大象传媒

A Line Mechanic鈥檚 D-Day

(My father, Wilf Dent was a Line Mechanic in 31 TM Section of the Royal Signals. This account describes his experiences around D-Day.)

Countdown

As we moved into April, preparations were underway for a sea crossing for the invasion of Europe, although we still had no idea when this would be. Rubberised canvas sheeting began to arrive for waterproofing the electronic signals equipment. Vehicle carburettors were sealed to a pipe so that the engines would get their air from above the driver's cab. Batteries likewise had to be sealed and waterproofed, also radio sets, teleprinters and so on. Our only protection, though, was a 鈥淢ae West鈥�, a rudimentary life-jacket, which proved to be surprisingly effective for me.
By the middle of May all ranks were sent on Embarkation Leave, with just forty eight hours to say cheerio to friends and family.
When I got back to camp, I was told that, although it had not appeared in orders, I had been transferred to TAC Headquarters to look after 鈥淪ignals鈥�. TAC Headquarters was to be in charge of the initial assault and follow-up from the beaches afterwards, under Field Commander, General Dempsey.
My chest for holding my tools could now be packed, along with a few of my conjuring items. It was to be transported on the 3-ton mobile Signal Office, admittance to which was by key, making it possible for me to smuggle aboard my camp bed, a luxury item!
Eventually all leave, including compassionate leave, was cancelled and telephones for public use, both inside the camp and out, became 鈥渙ut of use鈥�. We were virtual prisoners in the camp, with no outside contact.
At this time the padre visited 2nd Army Signals to enquire if Jewish soldiers wished to have their Service Pay Book reissued with their religion entered as 鈥淐hurch of England鈥�. I understand that they considered this to be a form of cowardice and thus unacceptable; 鈥渢hey were Jews and would remain so鈥�. I admired them for this, as did many others.

On the Move

At last THE MORNING arrived. We moved off in convoy, heading in a south-westerly direction to our first of several unknown destinations. What we were experiencing was one of the 鈥渋mpossible鈥� secrets of the war. Row-upon-row of 3-ton lorries, armoured vehicles and tanks were now parked throughout the countryside, camouflaged with nets and bracken, alongside hedges or woods. Why a German 鈥渟potter plane鈥� never picked up this vast area of weaponry on the move, I shall never know. For us, though, there was no doubt in our minds that this exercise was for real.
At our first stop, Waterlooville, residents came out with kettles of hot water to make tea for us. In one road a piano appeared and our pianist provided music for both the lads and a civilian audience.
As we neared the coastal towns I was dropped off alongside a field. I was clearly expected and ushered in to what the host sergeant described as, 鈥渢he friendship of TAC HQ鈥�.
Later that evening George Formby and his pianist, Violet Carson, arrived to entertain the troops. The stage was an open top 3-ton lorry, graced by a piano and two chairs. The show started at eight and continued well into dusk, when, as darkness fell, astonishingly, permission was given for another vehicle to strip its blackout filters to illuminate the two figures on stage. They were fantastic and the reception we gave them as George went through his patter, played his ukulele and sang those naughty songs cannot be described. He begged the officer in charge to allow him to come over with us, but permission was refused.
I went to bed wondering what the morning would bring. Immediately after breakfast I was introduced to General Dempsey. He asked if I was familiar with a piece of Post Office equipment called a 鈥淪ECRAPHONE鈥�. This was a special telephone that operated to a similar one, both of which would, at the press of a button, put speech into a scrambled state at each end. I knew about them but did not know their circuits and had never handled one. The General asked if I would try to set one up in his caravan, if he got hold of a handbook and tools.
