A Brit on JUNO Beach on D Day

This is a full version of an interview given to me by a family in-law during the course of my research for the Pen and Sword Battleground Europe title 'Juno Beach' published in early 2004.

LANCE CORPORAL STUART STEAR — ROYAL ENGINEERS

D Day unit — 619 Independent Field Park Company RE, 103 Beach Group.

Joining the Army: Son of a Devonshire Regiment soldier, Stuart Stear joined in 1939,as a boy soldier aged 14, at Cavalry Barracks, Honslow. Initially he served with the Scots Greys but when the Greys were sent overseas, he was reallocated to a Royal Engineers apprenticeship.
His service in the UK was with a variety of training units before joining a RE chemical warfare company that was subsequently converted into a tunnelling company. He left them to their underground work to join a field company but was transferred to a specialist field park squadron because of his trade training.

Pre D Day
‘My first amphibious landing training was a vehicle-waterproofing course at Warminster. Here we were taught how to fit extensions to exhausts and engine breathing pipes to enable vehicles to drive from the landing craft onto the beach. Our final exam was to drive the vehicles down a ramp into a tank full of water, to test the sealing of the plugs in the vehicle hull. If you drove through successfully, you passed but if your vehicle stopped in the tank, you were sent back to keep practising!
‘In 1944, 619 Company was based in Troon, Scotland and nearby at Mocham Loch we built a replica of the Atlantic Wall. It took us a month to pour the concrete and complete the building work and not nearly so long for Hobart’s Funnies of 79th Armoured Division to smash it up. It gave us a lot of confidence to see how quickly their great big demolition guns destroyed it and to watch the infantry and DD tanks practising coming ashore.
‘As D Day approached, we moved down to a tented camp in the New Forest and then on too a concentration camp near Southampton where we were sealed in prior to embarkation, which took place on about 4 June 1944. We drove our truck across the specially built concrete hard and once onboard our American LCT, we moved out into the Solent and anchored off the Isle of White. There were thousands of ships all of different size around us.
‘We were sharing the LCT with the French Canadians of the Chaudiere Regiment (8 Canadian Brigade) and some Shermans on the lower deck. To pass the time the Canadians taught us to play a dice game called Shoot. There was nothing else to do and I lost all my invasion money but it kept our minds off the invasion.
‘The crossing wasn’t too ruff but breakfast was a bit strange four our taste — porridge with bacon and sausage stuck in it! There was nothing else so we ate it.

D Day
‘We were due to land about 11 o’clock and, as we went in, we passed HMS Ramillies [more likely HMS Belfast] and HMS Diadem who fired over us and all the other ships each with a barrage balloon. The noise was tremendous and as we got closer, we could see explosions on the back of the beach or just inland. Only nineteen years old and in my first battle I was scared stiff.
‘On the run in I saw an infantry landing craft blow up on a mined beach obstacle. It seemed to leap up out of the water and it fell back in several pieces. Other boats had their hulls ripped open by Belgian Gate obstacles but our landing was almost dry. Clutching my toolbox, I rode ashore in our Company workshop truck, passing a lot of bodies, mostly Canadians, washing back and forth in the surf. The beach, Nan Red at St Aubin, was under occasional bursts of long range machine gun fire from the direction of Langrune Sur Mer and from sporadic artillery or mortar fire. The machine gun fire was eventually stopped about midday when about five LC(R)s came in and took it in turn to fire their rockets at what was I suppose a strong point. I heard about one of our Sergeants being to told to take on a pill box. Apparently he replied “I’m an engineer not an infantryman.” But having been told that he was “A soldier first” he set off with six Sappers to do the job but by the time he got to the pillbox, the infantry had already captured it.
‘We hurried across the beach to the cover of the sea wall. I only saw one knocked out tank on the beach but there were plenty of vehicles. I read that Montgomery had complained that “There seemed to be more vehicles on the beach than troops!” We waited here for our recce party to return from checking out the water tower just in land from St Aubin that we were to fix to provide a water supply. At this point I ate some of the chocolate and boiled sweets from our unfamiliar 24 hour ration packs. I can’t remember when I got round to eating my hard biscuits and using the Oxo cube sized tea ration — complete with dried milk and sugar.
‘It seemed to be absolutely chaotic on the beach at this time but I suppose there was order, as the infantry from our LCT and others gathered by the sea wall and were setting off inland very quickly. The Royal Navy Beach Master was able to call in the landing craft when there was space.
‘When the recce party returned they told us that the water tower was undamaged despite the bombardment and destruction around it. We were sent forward to the lanes off the beach to help clear mines. I remember a tank breaking down in the lane and the officer commander being told by a Royal Navy officer that he had five minutes to get it going or we’d blow his tank up. We had these heavy packed charges about two foot six square that we would put in the hull of a broken down tank to completely demolish it and clear the lane. In this case the tank was moved but one packed charge had to be used on another lane.
‘Most of the mines were Teller anti-tank mines, which were not too dangerous to handle as they were designed to be set of by vehicles not men. We did find some S or jumping mines in a field beyond the village that were much more sensitive and difficult to clear. One of the men who had been in boy’s service with me, Sapper Spreadbury, was killed while he was trying to deal with a booby trapped mine in the dunes behind the beach. There wasn’t even enough left of him to fill a sandbag. Despite incidents like this, people quickly became blasé about clearing mines and needed to be swapped around quite frequently. People lifting mines for the first time were the most through. While we were lifting mines by hand, the flail tanks cleared areas behind the dunes for the dumping of stores and the assembly of fresh troops.
‘Another task we began on D Day and continued for several days, was the clearance of obstacles from the beach at low water, as all the stores, men and ammunition had to be landed there. My job was to fit an armoured bulldozer’s chains to the obstacles so they could be dragged into piles at the back of the beach.
‘During the afternoon, I saw German prisoners passing us being marched back to the beach. They seemed very young and as frightened as we were. Later, others came back on their own, unescorted, happy to be on their way to England and out of the war. The German prisoners helped with carrying stretchers on to the empty landing craft and were put to work burying their dead.
‘Behind the seawall, the German defences seemed to be freshly built and the ground floors of the houses had been filled with concrete to make camouflaged bunkers. They had been badly shelled and were badly pitted but it was mainly superficial damage. Lying all about were khaki and field grey bodies. More field grey than khaki but it didn’t mean anything to me, as I was numb and overwhelmed by all that was going on. Beyond the sea front, there was less damage than I expected. By late afternoon the seeming chaos of the morning had been replaced by order, with signs and military police everywhere and by early evening even the sporadic artillery fire had stopped.
‘I stayed with the Beach Group on JUNO and had my twenty first birthday on the beach some weeks later. Eventually we moved-on after the breakout and eventually we became a part of 15th Scottish Division.

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