water was up to our chins and it was very scary. We only just made it to the beach.
Most of the beach was destroyed and we had to stay there for a while as the bombs were dropping. I hid under the jeep. After a while a Soldier came over to me and said 'Are you Ben Hardcastle?' and I said that I was. He then said 'I have seen your brother further up the line, but you can't go up there as the land has been heavily mined'. I never did discover who the Soldier was or how he knew me.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.