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My father Sgt. William Grant was in the 6th airborne, commando group. They took part in the D-Day landings, going over by boat. We have all his field books, and because he went to art school they are illustrated with sketches — he drew pictures of a friend’s grave, and the members of their pontoon school. In the field book he mentioned ack-ack alley and the sobbing sisters. Ack-ack alley was where the Germans could get to them, and the sobbing sisters was the noise the guns made.
He was in a dugout with his platoon, and they were fired on by mortars, but he could hear the shells coming before could anybody could actually hear the noise — he had a sort of sixth sense, and he could warn people to get down.
He wore a red beret, because he was a commando, but the red berets got fewer and fewer; he said that when you saw a body by the side of the road with a red beret you knew it was you. At the end there were only 2 red berets left in his group, and he said that you didn’t make friends because you lost friends. When he came out, no-one, neither wife nor children, could get close to him. He brought me up as a little soldier — I had to stand in the corner and not move if I had been naughty. I think that wartime experiences had effects not just on their generation but ours, and probably our children as well.

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