To my surprise his caravan was quite austere, with his sleeping quarters behind the driver鈥檚 cab and merely partitioned from the map room/living area. The necessary equipment arrived within the hour and I managed to fit it all. Test calls were then made through the normal civilian telephone network to the building which would be the operational headquarters of the whole invasion, Operational Headquarters D-Day. The calls were successful in both directions, in both clear and scrambled speech conditions. Had it not worked, the army would have had to kidnap a civilian post office technician and hold him aboard ship for the period of the invasion!
Within a few hours we moved again on a long, slow journey, ending up at Gosport Docks, which were littered with craft of all shapes and sizes, the majority for beach landing purposes.
Almost immediately I was ushered inside the vehicle deck of a tank landing craft. Each time the vessel was loaded, it seemed to rock and sway so that I was already seasick before we sailed and I continued to be sick during the long delay in sailing caused by the stormy weather.
When we finally moved into deeper waters, the pointed end of the ship rose into the air and then fell back with a heavy thud. Wanting some air, I pushed hard to open one of the very low, narrow doors leading to the outer and upper deck and for a few moments I experienced a sensation like a lift ascending and descending out of control. Huge walls of water rose up to come crashing onto the deck and run off towards the rear. I now understood that the doors were designed to prevent the water from the deck flooding the lower areas inside the hull.
Sergeant Foster went past me, through the doorway onto deck but then the door slammed shut in my face and I was thrown back to the opposite wall. When I managed to open it again and stepped onto deck myself, there was no sign whatsoever of the sergeant and I never saw him again. Eventually I curled up on the floor and dozed between bouts of sickness. As we neared France, I was woken by a concerned American sailor who had brought a bowl of Libby鈥檚 fruit salad to settle my stomach. It tasted wonderful and my seasickness finally disappeared.
I went back on deck only to be told that we had run aground on a sandbank as the tide went out. On the bridge were huddled a number of officers who, like the rest of us, were watching the huge battleships throwing hundreds of shells and rockets into the country behind the beaches, where to the naked eye all seemed fairly quiet. Slowly the tide turned and we watched the water level creep up the side of the hull.
After an hour a smaller troop landing craft was drawn up across the bows of our vessel. Our loading ramp was dropped onto the flimsy handrails along the side of this vessel, making it possible for our vehicle to transfer to this smaller one with a much smaller draught. This enabled us to approach further up the landing beach. We would then be moved off the 鈥渕other鈥� vessel and headed for the beach. From a list on the side of the craft, of names of Italian coastal towns such as Angio, we realised this vessel had already operated for the Italian landings and it gave us a little confidence.
About a hundred metres from the beach, our driver was instructed to go down the ramp, which had been lowered into the water, and move off towards the beach. However, he entered the water with such speed that the wheels went into the mud and stuck. Then the engine misfired and stopped. We were now stuck with the tide rapidly rising up the sides of the vehicle.
The three sergeants, the cook and myself discussed getting out through the window in the upper half of the door but by now it could not be pushed open due to the water pressure. The voice of the officer in the front of the vehicle suggested we wait until the water entered the inside of the vehicle and then open the door and swim out and 鈥渢o hell with all the precious radio equipment鈥�.
Just as we managed to open the door, the landing craft put its propellers into reverse and backed off out of sight. Had it been the same 鈥減erformance鈥� at Angio? I wondered. Anyway, with our Mae-Wests inflated round our necks, we floated quite well and soon stumbled onto an almost deserted, tidy beach.

