大象传媒

For those of you who think the Normandy invasion was a precisely executed operation, think again.
My liberty ship arrived off Gold Beach in the afternoon, it had a motely crew, the skipper was English, first mate Russian and the remainder multi-national.
As we waited for the tank landing craft (TLC) to come alongside, two Meeserschmidts flew over the long line of liberty ships, nobody firing at them and they not firing at us. Three of our crew dashed below deck to get ammunition for the 12 pounder gun. They returned in a few seconds each carrying a different calibre shell, none of which fitted the gun. By this time the two ME109s were out of sight ( organising a party in a brewery comes to mind).
The two men operating the winches were American, superb giants of men, both looked like Joe Louis. After they had got the first TLC away and were halfway through loading the second, one of the men looked at his watch and remarked '5 O'clock, it coffee time, and both disappeared below deck. They were obviously fully paid up members of the U.S seamans union.
Fortunately a couple of our lads knew a bit about winches so we carried on loading.
When it came to our turn, a 25 pounder troop, 4 gun towers, 4 limbers, 4 guns, we were loaded on the TLC two abreast and two deep. Each unit vehicle,limber and gun hooked up and ready to drive off. Just in front of us were two jeeps with two men in each belonging to the Royal West Kent Unit. We set off for the shore in the TLC with it's crew of three,one midshipman and two ratings from the Royal Navy. The rating by the ramp had a long pole marked in black and white bands. Each band measured a foot. When the TLC finally bottomed, the AB with the pole checked the depth, gave the thumbs up to the Skipper, who ordered the ramp to be lowered. I was siiting on top of the first gun-towing unit and thinking there's still a lot of water btween us and dry land. You've guessed it, the two jeeps got about three yards off the ramp and promptly sank, leaving four very wet West Kents to scramble to safety. We were of course on a sand -bank. We reversed the TLC altered course slighly and this time drove off in no more than three inches of water.
The rest of the the war went well (except see my story 'Maybe it because I'm a Londoner').
1133310 Gunner Clarke 74th Field Regt. RA

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