´óÏó´«Ã½

I was one of the first batch of "Nearly 18s" (one of 150,000 boys born between October 1, 1924 and March 1, 1925) to be required to register for military service on 9th January 1943 and had my medical examination two weeks later, passing A1. My mother was not best pleased as she already had two sons in the Army. Asked for choice of service, if any, I replied: "Army" - this was duly entered under the column "no preference"! After six weeks initial infantry training at Beverley, East Yorks, I was posted to Catterick (the Aldershot of the north) to be trained as a wireless operator in the Royal Corps of Signals - despite my being classed as a marksman on both the rifle and Bren-gun. The interviewing officer told me that I was too valuable for the P.B.I as I had scored 100% in the morse code aptitude test, and also very highly in the various intelligence tests. (The Army must have changed their minds, for a couple of years later I was commissioned into an infantry regiment!)

After six months intensive signals training at Catterick (some recruits, it was said, went "round the bend" as a result of seemingly endless morse sessions with 'dah, did dids' - not 'dot' 'dash'- in the Signals!) thumping away through one's headphones) I passed out as an "Operator, Wireless and Line" capable of sending and receiving morse at 20 plus words per minute, and operate "19" and "22" wireless sets (the former, the standard set in most armoured vehicles). I was also now skilled in the use of field telephones, switchboards, and Fullerphones (a machine for sending morse by line, named after its inventor).

Returning from seven days 'passing-out' leave (my first and last leave for over a year), I was greeted by a mate saying: "Hey, Russ, they've posted you to the bloody commandos". Perhaps, after all, they had remembered my skill with firearms learned on a farm, not in the Army! The notice-board, however, informed me that I had been posted to the Combined Operations Training School, H.M.S. Dundonald II based at Troon, Ayrshire. Even worse, I was on my own - all my mates had been posted to other units, most as I recall, to Divisional Signals.

On arrival at H.M.S. Dundonald (a shore establishment), I discovered that my unit was 104 Beach Sub Area, Signal Section - one of three units specially created for the invasion of Europe ("the Second Front") when it came. We learned - much later, of course - that there was one for each beach in the British and Canadian sectors - "Gold", "Juno" and "Sword". Our insignia was circular - a red fouled anchor on a blue background within a red band. This insignia can be seen on the arm of a soldier in one of the most widely published photographs of D-Day, Britsh troops landing, under fire, on Sword Beach.

Through January and February 1944, we did a series of "wet landings", from a number of different craft, on the Ayrshire coast. The 'warm' Gulf Stream, we soon learned, is only a relative term! These landings were followed by 'schemes' in and around villages in the immediate area.

We then moved to a primitive camp of poorly maintained Nissen huts without heating. In this God-forsaken place in the Scottish outback called, I believe, Dykebarhill we were toughened up to be ready for the big day. There was no hot water and some mornings we had to break the ice on a stream to wash and shave as the outside taps were frozen. We had to build a field-kitchen on which our cook experimented with 'compo' rations for the first time. After two or three weeks, which seemed an eternity, we moved to London by road convoy.

Billeted in commandeered houses in East Putney, we were issued with new equipment and vehicles from a military depot, near Slough, I seem to remember. Here, we painted the new vehicles, including half-tracks, with white stars within a white circular band (for aircraft recognition, to avoid 'friendly fire') and carried out initial waterproofing. During our short stay there was a heavy night raid on London and a crowded dance hall nearby received a direct hit killing many civilians and soldiers. I was so tired that I had turned in early and slept through it all - not knowing that all my mates were sheltering in slit trenches dug in the rear gardens!

Our next move which came sometime in April 1944, was to Camp 21 on Southampton Common which had been transformed, like much of southern England, into a vast military camp holding thousands of troops and vehicles. It was surrounded by high coils of barbed wire and patrolled by police, both civil and military. Even before it was sealed in late May, access to and from the common was severely restricted with passes required to leave and enter -1 still have one permitting me to leave on signals duty, actually to operate a military switchboard located in a house adjacent to the common. As a highly trained wireless operator, my skills were put to good use riding about the common on a bicycle delivering weighty missives, marked "Overlord, Top Secret", to various unit commanders against signature. A military postman!

In May, we took part in the last pre-invasion exercise codenamed "Fabius" providing line and radio communications for a monitoring team based on Hayling Island - a task not entirely dissimilar to that we later performed in the Normandy beachhead, albeit without the noise and fireworks! Here, for the first time we sampled 24 Hour Assault Ration Packs - small brown boxes containing 4,000 calories of concentrated food. We also had cans of self-heating soup, water sterilising tablets and a small "Tommy" cooker for brewing up in our mess-tins. A letter home , enclosing a press cutting about these packs, stating that I had sampled these rations was cut out - literally — by a base censor - by this time all our mail was censored, some by our unit officers, some by a base censor for greater privacy.

During exercise "Fabius" we heard a rumour that a number of bodies of GIs had been washed up along the south coast - the story was that some GIs had disemberked from landing-craft in deep water and had drowned. Probably a deliberately leaked rumour for it was not until long after the war that the full truth emerged. A convoy of landing-craft containing thousands of GIs, sailing from Plymouth, had been attacked by German E-boats; two large LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) had been sunk with the loss of some 700 lives and many more injured.

