大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Mairi Campbell of the 大象传媒 on behalf of Mr Benjamin Freeman Biddall and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

In 1944 I was a sapper in the Royal Engineers and my company was 970 floating equipment based on the Isle of Wight. On 2nd June we boarded a ferry going to Portsmouth where a train was waiting to take us to London. On arrival a fleet of covered lorries took us to a field surrounded with barbed wire where we had a meal and then back on the lorries finishing up on the docks where we boarded a ship called the 鈥淐ity of Canterbury鈥� which left the dock soon after. The invasion of Normandy started on the 6th June and our ship stood about a mile of the coast until 7th June when we disembarked by the use of scrambling nets fixed to the sides of the ship and then into landing craft which deposited us onto the beach, we went along the coast road in single file ten or twelve men on either side of the road, there was gunfire in the distance and I wondered what was in front of us, however all was quiet when we reached our destination the small town of Aramanches. We quickly set up camp in a field and then went about foraging, collecting guns ammunition and equipment that the Germans left behind also on the lookout for any enemy troops who may have been left behind.

The real work started a couple of days later when the floating roadways arrived and we quickly set about assembling them, this the first part of the Mulberry Harbour began to take shape, an artificial harbour the size of the Dover Harbour which took seven years to build and we were expected to get ours up and working in three weeks, all was going to plan when on 19th June a fierce storm blew up and threatened to destroy all our work. It lasted for four days and we worked day and night to keep the roadways from being destroyed. However, the port survived , had even began to unload some supplies, work went on for some months and it was in January 1945 when I had an accident while working in Port-En-Bessin, a fishing village a few miles north of Aramaches. I fractured my leg and was sent back to England. It was five months before I was fully fit again, and so it was back to the Royal Engineers Barracks in Longmoor Hampshire where I had first started my life as a scapper. A few weeks later I was sent to a fourteen day embarkation leave, it meant a hectic week of organising a wedding with my sweetheart Violet, we were married on 15th July 1945 and my leave ended on the 21st July. The war in Japan was still going on so a few days later I was on a ship bound for India. I was still at sea when the war ended on 15th August and I spent the next two years serving in India, Singapore and Kiire (Japan). This is my Story.

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