大象传媒

I was in the 15th Scottish Division - a Gunner. About six weeks before D Day we were moved very secretly to Lancing, on the coast near Brighton. Every morning we took our troop of 25 pounders to Shoreham and practised loading onto a Tank Landing Craft: a tricky operation that at first took about an hour but we got it down to around ten minutes.
On June 5th I was the Orderly Officer and sometime during the night I had to 'turn out the Guard'. I usually did this at about 11pm or 6.30am so that I had a good night's sleep! My conscience hit me on this particular night and for some reason or other I decided to see if the boys were awake around 3am. As I walked back to my billet (a lovely little house right on the beach owned by the actor, Tom Walls) I saw the first gliders going over. It was a wonderful sight and I could not believe my eyes. I ran to Regimental HQ and the Colonel 'stood the Regiment to' and said "We're off, boys".
Only nothing happened, and eventually we unpacked the vehicles and went to bed.
At about lunchtime on June 8th we were told to drive up to Tilbury on the Thames and we set off from there on a bigger boat, an LST (Landing Ship Tank), and after a horrible crossing in the now famous storm finally landed on Gold Beach in Normandy, to a "Where the hell have you been?" welcome.
I have often wondered why we did not go off from Shoreham. I probably wouldn't be here now to talk about it if we had.

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