My D-day

I was stationed at the Isle of White. We left the Isle of White at dawn on D-day morning and landed at Normandy in an American Rhino Ferry, which was capable of holding about 20 cars and lorries. I was in charge of landing the ferry. As we approached Normandy Beach there was three Marine landing craft already there. I said to my crew “We have an easy landing here”. After discharging the cargo, I went for a walk along the beach towards the other landing craft. As i was walking, a German plane came and tried to machine gun me down. I ran towards the landing craft to escape being killed. I then dived into a Marine Command Barge to save my life. All of the crew were dead. I had dived on to a pile of dead bodies. I returned to my landing craft and took it back out to sea to the other ships, along with my crew. I worked on the beach in Normandy for about two months, bringing supplies backwards and forwards. We had to sink a ship to make a breaker. It was a daily occurrence to see floating body parts in the sea and washed up on the beach. Many snipers tried to kill us during our time in Normandy. A few days after the D-day landings i was promoted to full sargent on the beach while the war was still on. After this I went to Belgium and Antwerp and from there I went to Holland. Whilst in Holland I was given embarkation leave and I returned to England to prepare to be re-stationed in Singapore. Whilst waiting to go to Singapore, they dropped the atomic bomb so the trip was cancelled. I was very lucky as my fate could of been different like many of my friends.

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