大象传媒

This is my fathers stories and one of the very few details he gave away about his war time experiences.

My father, John McCredie, was a Royal Marine who served initially on HMS Birmingham and then from El Alamain, Sicily, Italy through D-Day, northern Europe and across the Rhine to Hamburg.

He recalled how the weather on D-day was less than ideal for a trip acoss the channel in a flat bottomed LCT. How, that with the sea spray, all the Marines were wet and cold by the time they came in sight of the beachs. He recalled the smell of fuel and human wastes mixing with the sea and how they'd all wished Ike had waited for a better day. But after nearly two days in the boats due to delays they just wanted to get it over with and get a shore. His first recollection of the French coast was the noise of naval gun fire pounding the German positions on shore. But as the Marines line of LCTs approached the shore the men aboard became aware of the German gun fire. In particular a large German tank that was running up and down the sea wall directly in front of them. As my fathers vessel drew closer to the shore he could see the tank run along the wall and stop, fire and the LCT to his right explode, throwing Marines and sailors high in to the air with their bell bottoms fluttering in the breeze. The tank then reversed its direction and again stopped, fired and the LCT to the left of his exploded with the same awful sights. The tank then came back in the direction of my fathers LCT and stopped. At that moment a whisle passed over head and the tank vanished in a cloud of smoke! The navy gunners had done there job and my father and his comrades hit the beaches of France, on their way to German.

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