大象传媒

This story was told to me by my late father John Robert Young (P/MX 126640), and concerns an event that took place during the first few days of the D-Day landings in June1944.

My father was in the Royal Navy and during D-Day he was involved in the landing of a contingent of Scottish and Canadian troops, in the eastern end of Sword Beach ("Roger" sector) towards the Caen river estuary area near the town of Ouistreham. Needless to say there were heavy casualties, and a high proportion of the landing vessels were either sunk or badly damaged. This action was to capture some guns that could have threatened sword beach. There were no guns, but more than expected units of the Wehrmacht. He noted the first person off one of the landing craft and up the beach was the piper, followed closely by some of the Scottish troops with fixed bayonets that had somehow managed to change during the channel crossing into their kilts.

My father was told the landing area was safe on D-day +1 and he and a fellow sailor went into town and spotted a large Swastika Flag on the outside of a building. They went into the building to claim it as a prize. While doing so my father noted German soldiers at the back of the building burning files. A hasty retreat was made. The crew members of my fathers craft and others had their photo taken with the flag. (My father bought the flag home and I recall as a lad my mother using red dusters around the house, and the central Swastika is still somewhere in my attic.)

When the surviving vessels eventually made it back to England a few days later they were presented with immediate high priority orders to pick up a special cargo for the main invasion area. My father鈥檚 vessel was quickly made ready and sailed off to load this urgent and high priority cargo onboard. The cargo turned out to be a consignment of strawberries for the top-brass directing operations on the battle cruiser anchored offshore the invasion beaches.

In the English Channel there were a number of hospital ships and vessels preparing meals for the onshore invasion force. My father was not at all surprised by the high amount of 鈥渃argo spoilage鈥� that occurred which had to be rapidly off-loaded onto these vessels during the trip back to the invasion area.

Enclosed with this text is a copy of the group photo with the swastika flag, and my father is pictured central to the group highlighted by the oval.

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