大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of Ken Lutman and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

At the time of D-Day I was a 19-year-old Ordinary Seaman on the Captain Class frigate HMS Lawford. My action station was manning the port side Oerlikon gun, abaft the funnel.

At first we were at Action Stations all the while, and then the skipper said, right, now we will go to four hours on, four hours off. I had done my four hours on, and in my four hours off I got underneath the gun platform to have a sleep.

I was asleep and the next thing I woke up and I was in the water. I never heard a thing, I just woke up and I was in the water. I could see the ship going down with a broken back. I thought, I鈥檝e got to get away from here 鈥� I鈥檓 going to get sucked down.

I started to swim away from it. How long I swam for, I have no idea. I had a lifebelt, but it was not inflated. I just kept swimming until I was picked up by this whaler from HMS Gorgon.

The got me on board the Gorgon and some of the other lads were already on there. I remember one of them saying: 鈥淐urly, what鈥檚 the matter? You鈥檙e covered in blood.鈥� Then they just took me down below, took my wet clothes off, and gave me a tot of rum and bandaged me up, and then I was transferred to a hospital ship where they stitched my head and put me in the sick bay.

I had suffered a fractured skull. I think that as I slept under the gun platform, the force of the explosion must have blown me upwards, causing me to hit my head on the grating above, knocking me out.

One thing that puzzles me is that although I was on the port Oerlikon gun, when I woke up in the water I was on the starboard side of the ship.

I joined the Royal Navy in 1943 and the first clue that my ship, the American-built lease-lend HMS Lawford, was to be involved in the D-Day invasion came when it was refitted as a headquarters ship, with beefed-up communications, at Portsmouth.

Everybody was massed in Portsmouth, and all along the coast, round the Isle of Wight and in the Solent. There were hundreds and hundreds of ships, all just waiting. We knew something was going to happen. We took all these Canadian soldiers aboard. You could not move for soldiers, all on the upper deck and lower deck. Then this great armada began to cross the Channel.

I remember they gave us this letter from General Eisenhower saying that we were going to make history on this day. Mine is down at the bottom of the sea.

On reaching the French coast on D-Day, landing craft came to the ship and took off the Canadian troops and took them ashore at Juno beach.

We were right by HMS Belfast and she was the first one to open fire with her big guns, shelling the French coast. I remember opening fire myself on a handful of German aircraft that day.

Having unloaded the troops, HMS Lawford patrolled the coast and the following day took aboard wounded troops and transferred them to a hospital ship.

It was early on 8 June 1944 that HMS Lawford was sunk. We always thought that they had dropped a bomb straight down the funnel. According to what we learned later on, it was one of the first guided missiles. They鈥檙e still arguing about whether it was a bomb or a torpedo even now.

After recovery from my injury and following survivor鈥檚 leave, I trained as a radar operator and served on the destroyer HMS Zebra on the Russian convoys.

Recently I have been reunited with several of my shipmates from HMS Lawford.

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