大象传媒

The following story appears courtesy of and with thanks to Harold F Plank and James D Plank

Our ship was put out into the channel, and we bounced around out there. Eventually nets were hung over the side, and landing craft pulled up alongside for us to climb down into. We had to watch our step, because when the ship was going down and the landing craft was coming up, you could get caught between the two and crushed between their hulls. We made it into the landing craft, and they cast loose; and we started circling around. It was about this time that the big ships out in the channels started bombarding the coastline. It was dark, and though we couldn鈥檛 see the coastline, we knew it was out there in the darkness somewhere. Eventually we formed a straight line and headed for the coast. When daylight came, it was discovered that we were eastward along the coastline much further than we should be for our landing point. So we started going up along the coastline, heading westward. The Germans began to come out on top of the cliffs to fire down on us. Occasionally we would hear a bullet zing off the hull of the landing craft, and so we kept our heads low.

Many of the guys became very seasick during this voyage toward the shore, because it was mighty rough. They had issued us vomit bags, and many of the guys knew that once wasn鈥檛 enough, so they hung onto them. The bottoms got kind of soaked, so that when they eventually threw them overboard by the handles, the bottoms came out and spewed vomit all over the guys in the vicinity. That almost made them sick again.

Eventually we turned into the shoreline and could see the cliffs that we were supposed to be climbing. We were anxious to get ashore. When our rockets were fired, and the grapple hooks went over the top of the cliff, the landing gates were let down; and I was able to step out on dry land. Many others had to struggle through chest-high water to get ashore. Our first priority was to take our radio to a position under the cliffs. We found a kind of alcove, where we could set the radio up and make contact with the ships. We were supposed to be in contact with the battleship Texas and the destroyer Satterlee, just to let them know that we were ashore. We had been told previously that if we didn鈥檛 get our objective accomplished within a certain length of time, there was a great number of bombers headed there; and we would just have to look out for ourselves. There was no way that they could take us away. The colonel decided that we had enough guys on top of the cliff and that we had better send word that we had it. Our code phrase for achieving our objective was 鈥淧raise the Lord,鈥� and that was sent out over the air, so that the bombers which had been scheduled to drop bombs were diverted to other targets.

It wasn鈥檛 too long until we were all atop the cliffs, except for those who had been wounded from gunfire, machine gun fire, or hand grenades, which had been dropped on us from above. The first guys up there did manage to push the Germans back; and they went from bunker to bunker, cleaning them out, so that by the time we got to the top of the cliff with our radios, it was fairly safe right there at the edge of the cliffs.

We soon hooked up with Colonel Rudder and started moving inland away from the edge of the cliff and ended up in a bunker farthest from the cliff top. In doing this, the Colonel had been shot through the thigh. He didn鈥檛 break any bones; but it made a bad wound above his knee, so we stopped right there at that bunker, set our radios up, and started looking for snipers and targets of opportunity. We discovered that the big guns that were supposed to be there were missing. They had been taken further inland. That was kind of a disappointment, but we did set up our radio and start watching for whatever targets might become available. We later learned that the missing big guns had been discovered in an orchard by a patrol of the Rangers. They attached thermite grenades to the breech block or traverse mechanism. When fired, the parts were welded together, so they could no longer be used.

My particular job at the bunker was walking back and forth on top of the apron where the gun barrel would normally have pointed out toward the channel and keeping watch for snipers or anything suspicious. Eventually Captain Harwood told me that it was time for me to take a break and somebody else would take over looking for snipers. I got down in the bunker by the radio, leaned my back against the outside edge of the wall, leaned my gun up against the wall, and dug out some D ration bars and started munching.

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.