Post-war Reflections

Post-war Reflections

As one among the many thousands who landed in Normandy on D-day , 6th June, 1944, myself at 10.30 , I am sometimes asked “what was it like to go ashore under fire….did you get wet……were you wounded in any way…….mentioned in dispatches perhaps? ” etc. etc

When you admit that you happened to arrive on the beach after the immediate area had been cleared of the enemy, was not at all wet and suffered no physical damage (except to my hearing), the immediate attitude of some is that I must have had a cushy time of it, and interest in one’s story slackens off rapidly. Well, it depends how you look at it. It is understandably difficult for men who have never, and hopefully never have to, experience arriving on a hostile beach when all around you is evidence that, only a short time previously, the beach had been an extremely dangerous place to be - and one could see from the spouts of sea-water rising during the final run-in to shore, it still was to some extent.

Even before arriving on the shore, hundreds of yards out, unfriendly fire was arriving intermittently from small pockets of resistance inland, probably aiming blindly towards the sea where the surface was thick with landing craft. I did not see any struck in those tense minutes but the bodies bobbing about in the swell, still to be recovered, taken ashore and deposited - no time for ceremony - in the hastily dug trench alongside the sea wall, was proof enough that many had not been so lucky.

The point I am trying to make is to show that there are many, unaware of active service in any war, from WW2 to the many shorter conflicts since, who are quick to compare the undoubted horrors of WW1 with any of the later events. It would be a useless exercise anyway to make comparisons between the two Great Wars which
differed in so many ways, WW1 being of a largely static nature, slugging-it-out kind of conflict over four years, WW2 being more fluid in character, over six years.

It is true that WW2 servicemen never had to serve in trenches, subjected to unceasing
bombardment for days on end, sometimes, as my old father had said, up to the knees in mud (or blood). But it was not a case that individual units occupied the trenches for
weeks on end, rather that they were relieved from front line duty fairly frequently and given rest at the rear. Even major battles, when “going over the top” led to much slaughter, were sometimes separated by many months of stalemate, working up to the next “Big Push”.

Please don’t imagine that I am such a bloody fool as to believe that WW1 was anything short of Hell for those who took part in it. I was born during it - and
brought up among those who had experienced it. I learned much to ensure a deep respect for them.

That said, there are many of my own generation who served with great distinction in WW2 and I have several times over the years stood in silence in the many cemeteries
dotted around the French and Belgian countryside, my thoughts naturally thinking of
the fate that befell some of those I had known personally. Then I get to thinking of
the lines from King Henry V’s speech before Agincourt, which I included in my memoirs written some years back (for family interest only) — a record — or as much as I could recall with accuracy - containing a fuller version of my experiences of D-day and the weeks that followed.

“ …… From this day to the ending of the world
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day”.

Oh yes, I, and quite a few others lived through that day unscarred, part of - by far - the largest sea-borne invasion ever mounted; but proud now, as old men, that we “were there” and entered history.

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