Soon after "Fabius" all the embarkation camps were sealed with no one allowed in or out. Our advance party remained in Southampton, the rest of us were moved, in convoy under guard, to Camp R7 near Felixstowe. At our first briefing we had been told that we were to land at H-hour + 30 minutes on D-Day, but it seems that as a result of a unit similar to ours being largely wiped out in a landing in Italy (Anzio?), badly disrupting communications in the beachhead, we were now to land some six hours later.

Immediately after arriving at the new camp we completed the water-proofing of our vehicles and, as the camp was now sealed, were given our final briefing. Codenames were still used on the maps to mask the real location of towns and villages - "Tokyo", I recall, turned out to be Bayeux. We did not learn our true objective, the village of Ver-sur-Mer on Gold Beach, King Sector, until we were on the landing-craft. A few days before embarkation we were all "torn off a strip" for drying our laundry in the trees - an invitation to enemy aircraft to take a closer look. We were not told how we could get our clothes dry!

We boarded our LCT (Landing Craft Tank) on 2nd June 1944 and were issued with invasion money (I still have some) and "bags vomit". All on board were assigned to life-boats or life-rafts in case we were sunk en route to France. I was not thrilled to be assigned to a flimsy looking cork raft. A young matelot must have heard my remarks about drawing the short straw for he told me that the cork raft - "unsinkable" - was the best place to be if we were sunk. We sailed early on 4th June - but only as far as the Thames Estuary where we spent several hours under the protection of the guns mounted on the huge steel forts 'anchored* there; my eldest brother, Peter, was the officer in charge of the radar on these forts but he had no idea that I was aboard one of the landing-craft. We learned later that the delay was due to the invasion being postponed 24 hours - thank God, the sea was really rough.

We sailed through the English Channel at night, no smoking, no loud talking was allowed. A huge convoy assembled in an area to the south of the Isle of Wight, dubbed "Piccadilly Circus". There seemed to be thousands of ships of all shapes and sizes, each flying its own barrage balloon. Escort ships were busy going to and fro shepherding landing-craft into lanes which had been swept by minesweepers and marked with buoys. Overhead was an almost continuous stream of aircraft - bombers and fighters - all with distinctive black and white markings. A truly awe-inspiring sight which gave us all a terrific boost, despite our apprehension.

It was a grey, dismal day with a very choppy sea. I spent the whole voyage lying on the canvas roof of a three ton truck. Up in the air, with spray in my face, I was one of the very few on board who was not violently sea-sick. Small wonder really, as if the choppy sea and a flat-bottomed craft were not enough, we were fed self-heating soup, sardines, jam and hard biscuits - it would be weeks before we saw bread again. There were, of course, plently of "seconds".

Ahead of us was a large dark cloud hanging over what appeared to be the smudgy outline of the coast. Actually, it was thick acrid smoke caused by the sea and air bombardment - a mixture of dust, debris and smoke from burning ships, vehicles and houses. Oh God, what was ahead of us! And then the noise, incredible deafening noise. Warships were firing their heavy guns - among them the battleship H.M.S. Warspite and the heavy cruiser H.M.S. Belfast. They were to continue shelling for weeks. As we moved in closer to the shore we could see burning landing-craft - we remained off-shore for some considerable time. I suppose it was still too dangerous for us to go in.

Later we did go in - our LCT went right in and beached. To our right was a heavy explosion, another landing-craft had struck a mine or some under-water device. No time to look - the ramp went down and off we rolled, I was still on top of the three-tonner, head well down. But, thank heaven, no welcoming small arms or mortar fire - the area was clear of the enemy - alive, that was! Our assaulting infantry had done a great job, some of them remained in the water and on the beach, never to go home. After all those wet landings in Scotland, on the day my feet were not even damp!

And this is where I must almost end my story of D-Day and its aftermath -1 just cannot write much more, still less talk about what I experienced in the days and weeks which followed without deep emotion and fear of losing self-control. Thankfully much is a blur - the collapsing trench - buried - the dead girl - what was that in the garden? - that smell! - the crack of a near miss - "Achtung Minen" and the RM Commando; the timescale is lost, one day runs into another, perhaps the blurring, subconsciously, is deliberate for I have a clear recollection of my training in the UK and of places and events there. The beachhead remained a dangerous place for some time - our CO, Major Strachan and Sgt. Doug Lane were both killed on 11th June, their names are recorded on the Bayeux Memorial as they have no known graves.

I will add only this: I have no time for politically correct "historians" who have written that our troops were welcomed with open arms by the people of Normandy. I know from personal experience that this was not always so, some were sullen and bitter - even hostile - but who can blame them? After all, some 15,000 civilians died in Normandy, over 3,000 in Caen alone.

My small unit went right through the campaign in N.W. Europe before it was disbanded in May 1945, taking part in the breakout from Normandy, Operation "Market Garden" (the drive to Arnhem), and the Rhine and Elbe crossings. Some of us went with an "R Force" into the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. It was finally disbanded in Lubeck, Germany, having received five awards including an MC and an immediate MM.

John Russell

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.