大象传媒

When the war started in 1939, I was 14 and living in kent, I had experienced air raids, being bombed, and saw the battle of britain taking place in the summer skys.
I joined the royal navy in 1943 and after thye basic training I was sent on a combined operation course in scotland, I was then promoted to mid-shipman and recieved further training in the handling of a landing craft, gunnery, navigation etc.
I joined the tank landing craft, as second in commaned a practiced landing tanks onto beaches in south west England. On the 3rd of june 1944 we'd loaded up in southhampton near portsmouth, ready for the invasion of normandy.This was due to take place on the 5th of june 1944 but bad weather forced it to be postponed for 1 day.This meant that all the troops and equiptment were cooped up , in difficult conditions.
During the evening of the 5th of june we set of for normandy, in th company of thousands of other ships and various types of landing craft.Everything was very carefully planned and when dawn broke the next morning the whole sea seemed to be covered with ships.This was a tremendous site and comforting because naturally I was a bit concerned about what lay ahead.there was a tremendous bombardment from the battle ships and cruisers which lay off shore,and this knocked out quite a lot of the german defences.we landed the flail tank and other vehicles that we were carrying, safely near the town of Arromanches, and were very lucky in that our craft was not damaged and we were able to pull back of off the beach, ready to make further landings later on in the day.Many of the landing craft were of course damaged or sunk,either by enemy gunsor beach obstacles, and many lives were lost.I read afterwards that where we landed was a relatively quiet part, so I feel that I was very lucky.
I do not remember being really afraid at this time probably because i was concentrating on my job and because I was so young (18).we stayed out there for 2 weeks, ferrying men and stores from ship to shore while the mulberry harbour was being constructed.The craft was then so badly damaged that we had to abandon it.
After returning to England I joined the L.C.I (Landing Craft Infantry), which we took all the way from plymouth to India and made ready for the invasion of Malaya.Luckily for us, but not the inhabitance of the japanese cities, Atom bombs were dropped and this lead to the Japenese surrendering, so we were able to stage this invasion without much opposition.I have returned to Normandy over the past years, and this was privileged to return recently for commemeration of the 60th anniversary of d-day, where we remembered all those young men who gave their lives in th course of freedom.

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