Landing in France, as told by Judith Hill, daughter of Robert Sturgeon

My father often told us and indeed wrote down his memories of his experience of landing in France as part of the D day assault. He had to drive a lorry off the landing craft.As the sand was quite soft and the sea very rough, he had terrible trouble getting the vehicle to drive up the beach. He actually admitted that he thought he was going to drown in his vehicle. The water was up to his chest, all his mates shouting "come on Bobby" as if willing the vehicle to get some grip. Quite suddenly the back wheels managed to grip into the sand enough to propel the lorry up the beach, and he was able to complete his journey. He also described the horror of it all, as he put in his memoir "the worst thing was seeing the dead and wounded, being carried down the beach, as we were going up". He also described the awful noise that was all around him, this seemed to be as traumatic as everything visual going on. His unit had a task connected with Pegasus Bridge - cable laying - they were successful.

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