France

There were only two occupants in sight. One was a man in bathing shorts, instructing us via a loudspeaker to leave the water鈥檚 edge and retire to the sea wall some yards back. The other person was operating a hook and cable device running from a tractor on the shoreline so any vehicles that had not made it to the beach could be winched in. As we watched the recovery of sunken vehicles we also witnessed three jeeps making their way to the shore. Suddenly, within a few hundred yards from the shore, two of them sank and their occupants disappeared from view. None had bothered to inflate their lifejackets.
The breeze along the beach began to turn into a fairly strong wind and we moved up to the shelter of a low cliff, where we saw an area of sand covered by several camouflaged gas capes. As the wind strengthened it blew up the edges of these garments, revealing three dead soldiers, parts of their bodies burnt to the bone and the worst one still carrying on his back the circular canister of a portable flame-thrower. Clearly the liquid container had been penetrated by an enemy bullet and had exploded, killing all three. We were all affected by the sight, but our young driver was so shaken that he had to be cuffed sharply by the officer to bring him round.
Finally we saw our vehicle being towed up by the tractor. Light was now fading and the wind becoming really cold so we parked our lorry by a large German concrete fortification at the rear of the beach and tried to sleep. However, the noise of intermittent machine-gun fire meant that we passed the night merely dozing, myself armed with a wet rifle and the cook more usefully armed with carving knives! We were wet, hungry and a little afraid.
Daylight came quite suddenly and with it the sound of voices, one calling my name. I jumped out to see a jeep with a driver and his mate, well known to me as a member of one of the line sections of 2nd Army Signals.
鈥淭hank God we鈥檝e found you. We鈥檝e been searching for you since yesterday evening. Let鈥檚 get you out of here.鈥� I needed no second telling!
The journey was interesting. Small, yellow, triangular flags with skull and crossbones indicated the area had been mined by the Germans. The fields and ditches were so marked that it must have been impossible to use these areas for farming.
Arriving at a clearing in a wooded area, I immediately saw our 3-ton signals office vehicle, which was to be my home for a few days. As we arrived, so did Major Ireland, an ex-employee of the English Telephone and Telegraph Company. He had only recently arrived in 2nd Army Signals, working in an advisory capacity in operating our mobile equipment with what was left of the continental lines. He came over to our vehicle and from a nearby tree reached down a pair of wires, which he connected to a telephone at the rear of his jeep. 鈥淗ere鈥檚 England!鈥� he said. He turned the handle on the phone and immediately spoke to someone on the other end via, as he explained, the old 鈥渃hannel cable鈥� connecting France to England. Apparently, the previous evening we had taken over and connected up in less than ten minutes the old telegraph building on the French coast that had not been used for five years.
I fitted the phone into the signals office and relocked it because Major Ireland had warned me not to let 鈥渢hose buggers over there鈥� know that the phone line even existed, but I had no idea whom he meant. However, I found out quickly when I was directed to a chateau, a few hundred yards away. It had been taken over for dining facilities for the 鈥渙dd鈥� people like myself who had arrived on the beach for various specific reasons. Most were either newspaper or radio reporters, a noisy crowd who gave the impression that they were already high on spirits, so I now appreciated the Major鈥檚 advice.
By now my clothes had dried out fairly well but I was really hungry and enjoyed my breakfast. We had been provided with emergency rations to last for twenty four hours, consisting of biscuits which could be eaten dry or crumbled into boiling water to make a kind of porridge, and a lump of dried milk, tea and sugar which was stirred into hot water for a mug of tea. Our final comfort was a few cigarettes and a wad of toilet paper!
A little later, a visit to one of the massive German guns was suggested and we went along a track leading inland from our camp. Situated in an area of rock, twenty metres below the surface was a cutting, hollowed out to give a clear view of the coastline. A huge, folding metal door was built into the rock. As we arrived, a Churchill tank moved over the rocky ground towards the door. It fired a circular drum the size of a dustbin at the door, but with no effect whatsoever. Then the tank ejected a liberal dose of liquid along the top of the door and ignited it with a flame-thrower. As the door started to burn, more liquid was pumped on until the whole area was alight with flames.
Suddenly from a narrow doorway at the side of the blazing inferno appeared a stick with a white rag and a German soldier following. As he waved his makeshift flag the flame-thrower was turned off and one by one other soldiers came out. I had seen enough and retired to my vehicle.
All was quiet for a while until a line of the prisoners taken from the gun site were marched past me, all smiling, down to the beach, where details were taken before shipping them back to Britain.
Next, some German officers walked past, also on their way to a prisoner-of-war camp. Then suddenly one broke ranks, ran over to me and in very good English asked me to take a brown paper parcel. 鈥淭hese are medical records of my duties and all my own medical reference books. Please will you pass them to someone who can arrange for me to collect them after the war?鈥�
I took the parcel and as I did, I felt his hand grasp for my fingers as he tried to shake hands. 鈥淵ou look an honest man, Corporal. Please do your best for me.鈥�
The parcel was handed over to the General, who first wanted to ensure that it wasn鈥檛 a bomb. Later he told me that it really had contained the Medical Officer鈥檚 books and would be taken care of.

Day 3

The storm abated but the sea was still very rough. That evening I telephoned the London switchboard operated by the ATS and asked to be plugged in to my home number. My mother took over from my speechless father but I could only tell her I was okay. There was no news of my brother, Joe.
Each evening we were briefed on the day鈥檚 events and, where possible, on the planned movements to aid the 鈥渂reak out鈥� from the beach head. A thousand-bomber raid was executed to obliterate German troops in houses which they had taken over from civilians in the Bocage area. To stand on a hilltop a mile or so from the area being decimated, to witness house after house, street after street, going up in dust and smoke was something I cannot describe. Just one lone bomber was hit by anti-aircraft shells and flew backwards and forwards on autopilot, the crew having bailed out to land in a friendly area.
The following evening General Dempsey telephoned Headquarters in England and asked for, 鈥渁s many LAZY COWS (code) as could be found to be sent over immediately.鈥�
Early in the morning, as I walked towards the beach, I witnessed another sight, which to this day is still vivid in my mind. At least five of the large vehicle transport ships were lined up along the water鈥檚 edge, disgorging bulldozers as fast as they could be guided onto the beach. Then in perfect formation they lined up in pairs, drove onto the road and disappeared. Possibly their first time in action, they were to clear the streets of the wreckage of the buildings so that our convoys could pass through.
The only other occurrence was the arrival of the VIP鈥檚, including Winston Churchill, General Montgomery and General Smuts. All arrived on the beach in DUKWS , amphibious vehicles shaped like a boat, with a propeller for propulsion in water and wheels with deep treads for land.
With the re-routing of the telephone lines I now realised that 鈥淢ain Army鈥� had landed and taken up positions inland to where TAC would move, prior to the advance through France.

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