大象传媒

DONALD HOLMAN

September 3rd, 1939

On the day War broke out, I was about to take up a profession. I'd left school, and I'd decided I didn't want to stay ...(inaudible) if War was about to happen. Over about three weeks looking for jobs I eventually went into Lloyds bank, and during that period I did a certain amount of fire watching, going on the roofs of various places, including my old school, to watch for any incendiaries which were dropped during air raids. A bit later on in 1940, mid 1940, the Home Guard was formed and I joined it. This was at Aldershot, Lloyds Bank Aldershot branch. We didn鈥檛 actually have an air raid during the period I was fire watching, fortunately; but we had all the paraphernalia, guns (?) and what-have-you, to deal with it should it have happened. In the Home Guard we had one or two experiences: the first one was trying to pretend a broomstick was a rifle, and it was very difficult to do that (inaudible). And later on we actually got weapons and things improved from there on. In my area there was very little going on - the occasional raid but nothing to call the Home Guard out for, and the situation went on until April '41 when I joined the Army.

When I joined the Army I wanted to be a driver, because it was the sort of thing I felt I wanted to do, and they hadn't got any vacancies for drivers, they put me into the Royal Corps of Signals where they said I'd get a lot of driving experience - I didn't get any! However, I was in ack-ack signals for quite a time and moved round to areas where air raids, both in Kingston in London, and later in Cardiff: I went to Cardiff in about August '41. Life in the Army at that time for people on that sort of thing was not particularly exciting. A little later on I joined the Signal Office crew which was in the basement of Llandaff Palace where the headquarters of the Division was and in the Signal Office we had to get messages to and from various areas of the Division. Then a little later on I went to Gun Operations Room where we had to directly ack-ack fire on any raids on the city. We had or two of them and on one occasion a bomb was dropped near the Gun Operations Room and after it had gone off it was incredible getting back from underneath the plotting table and trying to get out of the way of the officer with his glasses half way across his face! But it added a bit of variety to the usual pattern of existence.

Were you in billets?

No we were in a camp in Cardiff. Soon after that I went to OCTU, this was in mid-1942 and ....

Were you still a signalman?

Yes. I went to OCTU in Southend on the Sea, and we passed out at Christmas time; so immediately after Christmas I had to go and take up my appointment with a Unit of the RASC.

I was lucky; I managed to get into Transport at that time. I was posted to a Unit which was (I didn't know it at the time) which was being changed over from a troop carrying Company to go into Combined Ops and become part of the invasion of Europe - they were planning as far ahead as that. And that was in January '43. We did various exercises in the Combined Ops Centre at Dundonald in Scotland and we had to at that time use ordinary three-tonners for loading and unloading off the beach. This was done by coasters coming in with supplies and beaching, in other words going in as far as they could on high tide, letting them dry out, the tide go back, and then we'd go down with our three tonners and get the loads off and distribute them to the dumps and Units. Well, this was a cumbersome way of doing things but at that point we didn't think anything else would happen. But then suddenly the whole pattern changed when we were issued with amphibians and went to amphibian training to the amphibian centre in North Wales. That brought another dimension to the whole thing: they were so easy to use at sea, anyone could drive them - if you could drive a truck you could drive a DUKW, on the land or in the sea. Their ability to cope with various types of beaches was excellent - for example if it was soft sand you could alter the tyre pressure as you drove along.

How could you do that?

On your dashboard you had six sort of tap things, like valves, and each one if you pressed it took it along the air pressure line, so if you changed the switch to that one the pressure on that tyre would come up on the indicator and you would then press it to the pressure you wanted, or if you wanted to deflate you would press it lower down, and it would go down. That line was all round the vehicle and to each tyre on an arm, a sprung arm, which was never over extended.... so you could control the pressure on each wheel. Very useful that, because on some beaches you would certainly go from pretty hard sandy beach to something which was a bit of a mud swamp and for that sort of thing you needed very low pressure on your tyre. As far as we were concerned we found out afterwards that they picked the Units long before this happened so they got what they thought were the right drivers and right officers in the Units, so we were very lucky: not a lot of Units got DUKWs.

That having happened we then formed part of an assault Division, 3 Div, and we worked in support of them by following them up on the beach on D-Day and at that time there was the opportunity to take advantage of various things going on: loading and unloading. They tried trailers; they tried putting trailers on the back. That was a disaster because if you had to reverse the trailer on it, you had no control of the trailer whatsoever. They also tried other amphibians and I was sent on a course to Towyn to try British amphibian, three of us had to do that and quite frankly it just didn't stand up to it. It was called a Terrapin, it four wheels each side and an engine on each side and the engine on the right controlled those driving wheels and the engine on the left controlled those on the other side.

If you wanted to turn a corner you had to throttle down on one side and up on the other side and frankly to get it right you had to almost cause a series of jerks all the way round the corner. It was unwieldy - the DUKW was the much better vehicle and we gave it the thumbs down. I'm sorry that went because I would have liked to have seen a British amphibian doing well.

