大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Claire White of 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Joe Munro and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

In June 1944 we travelled from Tilbury in London to the Normandy landing on Gold Beach on an American Liberty Ship.

I had a lucky escape at Tilbury. We were asked to go to a meeting point where all the ships carrying army personnel were gathered. We were waiting our turn to go onto the landing craft when a German bomber dropped a bomb on the deck making a large hole. At that point one of our Destroyers pulled up alongside the ship and an officer cried over the megaphone "Are you alright? Bring down your wounded!"

The wounded were transferred to the Destroyer. The American gunner on board the ship lost both his legs in the machine-gun fire. There was confusion and noise everywhere, but eventually those that were left headed down the scramble nets onto the landing craft and thus onto Gold Beach(which was 4-5 miles out in choppy seas).

We were lucky to dodge death during this incident. It was a sheer fluke that we went up on deck and didn't stay down in the hold otherwise we'd probably have been injured or worse.

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