大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Callington U3A csv story collectors Peter and Judy Foweraker, on behalf of Reg Hawkings, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I went into the army in 1942 when I was 18, and I did my initial training. Then I was sent to Blackpool for Christmas 1942, where I learned to drive. You had to pass your 鈥楾est鈥� before you could come on leave, so I passed a couple of tests and then came on leave and afterwards was posted to Neath in Glamorgan, to the anti-aircraft battery at the Abbey where I was on the heavy 鈥渁ck ack鈥� guns until 1944.

One of our jobs before we went over to France, was 鈥渇eeding鈥� the Mulberry Harbour (which was being built then at Tilbury) with 鈥渂owfer鈥� ammunition, which was all stored in Hyde Park.

We arrived on 鈥楪old鈥� beach in France on D Day plus one, on one of those American Liberty Boats that they were churning out. Ours was called the Fort Pic, and unfortunately we got hit as we were landing about one o鈥檆lock in the morning. The ship was hit by a glancing blow from a Stuka dive bomber, and the two maritime gunners on the pillboxes either side of the ship were killed. After that we backed off a couples miles so that these two chaps could be buried at sea. Then we went back again and started to offload into landing craft so that we could transfer the cargo to the beach. We had a job getting ashore with our lorries, as the engines had been 鈥渨aterproofed鈥�, and our last job before going ashore was to tape over the air intake to prevent water entering the carburettor. As soon as we hit the beach we should have removed the tape, but the beach master shouted at us and ordered us up the beach, and our engines overheated because the air intake was taped up!

Once the Mullberry Harbours were in position, it allowed the supplies to be loaded from ship to harbour and straight onto the beach for quickness. We saw the supplies on the beach and they were the size of a couple of houses. At the same time we noticed a pipeline that turned out to be 鈥淧luto鈥�, which was the pipe that carried the fuel across the channel for vehicles.

At the same time as we were unloading, the HMS Rodney, one of our biggest battleships, was laying off the coast firing inland at ranges up to 21 miles. The 16鈥� guns were some of the biggest the navy has ever used and threw shells of about a ton. A six-foot man could stand up in the breach section and a small navy rating could have crawled completely up the barrel!

One thing I will always remember was all of our ships in the bay. You could almost have stepped across them; ships of all shapes and sizes. There was a little bit of, what I suppose I felt, pride in that. A wonderful sight!

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