大象传媒

(This story has been submitted to the People's War website through the 大象传媒 East Video Nation project on behalf of Reg Clarke and has been added to the site with his permission).

On 6th June 1944, Reg Clarke left Southampton bound for France with the Royal Engineers. He was just 19. After landing at 9.30am he fought for his life to gain a position to be able to land equipment to help the assault.

THIS IS REG'S STORY IN HIS WORDS.

The next thing we heard was the anchor dropping and they called the first wave forward which was all the French Canadians and we waved them off. As each one was loaded it went out and started going round in a circle and as each one was loaded they all formed a big circle, when all the first wave was on board they made for the beach.

When I was waving off I saw this guy who I had been looking after his crown and anchor game and I still had my bottle brow with money in it which belonged to him, he was running the game so I said what do I do with this and he said its no good to me, you do what you want with it. So I had a bottle with this invasion money we had been paid with.

Then it was our turn and the landing craft came round and they formed up in a circle going round in circles. Each one came up to the scramble nets, and we had to scramble down these nets. I didn鈥檛 realise how rough the sea was until I got on the scramble nets. As we got near the beach we started to get enemy fire hitting the sides of the ship, obviously small arms fire and eventually we came up on the beach, a big crunch as we hit the sand, the ramp dropped on the front and we all dashed out. As we dashed out the obvious thing to do was find cover so I went behind a sand dune where I saw some other people lying, and actually when I had nearly just about put myself down I saw this corporal who was running the crown and anchor game to my right. So I crawled over to him and gave him a thump and said do you want your money? But when I thumped him he fell over, in fact he was dead, I couldn鈥檛 see a mark on him, but he must have been killed as he was the first wave in.

The next day we took some German prisoners and they were trying to escape in an Opal car and we took them prisoners and pinched the car and sent them off down to the pen, disarmed them obviously, sent them off to the pen on the beach. So for the next few days we were driving around in an Opal car (he laughs).

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