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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Marcus Heald (´óÏó´«Ã½ Guide) on behalf of Mr. Frank Douglas and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

After we’d been on the beaches at Aramaches, After three months, the reason we were there was redundant. But by the end of that three months — what an eye opener it was!

We were on a barge literally a barge. It was a London barge it was part of a flotilla of, I think, as far as I can remember there were about five boats of us and we were what they called an ‘S and R’ — Supply and Repair. So we were in what was the third wave of craft going in and we arrived on the beach head about two o’clock in the morning of D+1. you could have walked faster that it took for us to get across the channel! And it was rough.
We were a kitchen barge. L.B.K. 1 was our craft. We had an engineering barge with us which was another London barge which had been converted into facilities for repairing any emergencies that there were on the craft. They had all the skilled men, they had lathes, all sorts of metal working machinery that was there to do that job and trained men and apprentices. Then there was a barge that was carrying the diesel and another that was carrying fuel and then the other one was carrying general supplies.
When we got on the beach head we were each allocated places to go where we were out of the road but easily accessible. And the actual landing of D Day was virtually over by the time we got there. The reason we were there was for supply and repair flotillas. When we got there what they had found out from other experiences of one thing and another is that the one thing you must have with an invasion was supplies. You had to have a port and supplies to support an army. The port was like. . . . well the nearest I could say to is its like being at Aldborough in a way, little bit bigger but the village of Aromaches wasn’t particularly a big place but the beaches in that place were absolutely idea for the invasion. What they did was on the 1st day before it got daylight they had taken old ships across and scuttled them out in the bay as breakwaters. Back in England they built these huge concrete blocks, as big as houses they were and what they did was they floated them out there. Then they were put in position in the bay to provide shelter.
When we first commissioned the craft we were at Rochester in Kent where they had got this ship and all they had done was put a big steel top on it and that was the galley and the servery. There were two big ranges in there that were capable of producing enough food to feed 2,500 men every day. Although it was a small barge, it was surprising what you could get in on it. And then that was one end and the other was the servery where we did the preparing and the getting ready. What was happening was the landing craft and the support craft that was in the area used to just come along side and we had what you called ‘Hay boxes’ and they were a box about 18 inches cubed and inside there was an empty circle and it was insulated around the outside and we had four containers in there. We put the food in and then we had big thermos flasks called ‘Safari jars’ that held a gallon and in those we put the liquid, soup or the like, or tea. We supplied the ships with these and they went off with the food and when they came back the next day they brought the empty containers and we gave them a new full set for that day and so on.
In them you got enough for about ten men. That was what we did all the time we were there.

We saw them lay P.L.U.T.O. (Pipe Line Under The Ocean) There were these things in the sea and you wondered what on earth they were. They were like big bobbins. Huge things that had the pipe on it, a pole through the middle and a tug at each side of it. They laid the pipe to send fuel across from England to fuel up the machinery, tanks etc. when you think about how much organisation there was behind something like that it was unbelievable.

We went there and then from there they sent us back over to England, then to Holland. The reason we went there was because our supply route was through the Skelt — the river Skelt which went through the Islands on the Dutch coast. Just across from the Island we went to were all the Germans! We used to watch the V2’s set off from there. For the first day or two we were there. Then the R.A.F. came over and really went to town on them. But what was happening was to get the ships through to Antwerp they swept the channel and put buoys through the channel. The ships went through there at nigh time naturally, well the German ‘E’ boats used to come up and tie up on the buoys. And as the ships were passing they would attack the ships. So to counteract that there were some landing craft — LCSM’s (Landing Craft Support Meduim) fairly small craft. But they were very, very powerful. They has a twin point 5 machine gun on it and they could drop charges against underwater ships. You could hear explosions all night long where the frogmen had been putting limpet mines on the ships.

Its worth saying that you didn’t volunteer for any of this, you went where you were sent! You had no choice, you went were you were sent. You just accepted it.

A newspaper reporter actually reported on the barge Mr. Frank Douglas was on. Its headline — Roast Beef Ship Has 10 Cooks In Crew Of 26. Mr. Douglas also got a mention in the report. ‘Cook, Mr. F. Douglas from Hull might be counted the expert on Yorkshire pudding.’

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