Anyway, a lot nearer to D-Day various exercises up in Scotland and then we came down south. We did an exercise about five weeks before D-Day, I think it was called Exercise Harlequin. We went down to Dover and on to the front at Dover the Germans from their observation positions in France would think "Hello, they're going from here, they're practising embarking". In fact this was purely done to pull the wool over the Germans' eyes.

... The Seventh Invisible Army.

That's right. Having done that, they moved us on to the Portsmouth area, where we took up positions ready for embarkation. We were stationed just behind Emsworth and we were there for about a fortnight. We used to wander into Emsworth, go into the little pub there, put "Beautiful Dreamer" on to the jukebox and drink most of the evening. I'll never forget that tune.

I don't suppose you will. Do you have the record now?

No. Eventually they moved us forward to one of the disused forts in Gosport. We were only there for about three days when we had to go up to the fort at the top of the hill, I forget which one, for the actual briefing for D-Day. And we knew then it was pretty close because they gave us full details. We were already consigned to the area and at that time they felt it was safe to give us the full details of where we were going, what we were doing. Even though some of us some of us been to France, most of us had never been to the area we were going to go to, so it was all going to be very new to us. We did find out that one of the beaches we had used on the exercises was similar to the one we were going to. I was surprised at the efficiency generally of the planning.

They had taken samples of the beaches, had they not?

Yes, they had. The maps we got too were up to date, well prepared. The most surprising thing of the lot was that we were short of the FAMTOs, now FAMTOs were First Aid MT Outfits and each vehicle had to have one with its full set of kit And we had the DUKWs from America, and they were all brand new: we trained on DUKWs but they gave us new ones before D-Day; but they had a job to get all the new stuff through to make up the FAMTOs complete. The last few items to make it complete were actually delivered to us when we were going on to the boat in Gosport Harbour!

At least they got the stuff late but they were damned efficient in getting it out to us. And it was the right stuff; it was the stuff we needed. We then loaded at Gosport Harbour, this was on my birthday, June 4th, and they moved us out into the Solent where we spent the night, and we just got a delivery of Scotch so I enjoyed my birthday (laughs). We were left there for the evening and we were expecting to go on the 5th. But in fact as everyone knows we didn't go until the 6th so we spent two nights, somewhere moored between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight. On the morning of the 6th, in the early hours about 2 o'clock, we set sail. And looking from the boat it was amazing how many other ships were around.

We also had, going along with us, various craft which were going to be used, smallish craft. We had a motor launch, we had something like a motor torpedo boat only not quite as big, and was used by us when we got there to go round the DUKWs at sea, to make sure they were loaded from the vessel which they were allocated to unload; and that controlled the unloading. We could, if they were entering the water, gave them the detail to make sure they went to the right one. We used to watch them and go out in the high speed launch, if necessary. Anyway, we got to Le Havre Bay, very well out to sea by 8 o'clock in the morning and I don't know why I did it but I suppose I thought I should and I went to the rear of the ship where there was a big can with holes in it and I burnt all the secret orders except anything that was needed from now on, and while I was doing this, the first idea I had that there was a war on was: a great big plume of water went up, in the sea about half a mile from me, while I was burning the stuff, so I thought "I'll get back down now!", and got back down into the boat. We moved on slowly to a position about a mile out from the beach, where we arrived about half eleven I suppose, and then at about 20 past 12 I had a message from the captain that Number One Platoon can go. So I said to my NCOs, "Right", My platoon consisted of 33 DUKWs, I had 17 and my platoon sergeant had 16, to bring in. I was bringing in the leading 17 so I went off and the others automatically followed me at about 50 yard intervals, going for the beach and looking ahead to see where I could find a way in. We had an advance party that went ashore and they were supposed to sign it but there wasn't a sign of a sign, it was difficult, the beach was a bit chaotic, so when I got to within about three or four hundred yards I began to look for where there was a place between the barbed wire where vehicle tracks showed that there no mines. At this time machine gunning broke out from the houses behind the beach and it was getting a bit heavy, and I though before long one of my chaps is going to be hit. Fortunately the Navy saved our bacon, the naval gunner in charge of a Bofors gun was obviously there to look for enemy resistance, he saw firing from the houses and he used AP shells and they were pretty effective. From where I was going in you could see the bits of concrete flying off the wall from these shells, and the Germans, all they could do was bob up, quick shot, and then down. They had no time to play games at all. I'm forever grateful. I never met the chap, but I'm forever grateful to him.

Where was he?

It was difficult to pinpoint because I was busy, I think it was probably an LCT, that sort of size. They had some rocket-carrying ones...

Were the DUKWs unarmed?

We had only got side arms. So that really was the first part...

So, having achieved a safe landing, you had to start work.

It wasn't as easy as that! (laughs) We were pinned down on the beach for quite a time.... There were sand dunes, we were tucked in behind sand dunes and we could no longer get to the houses, even if they were still firing, couldn't get a bean down to them.

You were in dead ground...

I stayed at the sea side, we got them all in. We only had one casualty, that was Driver Ball, I don't think he kept quite to his tyre marks and he went over a land mine. His ankle was damaged, not badly. That was the only casualty.

How many men on each DUKW?

Three: driver, co-driver and either a corporal or a spare driver. You also had on one of them a Lance Sergeant.

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