大象传媒

What did you do at the invasion of Normandy then? Me? Oh, I collected lemonade powder.

Yes, it does require some explanation. In June 1944 my ship - HMS "Pearl", 600-ton Asdic Trawler of the Royal Naval Patrol Service - was taken off her usual duties of escorting the Coastal Convoys between the Solent and the Welsh ports and, with her sister-ship "Cornelian" and the Whaler "Ellesmere", attached to the escort of the American "Follow-up force" from Salcombe to UTAH Beach.

After seeing them ashore early on D+1, our instructions were to anchor in the Unloading Area some 7 miles offshore and await orders. Instead, while still quite close inshore, we saw that "Cornelian" had apparently been hit, but it was actually the steam from her anchor- winch. Her Skipper flashed "I've got a five-bob seat, so I'm going to stay", and naturally we and "Ellesmere" followed suit - the Royal Naval Patrol Service ("Harry Tate's Navy") was like that!

We stayed there all day, and in the afternoon we saw what appeared to be a big oil-slick drifting down on us. It was, however, a huge mass of Cellophane packets of lemonade- powder, red, green and yellow, and everyone hung over the side scooping them up as they drifted past, oblivious to the fate of the world being decided a mile or so away - I had three large stacks of each flavour on the Wireless Room table by tea-time. They had come from the tons of "K Rations" dumped on the beaches and not cleared before the tide came in again. The cardboard containers had disintegrated, but the Cellophane packets in each had floated away intact.

Also drifting past though, were dead GIs, floating face-downwards, because their lifebelts, unlike the "inferior" British Naval issue, went right round them and so didn't turn them onto their backs when they lost consciousness. I was always surprised at how long it was after the War before that requirement was written into British Standards for yachting lifejackets.

We were anchored opposite the village of Vierville, behind OMAHA Beach, and in the early evening there was an enormous explosion, putting a huge smoke-ring into the sky.

This obviously vexed the Americans ashore, and within a few minutes their battleship "Texas", about a mile out beyond us, opened up with all her heavy guns. On Charge 1 for short range, and at low trajectory, you can see shells that big as they go over, and feel the wind of them - it was a bit like standing on the platform of a country station while a series of expresses rushed through. At last she flashed us - "Please go away - you are interfering with our gunnery", so we upped anchors and made our way out to where we should have been all along.

We made 11 trips to the beaches with supply convoys, losing our escort leader "Boadecia" on the second, and we came to see the purpose of the strange concrete structures we'd been escorting round the coast to the Solent for the best part of the previous year. Then, on D+13, came the gale that washed away many of them, the supply convoys had to stop, and we patrolled outside Bournemouth Bay where over 400 ships were anchored - a perfect target for the Luftwaffe and the E-boats if they had still existed. It was in fact the point at which we could well have lost the war, with huge armies ashore and in need of vast daily supplies, and no possibility whatsoever of a "Dunkirk" if those supplies didn't get ashore to them. But we got the ships sorted out into the correct order eventually, and on to the British "Mulberry" which had been less seriously damaged in the storm.

The lemonade powder lasted us for months.

Jack Yeatman, "Sparks" in "Pearl" 1943-44-45

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