大象传媒

My father, Sid Tomlin wrote this account of his D-Day landing for my children when they were studying World War 2 in their History lesson. He was a Carpenter/Joiner and lived in Buckinghamshire all his life. He was a quiet gentle man but he did his duty and was mentioned in despatches several times for his bravery. However he could not swim and had a fear of deep water:-

"I was in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, attached to a line of Communication HQ. We were all assembled at a place near Brentwood, there must have been thousands of troops altogether, we were only a small part, about 60 Officers and men. We all knew something was in the air but not what, or where we were going.

We were under canvas and our main job at the time was making our lorries waterproof because they might have to go in the water. After some time, it must have been a couple of weeks, there was a rumour going around about an invasion. Then the whole camp was sealed off and no one was allowed out or in. We learned later that an officer had briefed his men too soon.

Soon after this we were all issued with French money, we knew then where we were going, or as some people said, it might be a blind to put the Germans off. Very soon after this we were packing our kit and into endless lines of lorries.

We arrived at Tilbury Harbour and boarded a large ship, learning later that it was called the Cameronian, a 17,000 ton converted cargo carrier. We sailed then under a Navy smoke screen and anchored in the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the mainland - this as we now know was D-Day minus 2.

I don't think you could get a pin between the troops on this ship, we had to stay where we were put. We moved out and the next thing I knew, we were all scrambling down nets on the side of the ship into landing craft. This was very risky because the small craft was rising and falling quite a few feet and several men were injured and had to be taken back on board. This was D-Day plus 2 and our landing craft was heading for 'King Beach'. As we neared the beach, the front went down on chains and we saw a path of Royal Marines we were to go inbetween as they had cleared it of mines.

Unfortunately for me the crew had stopped the craft too soon and it was still in deep water. I started to go down the ramp but my foot went through the hole for the chain so I tried the other side and the same thing happened. Luckily I had a good friend who was at least six feet tall and he said "Come and get on my shoulders" so that's how I landed in France, keeping the rifles high out of the water.

Well, we formed up on the beach and started off, but very soon a sniper opened fire from a farmhouse, nobody was hit, and the Marines soon dealt with him. This all happened at 9.00 o'clock at night. The roads were very narrow and all the time we were being passed by supply trucks but we couldn't go on the verges because they were mined. There were signs everywhere (Achtung Minen) with a skull in the middle.

We were marching along one road when more troops came up behind and told us that the road we were on hadn't been taken yet! We eventually came to a halt in the early hours of the morning at an orchard. There we tried to dry everything, including our cigarettes which all laid in rows along the branches of the trees. We stayed at this place a while and then it was our HQ's job to administer the Mulbury Harbour, floated across from England. But from then on through Belgium and Holland and into Berlin is quite another story.

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