大象传媒

"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Aubrey Sales with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."

We were employed in the Royal Navy as gunners in the Defence Equipped Merchant Service (D.E.M.S.). We were sat in the D.E.M.S office waiting for a draft to ship when our three names were called out to join the "Southampton Salvour" lying in Southampton water. It had just had some repairs done to it, we then had to order ammunition to cover 2,ORL either side of bridge and 41th Q Fgun after end of ship, the captain and other officers and crew came back the ame day as we arrived and the speculation started to where we were going as so many other ships had started to arrive including small troop ships, so we knew something was coming up.
On June 4th 1944, in the early hours of the morning we moved down stream, to near old Portsmouth and we anchored near some landing craft who had already had army personnel on board, and noticed on shore a lot of American troops preparing to board landing craft. On June 5th 1944 in early evening we set sail still not knowing where we were going, but had lots of ideas, no one spoke just waited. Then we were joined by escort ships, and then the captain told us what was happening, and we were making for the beaches of Normandy and D.Day was June 6th 1944. We arrived at Arromanch, and the divers of our ship secured the Mulberry harbour to the bottom of the sea, our next job was to beach all loose Tank Landing craft, while doing this there was a lot of shouting going on, as some soldiers would not drive their tanks or lorries over the dead soldiers lying on the beach and they had to do it. Going behind us was the battleship the "Warspite" and Lord Roberts, we were shelling the coast in Salvo's. At night time we had a visit from the German Airforce dropping Acoustic bombs around us, which made 6 to 12ins holes in any ship that hit them. A few weeks later when the army had to advance into Belgium we were given the job of going to a ship who's cargo was butter for our divers to secure a plate over the hole to keep it afloat, and we towet it into Antwerp where we stayed a few days and the German were sending Doodle Bugs and Rockets, one landed near to where the butter was being placed on the Quayside and blowing out all our windows in the wheelhouse while I was trying to make a cup of tea for a soldier who was guarding the butter, from Nottingham. After climbing the gang plank I could see he had been killed by the blast. Our next job was to come to Hull lighthouse where I received a message to await 2 minesweepers and be prepared to travel to go to Heligoland, to pick up a pilot to take us up the Elbe to Hamberg but before we could get there we had to pass through 125 miles of minefields, so keep our eyes peeled. We only saw the mine sweepers for 2 days at sea and we were on our own, we passed through the minefields slow but slow, very often stopping as some came very close to the side of the ship and we could only fire at them to set them off, if they were a fair distance away we would try when we arrived at Heligoland, a German pilot came aboard, he decided to be awkward, so he was told my me, if he did not on with his job we would blow his brains out, he decided he would do it. Close watch was kept on him by everyone. All the way up we were getting Doodle Bugs and Rockets and then it stopped, so we knew British Troops were in command. We found on arrival, there were 125 ships sunk in the harbour so we had to work fast to uplift as amny as we could to get a passage for a River Lane for supply ships to come in. It capitulated a day before we arrived, so we saw good few British Soldiers on Quayside in St.Pauli, everyting was flatten'd bar the church.

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